Article by Federico Guerrieri, picture by The White House/flickr

The UN Conference on Climate Change which took place in Copenhagen between the 7th and 18th of December 2009 ended in failure. The agreement signed is not legally binding and does not include any proposals for greenhouse gas emission reduction. The accord only promises to deliver 30 billion dollars (£18.5bn) of aid for developing nations over the next three years outlining a goal of providing $100bn a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with the impacts of climate change.

The Copenhagen accord only recognises the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2°C, but does not contain any commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal. This agreement has been strongly criticised by developing and Third World countries, because the deal was brokered between China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US only.

The Sudanese negotiator, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, said "this is asking Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dependence of a few countries. It's a solution based on values that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces." The United States did not acknowledge their responsibility and President Obama showed to the world that he did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: "the city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport".

The US arrived at the Copenhagen Summit with an offer of just 3% emission cuts on 1990 levels: a ridiculous proposal from the major emitter together with China that affected the talks since the beginning of the Summit. And the European Union? As mentioned above, the deal has been discussed between China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the United States. What about the leadership role claimed by the EU? And its proposal of cutting the output of greenhouse gases by 20% or 30% on 1990 levels? The EU has not been considered by the US and other countries during the Summit.

The EU failed. The EU comes out of the Summit without any importance in the international arena. It is clear that the first responsible for the failure of the European Union are Van Rumpoy, Catherine Ashton and Manuel Barroso. They are almost unknown in the international arena and they cannot represents such an important organization. As I have already underlined in a previous article, the appointments of the two most important offices of the European Union makes me think that the majority of European leaders prefer a weak Europe rather than a strong one. We have seen the dramatic effects of these appointments in Copenhagen. Now the world does not have a legally binding treaty on climate change and Europe is a completely not influent player in the world affairs. The ones who sustained the appointments of Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton must be considered as responsible for the failure of the European Union and for its current lack of credibility and importance.

If the European Union wants to become an important player, the member States must immediately stop to only looking at their own narrow self-interest. Moreover, it is time to be clear. Great men, such as Victor Hugo, Spinelli and Monet dreamed about a Federation of European States characterized by a political union, not only an economic one. This is the only way to form a Great Europe. In order to achieve it, we must clarify “who is in” and “who is out”. The behaviour of some member States who see the European Union only as a “bank” where to get money is no longer acceptable. The countries who do not believe in the future of an unified Europe should reconsider their position.

For what concern the environment, we cannot accept the weak outline of the Copenhagen Summit. As Robert Bailey (Oxfam International) said, “it is too late to save the summit, but it's not too late to save the planet and its people. We have no choice but to forge forward towards a legally binding deal in 2010”. The reduction in global CO2 emissions in order to prevent temperatures rises above 1.5 °C over pre-industrial level, and a legally binding treaty are absolutely fundamental in order to avoid catastrophic events. Because the Kyoto Protocol will expire by the end of 2012, the Copenhagen non-decisions are a serious threat to the few things that we achieved in that circumstance. Western countries did not acknowledge their responsibilities for the damage caused during their own process of industrialization.

Rich countries, especially the United States, were not ready to make deeper cuts in their emission than developing countries. If we want to reach an agreement on climate change we must make deeper cut than developing countries. The Western world must also provide financial and technologic aids to developing and Third World countries helping them to achieve a “green economy”. The agreement proposed by the US and China is not what we need in order to fight climate change.