Climate savants of every stripe--from our colleague Brad Plumer at The Vine to Andrew Light and Michael Levi at the Center for American Progress and the Council on Foreign Relations, respectively, to Bryan Walsh at TIME, Sharon Begley at Newsweek, and the writers at the Breakthrough Institute -- are still trying to figure out what happened at the Copenhagen climate talks and what it means. And they’re right to be uncertain, as the last days of the massive United Nations conclave were at once chaotic and extraordinary, with President Obama breaking free of the UN’s 190+ nation negotiating framework amid protests and parliamentary opposition to hammer out a three-page international accord with a small group of the largest carbon emitters in the world. On the one hand, questions are flying about how seriously to take the highly general, three-page political final statement with its vague targets, lack of binding emission reduction commitments, and other uncertainties, since everything will depend on how individual nations act in the months and years going forward. On the other hand, confusion now surrounds the future status of the ungainly, largely ineffective, and now marginalized UN process -- the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). On this point, it could well be, as Andrew Light and Michael Levi have been writing, that Copenhagen will go down as the last time that the world places such high hopes in the all-inclusive UN process with its gargantuan and unworkable world plenaries. But what then? That question opens up new uncertainties about how and when new forums for carbon abatement might be located and agreed upon.

And yet, for all these uncertainties, good reasons exist to welcome the Copenhagen tumult and the glimpse it has provided of a new way of approaching world climate mitigation. Most auspiciously, in the wake of Copenhagen it appears that many of the world’s major carbon emitters — the U.S., China, India, Brazil, and South Africa — may at last be ready to move forward to reduce emissions and spur clean development with or without the rest of the UNFCCC nations and with a more practical focus on direct dealings and technological innovation than has characterized the UN process.

It’s true, to be sure, that the Copenhagen Accord dropped the hoped-for goal of a halving of world emissions from 1990 levels by 2050, retained only an aim of keeping temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and is not legally binding. However, those concessions to reality can only disappoint those who had unrealistic hopes. After all, not only was such a “binding” deal always unlikely, given the UN approach, but even if one had been achieved, the weak achievements of the “binding” Kyoto pact have already demonstrated the limited efficacy of such abstract targets and timetables. And the fact is that President Obama’s trip to Copenhagen meanwhile delivered real achievements, as Climate Progress has noted:

• There is now an accord hammered out by 28 countries and accepted by 188 calling on committed parties to submit national action plans for emission reductions consistent with a stated goal of limiting global temperature increases from carbon pollution

• Developing countries-- including China, India, South Africa, and Brazil—are now for the first time engaged to make transparent emissions reductions, as they had not been by the Kyoto process

• A compromise agreement on verification of pollution reductions now exists for the first time and subjects all reductions to “international consultation and analysis”

• Developed countries committed significantly more financial resources than ever before to developing countries for mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer, and forest conservation

Beyond all that, a new sense of practicality and a sense of starting over on a simpler, more realistic footing can be extracted from Copenhagen’s drama and controversy, nowhere more so than in President Obama’s interesting remarks as he left the convention site. In these remarks and answers to questions, Obama provided a clear-eyed review of the difficulty of getting politics to comport with science, the fundamental problems of getting a deal in a forum of 190 diverse nations, and the need to begin building new partnerships and forums among the willing to begin making real program right now. But what is also critically important and welcome was the extent to which, in acknowledging the shortcomings of the Copenhagen Accord, Obama recognized that technology innovation may be, the best way to bridge the gap, as Jesse Jenkins of the Breakthrough Institute well summarized, between “the actions nations are willing (or able) to take today” and those climate scientists argue are “necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.” Declared Obama:

Our hope is that by investing in clean energy, in research, in development, in innovation, that in the same way that the Clean Air Act ended up spurring all kinds of innovations that solved the acid rain problem at a much cheaper and much more rapid pace than we expected, that by beginning to make progress and getting the wheels of innovation moving, that we are in fact going to be in a position to solve this problem. But we're going to need technological breakthroughs to get to the goals that we're looking for.

This is a potential breakthrough. For nearly two decades international climate debates have been too much fixated on complex, abstract, and impractical regulatory targets and reductions and too little concerned with the specific political, economic, and technological means by which such goals will be achieved. Now, with the failure of the standard UNFCCC approach and the emergence of technology transfer as a crucial meeting point, a new pragmatism and perhaps actual progress may now be possible.

I did not go to Copenhagen, but as I read over the reports from the Nature Conservancy’s delegation, I am reminded in some ways of the early days of the effort to control toxic substances in the U.S. In the late 1960s and 1970s scientists were discovering a relationship between toxic chemicals and human disease. There were, of course, deniers then, and those who argued that regulation would damage economic growth. But as the public began to understand the risk, there were, across the country, hundreds of community meetings at which citizens who lived near contaminated sites demanded explanations of why government was imposing risks from toxic chemicals on their communities, and, particularly, on their children. They wanted to know why the polluters were not stopped much sooner.

The focus, then, was on the risks of cancer and birth defects, and while scientists had developed ways of measuring those risks, it was simply the possibility rather than the mathematics that convinced lawmakers to ban the dumping of toxic substances onto the land and into the water and to begin the cleanup. Once the risks were acknowledged by government, there was little choice but for Congress to act or face increasing condemnation from voters and, ultimately, in the eyes of history, for having sat idly by while people suffered. Now, just a generation later, one cannot imagine, here in the U.S., piling leaking chemical drums over drinking water aquifers or spraying chemical wastes into rivers. Sadly, people in many developing countries are still exposed to risks we in the U.S. would find unacceptable.

Earth’s citizens are now faced with assessing the risk of greenhouse gas emissions on our climate and, thus, on the health and welfare of communities and the world’s children. Those risks are more complicated to quantify than for specific toxic chemicals, but the best available science suggests that uncontrolled climate change will inflict real and quantifiable hazards on many hundreds of millions of people. While we can question whether Copenhagen reached the finite goals set out for it by thousands of commentators and advocates, the real questions is whether the meeting marked a pivotal point in acceptance of the responsibility for addressing climate risks by the world’s leaders.

It is, of course impossible to know without looking back from the vantage point of the next generation, but the perception of my colleagues who were there is, yes, while Copenhagen did not produce legal and binding results, it did create the essential foundation for future progress. Most important according to Eric Haxthausen, Director of the Conservancy’s U.S. Climate Policy Program:

• The leaders of the world’s most powerful and influential countries formally recognized and quantified the risk of climate change by agreeing on the need to keep temperature increases below 2 degrees centigrade. Recognition of risk and a quantifiable goal to manage that risk is essential to subsequent action because it brings with it the obligation to act. If no action is taken and those risks are later realized in disastrous climate change impacts, those now in power will be seen as responsible.
• World leaders also agreed that greenhouse gas emissions are the source of the risk and that countries should reduce such emissions and verify what is being achieved.
• Wealthier countries accepted at least part of the obligation to help poorer countries cope with the impacts of global warming and promised sufficient amounts of money to begin helping those countries adapt to a changing climate
• And there was a clear recognition that forests and other natural systems have an important role in reducing carbon emissions and providing other quantifiable services to people

As Andrew Deutz, the head of the Conservancy’s delegation to Copenhagen reported back to us, “Climate change is now firmly established as a central issue on the geopolitical level and all of these leaders are now intimately familiar with these challenges and committed to solve them”.

History does not grind forward by some invisible force. Change is powered by individual actions, and, as Andrew suggests, individual world leaders are now taking responsibility for addressing the threat of climate change. President Obama’s critical role in achieving these results is important. He took considerable political risks in advancing both the U.S. position and a global perspective. He is a man with a sense of history and, having recognized the environmental risks to his country likely to result from unconstrained climate change, it appears he simply did not want to stand by in Copenhagen without acting decisively to address those risks. That is how environmental progress is made.

It is clear that Copenhagen did not guarantee success in meeting the climate challenge, but only created the foundation for success. We all know the unprecedented difficulty of moving forward, of restructuring and retooling global energy production and use to reduce carbon emissions. I expect, however, that neither today’s nor future leaders will want to face the people of the world, as the impacts of climate change are seen more broadly, to explain why they did not act sooner and more decisively to protect their constituents from a far-reaching and predictable danger.

Copenhagen is not just the end of the beginning. It’s the beginning of the middle game. For some years, participants and other stakeholders in the international climate change negotiations have talked wistfully about the impossibility of getting unanimous agreement from over 190 countries, however global and universal the problem of climate change that we have been trying to address. G8, G20, MEF were all responses to the feeling that the countries most important for mitigation, at least, needed to get together in a forum where real negotiations could take place. All of them were undermined by doubts about legitimacy and by the belief that if the UN was intended to do anything, it must be given a chance to do this.

Well, Copenhagen may have resolved that. When the traditional approach had reached the end of the line on Thursday of the second week, the most important countries apart from the EU, whose position was already clear, went into a closed session. What emerged was not pretty, not equitable, not legitimate in the sense many are still looking for, and not binding in a way whose force has in fact been destroyed by Canada, though no one seems willing to admit it. But for the first time developed and major developing countries have put their name to a document that indicates the action each of them is taking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the beginnings of a monitoring system, understandably differentiated at first but grappling seriously with issues of trust and comparative effort. And the UN forum has noted this, and is going to try to find the means to legitimise it. It is reasonable to consider whether we may be looking at a precedent.

It’s not that this has happened without the UN – it was the approaching pressure of Copenhagen that led these countries to put their offers on the table, and it was partly the UN dimension that led to Heads of State finally designating this as the geopolitical and (it’s getting there) financial issue of our time, and not just something for irrelevant Environment Ministers. But a key negotiating caucus was needed to turn that pressure into action of some kind, and it may now have emerged.

Of course, any number of other aspects of Copenhagen and its outcome make one weep. The step backwards from a long-term goal expressed in terms that relate to action that can be taken, the heightened demagoguery, the echo of the Convention’s original 1992 pledge and review approach which failed. Most importantly, the continued reluctance to face the sheer size of the investment challenge, the repetition by developed countries of the need to leverage huge amounts of private money without the least idea of how to do it, the ritual disapproval of private money by developing countries hopeful of squeezing more from rich countries’ taxpayers. And the continued strangulation of the only successful device so far for making companies driven by normal economics, and countries without formal targets, actually want to do projects that cut carbon - the clean development mechanism, whose reform process seems driven by leisurely, suspicious and cost-generating concepts of environmental integrity far removed from the every-year-counts emergency that science tells us we are facing.

The ideas for expansions of this system, and new mechanisms that will make investors and entrepreneurs bring their ideas and efficiencies to the cause of reducing carbon, are still visible in the texts that will continue to be discussed. But the amount of hard professional work needed on financial structures that can make things happen is enormous. The recognition that carbon reduction needs to be given a price and turned into a commodity has spread across the world, though it is still battling hard against cynical or unrealistic preferences for tax, inflexible regulation or endless Government subsidy. All four have their place when the timetable is so tight, but to act by imposing on or simply paying the private sector, rather than engaging it as well, would be a terrible mistake.

This too is an area where the UN pointed the way and promised much, but where individual countries or groups of them are taking things forward. As is the case for targets, the economic power and leadership of the United States is absolutely necessary. So the wish for 2010, or as long as it takes, should not just be for continued US pressure to find a way for negotiations to produce results, but for a US demonstration of how private sector as well as public sector money can be focused on the problem. Once that is done, the middle game will be truly under way.

When Barack Obama and his counterparts arrived in Copenhagen, they each found a surprise – line diplomats had not been able to set the table effectively for their interaction. Whereas Presidents often arrive at such international gatherings with the expectation that they will say grace over the offerings prepared by their negotiators and perhaps decide one or at most two key issues, world leaders at Copenhagen found a bare table with the waiters and kitchen staff locked in arguments.

This certainly was an unusual international scene, one where world leaders themselves actually negotiated the words of the accord. The heart of what they achieved was to build trust, both in the broadest sense of the word and in the narrower sense of an agreement that identifies the road to a transparent system designed to ensure that each country keeps the promises it makes.

Several questions are paramount in assessing the spare Copenhagen Accord that emerged from those crucial discussions among world leaders.

What was really accomplished? What does the Copenhagen Accord mean for the future? How will it affect the critical US Senate debate on climate legislation? What led to the sad state of the negotiations the world leaders found when they arrived? And what lessons can we draw that can avert the need for a similar rescue effort by world leaders in Mexico City next November?

While the view that the Copenhagen Accord has fallen far short of expectations is the conventional wisdom in the media, I would argue that in fact this Accord is an important accomplishment. It has addressed the three key elements of the global deal: 1) reduction commitments by all the major emitters; 2) a commitment by developed nations to help developing nations to finance adaptation, capacity building, technological innovation and reductions in carbon emissions and deforestation; and 3) an international system to ensure transparency of country performance. The national reduction targets announced by every major nation before Copenhagen will be enshrined in the final Accord. While these announcements were seen as a potential springboard to more far-reaching and specific agreements on the underlying policy architecture, that failed to materialize. The Copenhagen Accord nonetheless marks what President Obama called “a breakthrough.”

Key developing countries like China, Brazil and Mexico have been quietly assembling an impressive record of carbon and deforestation reductions that will equal if not exceed by 2010 the aggregate reductions promised by the EU and the US. Their announcements here and the targets they will inscribe in the Accord build on those efforts and finally put to rest the myth that developing countries are not doing anything. They also make clear that the Copenhagen Accord is not the Kyoto Protocol - it will require both developing and developed countries to reduce their emissions.

On finance, the stunning announcement by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Thursday that the US would carry its share of the $100 billion annual package of financing in 2020 fell flat with most developing countries, a commentary on the difficulty of communicating to developing countries the full political reality of the US climate debate and the larger economic context. US negotiators felt they had spent their “silver bullet,” without moving the negotiations forward, creating a heightened need for President Obama and other heads of state to intervene.

Many developing country delegates had come to expect that the G-77’s demands for a commitment of 1% of developed country GDP—for climate assistance annually would eventually be agreed to, a never-never land dream, one unfortunately stoked by many NGOs who hoped to land the annual $100 billion commitment by asking for much more. Too bad that before Copenhagen developing country delegates couldn’t have heard the commentary by Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) who told ABC News on Sunday that “neither the President nor the Secretary of State can go to Copenhagen and make (such) commitments” . . . “there is not the support right now for that (in the Senate)” or seen the recent US polling that found that 57% of American citizens opposed providing aid to developing countries for climate change.

Beyond the big three elements of the package, the Accord incorporated key principles that negotiators had worked tirelessly on since Bali including reducing deforestation and preparing vulnerable countries to adapt to the already unavoidable effects of climate change. Final agreement is within reach on cooperative efforts to reduce deforestation which is responsible for nearly 20% of global carbon emissions, and it is heartening that world leaders themselves underlined the importance of halting deforestation.

So what does the Copenhagen Accord mean for the U.S. climate debate? It tackles head-on the two most pressing issues, action by the key developing countries and international transparency to ensure all national promises are kept. It keeps the “ball in play” for the Senate and lays the groundwork for the all-important assurances that our competitors in India and China will not gain market advantages in key competitive industrial sectors as a result of passage of US climate legislation. In fact, provisions in both the House and Senate bills provide insurance in the form of 100% free permits to US industries in those competitive sectors for emissions in the period until 2025, the period when China, India and the other major emerging economies will build on the actions they are already taking in these sectors. And nothing in the Copenhagen Accord will restrict our ability to use border tax adjustments as a further protection should those actions not be taken by one or another of the key developing countries. After all, 6 to 8 large developing economies are responsible for the lion’s share of emissions in the key internationally competitive sectors like steel, cement and aluminum so their action will be sufficient to avoid competitive problems for our country.

In the aftermath of Copenhagen, much has been made of the fact that the negotiators only “took note” of the Accord in final action on Saturday. Hence the argument goes: little has been accomplished in the arcane world of UNFCCC negotiations. But I think this “inside-baseball” analysis misses the big picture. On Friday, more than 25 heads of state had negotiated the first drafts of the Copenhagen Accord. On Friday evening, President Obama and the leaders of Brazil, China, India and South Africa resolved the final key sticking points in that document. I think the proverbial take-home message is that these five countries and their larger set of counterparts committed to stand by that Accord. I was told by one developing country minister present at the meeting of the five that a spirit of “bonhomie” pervaded the scene as the final negotiations moved toward agreement. But that was not expected at the initial moment of truth when the President knocked on the door unannounced and asked politely if he could join the meeting. None of the four was quite sure what to say at first or who was empowered to respond, looked at each other for a moment and then invited him in.

My sense is that this meeting will likely take on a certain magical status, much like the moment at 4 am in Kyoto when then committee-of-the-whole chair Raoul Estrada of Argentina, by dint of sheer personal magnetism and negotiation savoir faire, pushed the Kyoto Protocol through to agreement. And this Accord, no matter how it is finally handled in the UNFCCC process, will become the important first agreed-on architectural sketch for the building that will eventually be erected to solve the climate problem.

So how did we get to the situation on Friday where the world leaders had to set their own table? One of the developing country ambassadors who has seen many negotiations over finance in a variety of treaties warned me weeks ago in Bangkok that the success of such negotiations depends fundamentally on the personalities of key players and on building trust. He was concerned whether that trust could be built in Copenhagen. While no Raoul Estrada was on the scene, Danish Environment Minister Connie Hedegard made a valiant effort with shuttle diplomacy, travelling worldwide for two years to visit environment ministers and decision-makers before the conference to build some of that trust.

A senior European negotiator and a veteran of Kyoto had a different warning a month ago. For the first time, he said, we have a set of countries who do not want any agreement and instead see this as an ideal opportunity to press their larger geopolitical anti-capitalism views. In a negotiation as tricky as this one with consensus required to move forward, he feared such players could sow the seeds of discord both within G-77 and in the negotiating rooms, thereby undermining the process. He was prescient. Outlier countries led by Venezuela were highly effective in stalling talks and fueling distrust.

Meanwhile, the unfortunate decision of Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen to personally take charge of the negotiations in the final days exacerbated the problems. Not having built the relationships and trust necessary to carry such a high stakes negotiation to the finish line, he faced likely defeat. Ironically, the Danish Prime Minister was rescued by a most unlikely source. Ambassador Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan, the spokesman for the G-77, appeared to go beyond his mandate on several occasions to undermine progress in the days leading up to the world leaders’ segment of the process. In the final hours, his comparison of developed country positions on climate to a “second holocaust” for Africa so “over the top” that he seemed to alienate many of his G-77 colleagues, outraged developed parties, and caused an eloquent and widespread show of support for the Accord from a wide array of Parties. The final “taking note” compromise patched over a near-black eye for the UNFCCC process, and created space for the Accord negotiated by the world leaders to survive.

But the breakdown in the days leading up to the dramatic agreement on Friday cannot be explained solely by personalities and tactical errors. It also goes to the enormity of the challenge, the size of the financial and human stakes that climate change encompasses, and the near-impossibility of solving all these questions through a consensus-based negotiation among 193 countries. The question is: can we add a complementary process that can narrow the issues that the larger UNFCCC process must resolve? Admittedly clumsy attempts by the Danish presidency to draft a president’s text were rejected repeatedly by G-77 negotiators. And efforts like the Major Economies Forum spearheaded by the US got active participation from developing countries only on condition that everything must be brought back to the UNFCCC process. Clearly, jettisoning the UN process is not a real option. The UN process and the public and media pressure that surrounded it helped the Danes and others to encourage the set of far-reaching announcements by every major emitting country, and a democratic multilateral process has a high ethical and equity value in assuring the most threatened and poorest countries have a voice in their future.

Yet it is clear that more of the same cannot lead to success at Mexico City. So representatives of those world leaders who rescued this process over the weekend will need to work with UN leaders to find a complementary process where more of the issues can be narrowed. We know the bulk of the emissions come from the 20 largest countries. We know the bulk of the finance will also come from them. Each of those leaders standing side by side to jointly step up further, in the process assuring each other that no one will seek narrow economic advantage, is the central path to success. Finding a way to blend this into the UN process is the challenge for 2010.

Two weeks ago we seemed poised for that to happen, but the negotiations sadly ran off course. The leadership on the final night did not create a space to give regional groups of countries time to get comfortable with the Copenhagen Accord. Next time we need a process where the 20 key countries bring a more detailed package based on the Copenhagen Accord forward and give the other nations a full chance to understand and participate in it. Many key elements do not have to be in the UN official accord – there can be multilateral agreements among the 20 parties – things like a common set of rules for emissions trading and for offsets that all the countries with trading systems will observe, an agreement on what transparency really means. Then the UN can provide the common standards and guideline to implement those standards.

To coin a final metaphor, this process is like turning a huge ship around. The Copenhagen Accord turns that ship around and gets all the big players on board as passengers – now we need to bring all the others in their smaller boats on board and then the ship can pick up needed speed to solve this long term planetary challenge.

Well, we missed our chance. No, I’m not talking about the chance to get a new global climate change treaty or something even more important to me, a global sectoral approach to greenhouse gas emissions for aviation. We did not miss that chance, because – going into it – everyone knew that Copenhagen would just be a stop along the way. Indeed, the doors are still open and there are work programs extending into 2010 (and beyond) for the next step and the next. No, the missed chance that I’m talking about is the great entrepreneurial idea that came to me about 11 pm one night in Copenhagen’s Bella Center – to sell t-shirts with the logo “I Went to Copenhagen Looking for a [Bracketed Text] and All I Got Was This [Bracketed Text].”

My colleagues thought it was a great idea. And think of the money we could have made! Because – if there is one thing I learned in Copenhagen – it is that a lot of what climate change policy is all about is money.

If I’m consoled at all about my missed opportunity for personal gain, it is by the fact that we still have the opportunity to achieve what we need for a reasoned and calibrated climate policy for aviation. Copenhagen ended in just the right result in that regard – the negotiators representing the 193 countries that are Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) did not meddle with the framework on aviation greenhouse gas emissions that the 190 countries that are signatories to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (commonly known as the “Chicago Convention”) are pursuing through another United Nations body, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

Indeed, while the “Copenhagen Accord” that was brokered between the United States, China, Brazil, South Africa, India and about twenty other countries during the 11^th hour (actually, it was the 11^th day, if you don’t count the Sunday that the Bella Center was closed) sets forth certain principles for climate change policy action to come, it does not fiat in any aviation-specific emissions targets or aviation levies to fund climate change adaptation nor does it claim that the UNFCCC is “better” than ICAO as a forum for the countries to set aviation greenhouse gas policy. And the rest of the countries in the Copenhagen meetings who grudgingly agreed to “note” the Copenhagen Accord during the 12^th hour of the meeting (coincidentally, the 12^th day!) appear to have concurred with this result.

This is good. Because now ICAO can set about fleshing out the framework it agreed in October 2009 at its “High Level Meeting” on climate change. That framework recognizes that we need a global “rulebook” of sorts regarding how aviation greenhouse gas emissions should be addressed. This is critical to ensure that, when an airline flies from one country to the next, the game will not change as the plane crosses the border. Among the reasons we need that are to avoid the trade wars that are almost certain to crop up as individual countries or regions decide to pin 20, 34, 50, 87 or some other random percentage of the “costs” for climate change on aviation, a sector responsible for 2 percent of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions globally. We need a global rulebook so one country or region can’t decide the relative priority of CO2 emissions from aircraft versus emissions with local air quality impacts versus noise (because there are trade-offs inherent in aircraft engine combustion and aircraft operation) or, far worse, versus safety. And we need a global rulebook so the airlines can maintain and build on their record of continual fuel and greenhouse gas efficiency improvements, which have allowed the global airlines to drive over 8 percent of the world’s GDP while using only 2 percent of the CO2 budget.

The rulebook should have details. ICAO already has recognized that fuel efficiency goals are appropriate for the near to medium term. (While the aviation industry proposed an aggressive annual average 1.5 percent fuel efficiency improvement through 2020, the ICAO High Level Meeting recommended two percent per year. No doubt the airlines would love to see this achieved, but so much of this rests on things fully controlled by governments, like air traffic control modernization, which has languished for years. Will the governments finally step up with the appropriate infrastructure investments?) And ICAO, like President Obama, Mexico’s President Calderón and Canada’s Prime Minister Harper, has recognized that – given aviation’s tremendous fuel efficiency record to date and a framework supporting even more improvements – “carbon neutral growth” (i.e., either eliminating or offsetting extra emissions from growth) makes sense in the medium to long term, as the potential for growth in aviation emissions is where the environmental concern lies and demanding absolute emissions reductions from aviation now would have grave consequences for the global economy. (Note – the aviation industry’s global sectoral approach proposal includes this detail. We’ve committed to carbon neutral growth from 2020, but, again, we cannot achieve this without complementary policies from governments).

The rulebook should also speak to measures. As ICAO has acknowledged, continued improvements in technology, infrastructure and operations should be prioritized. (The aviation industry certainly is doing this – with the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative hastening the deployment of commercially viable, environmentally friendly alternative aviation fuels and our airlines testing new ATC procedures, for example.) But we recognize that there is a role for economic measures – certainly for positive incentives, but also to help us bridge in accomplishing our carbon neutral growth goal. Any such measures, however, must only provide for offsetting the small portion of emissions that would otherwise keep us from meeting our targets. If taxes, charges, trading, offsetting or other measures are applied to aviation more broadly than that, they will take away the funds we need to continue to improve our greenhouse gas record from within the industry. And to be blunt, it just makes no sense for aviation to subsidize other industries that have done far less to improve their own greenhouse gas emissions profile or to line the pockets of Wall Street carbon traders. ICAO has agreed to develop a framework for any economic measures – this is a critical need.

What Copenhagen also gave us by not dictating a specific aviation outcome is a further opportunity to “get it right” in any U.S. climate legislation that might go forward. The U.S. should build into any such legislation a provision carving U.S. aviation in to a global sectoral approach. This will give U.S. airlines with both international and domestic flights and those with only domestic flights a comprehensive, harmonized framework in which to operate. As I’ve explained before, the U.S. government gives up no sovereignty here – it just seeks to make domestic climate change policy covering aviation consistent with the international framework necessary for operation of a global industry.

We have much work to do in the ICAO process between now and the ICAO Assembly meeting at the end of September 2010. We have a chance to fill in the bracketed text and to fill it in with a tailored and appropriate global sectoral approach program that will bring significant environmental benefit, without unduly hampering this critical industry. Under such a scenario, I will forever miss the chance to profit on my “bracketed text” t-shirt idea. Let’s hope so.

One of the themes emerging in the many post-game analyses of the Copenhagen talks is that conventional UN-style negotiations cannot work. Even the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has acknowledged these criticisms, and has pledged to lead a review next year.

To be clear, no one should have unreasonable expectations of what can be achieved simply by shifting forums. Climate change is an exceedingly hard issue around which to build international cooperation. All countries have some incentive to avoid the dangerous impacts of climate change, but each also has a motive to keep developing its economy. As a result, the incentives to be a “free rider” are very strong, which puts stress on the limited ability of the international community to organize credible inducements or punishments.

Yet, precisely because climate change is a hard issue, we should think carefully about how to build cooperation. Since their inception, the UN climate talks have relied on architecture that maximizes inclusivity, soft obligations, consensus-building, and managed compliance. I’ve called this strategy the “Transformational Model.” The theory seems to be that gathering all of the 193 affected parties together in the same room will create a social dynamic that generates ever deeper cooperation.

Yet, there is little evidence that this approach has worked. Its high water mark was the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty which omitted emission reduction commitments for two countries – the United States and India – that collectively account for 40% of global emissions.

Climate negotiations have been mired in posturing and procedural maneuvering. You don’t have to be a political scientist to know why. Anyone who has tried to construct a complicated agreement with multiple parties can tell you that it is hard work, particularly if everyone has to agree on the outcome. If you end up with any agreement, it is an agreement that appeals to the least willing party. Try negotiating with 193 participants.

There is another way: reduce the number of parties to the negotiations. Move to “minilateralism.”

After the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, I co-authored a paper that analyzed the recent history of international negotiations on various issues. We looked at regimes adopting the “Transformational Approach,” and regimes that purposefully started with a smaller number of parties. We found that the latter group reached a deeper level of cooperation and commitment over a shorter period of time. See http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/downs/transform.pdf

The “minilateral” group of regimes includes some pretty well known successes. The European Union, for example, started with a small group of like-minded countries and built from there. The history of cooperation on international trade includes bilateral and trilateral milestones such as the NAFTA. The global community achieved a major agreement on land mines only after a “coalition of the willing” exited the faltering UN negotiations, formulated an ambitious treaty, and then sold it to the United States and others.

Could we do that for climate change? We already have more than one minilateral forum available. There is the Major Economies Forum on Climate Change and Energy. There is also the G-20. Each includes no more than two dozen countries that collectively account for the vast proportion of global emissions. Negotiations in either of these fora could establish the conditions for a deeper deal on mitigation measures, leaving for UN negotiations the issues of adaptation and financial transfers to least-developed countries.

Indeed, even the experience in Copenhagen itself – in which a small group of countries hammered out the Accord in the 11^th hour – suggests a kind of natural law of negotiations, in which there ultimately is a reversion to small numbers. How far could the group have gotten if they could have dispensed with the first week and a half of posturing?

To be sure, this minilateral approach implies excluding a direct role in the negotiations for over one hundred countries that will be affected by climate change, and also will be affected by measures to mitigate climate change. For some, it will offend a sense of morality and equity to leave them out of the room.

However, let’s remember what we get with the Transformational Model. Yes, it provides a platform for the country of Tuvalu, which brought its own proposal to the negotiations and whose President made news by giving a tearful, stirring speech. But the current approach also has provided a platform for the Sudan, for Saudi Arabia, for Venezuela, and for a host of other countries bent on exploiting consensus-based decision rules to thwart action. Indeed, China has for years manipulated the “G-77” bloc of developing countries to prevent even those countries willing to adopt emission commitments from doing so, in order to lessen pressure on China itself.

The minilateral approach suggests an interesting deal for Tuvalu and others. Is it willing to forego a seat at the table in order to get a better deal? If a smaller table with fewer seats can generate a more durable, more ambitious agreement, it could be a reasonable trade-off.

The forum for negotiation matters. And there are many potential “architectures” for cooperation that could come out of such negotiations. A last tip: If you are interested in these issues, I strongly recommend you visit the Harvard Belfer Center website. You will find there several short papers by Professor Robert Stavins (a contributor to this blog) and scholars at other schools outlining innovative recommendations for international climate policy. Go to:

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/project/56/harvard_project_on_international_climate_agreements.html

After 17 years, Obama has cut the Gordian knot.

Obama agreed with the Chinese—and with our best climate strategists, Stiglitz, Nordhaus, and Schelling. Developing countries will not cap their emissions. Just six weeks before Copenhagen, Todd Stern was still saying China would “absolutely have to cap their emissions” significantly below “where their trend line is.” The Copenhagen Accord requires only that poor countries commit to “mitigation actions,” not caps. That’s a much better starting point.

As our three strategists have been explaining for years, it’s not that caps are bad. They just don’t make sense for poor countries or for reaching agreement. They create large and unnecessary financial risks and bitter negotiations. And trend-line capping would cap India’s per-capita emissions at half the US level in 1880! Can you imagine how that plays in India? What have we been thinking?

The good news is that there is a better commitment than a cap (see A Better Climate Commitment). And a better commitment from China will only increase the strength of a cap-and-trade bill passed by the US Senate.

But those who ignored the obvious will continue with the charade of caps as long as possible. Now they pretend that China’s promise of a 40% cut in “intensity” (2005–2020) is a cap. Stern calls this “a significant proposal.” But the DOE (IEO, May, 2009) says it’s a commitment to increase (not decrease) emissions above business as usual by 5% or less. (In the previous 15-year period, China cut intensity 44% with no climate policy. source) India quickly followed China’s lead with a commitment to increase emissions no more than 23% above BAU.

With emissions increasing, a commitment to cut intensity (emissions/GDP) is actually a commitment to rapid economic growth. This is not the commitment to turn to next.

The Kyoto approach has one more problem. “Legally binding,” means next to nothing. Near the start of the conference, Canada simply announced that the assumptions of its Kyoto commitment “no longer suit present physical or market realities.” So what consequences does it face? In reality, none at all. As Obama explained after Copenhagen, “Kyoto was legally binding and everybody still fell short anyway.”

With his honesty and flexibility, Obama has opened the door to cooperation-inducing commitments. But attaining these will require a complete about face by those who think “Emissions are emissions. … It's not a matter of politics or morality or anything else. It's just math” (Stern 12/9/09). It’s not about math (though it would help to do some), it’s about cooperation, and that requires game theory, careful design and innovative strategies. Good intentions are no substitute for doing one's homework.

Our first true view of the planet in its entirety came during the Apollo missions, with one picture taken during the Apollo 17 mission becoming the opening slide of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth presentation. It was forty years ago that mankind took that giant leap and set foot on the moon. Copenhagen presented a very different view of the world. Dogged for nearly 10 of its 11 days by political infighting, the eventual arrival of some 100 Prime Ministers and Heads of State finally forced an outcome of sorts, with many brave faces appearing in front of the media in the late hours of Friday and during the day on Saturday to attempt to explain that progress had indeed be made.

But has it? The weekend was certainly full of talking heads condemning the Accord for its lack of ambition and failure to set targets and it is true that it dodged that issue almost entirely, but I would argue that it sets the scene for sustained action in the years to come on the basis of a single principle that has delivered a great deal in the past - "Trust, but verify". Ronald Reagan used this on many occasion, usually in relation to talks with the then Soviet Union and typically in the context of strategic arms limitation and reduction talks. The principle has not completely solved the issue of the nuclear arms build-up, but it has allowed sustainable progress over more than twenty years, resulting in a significant reduction in nuclear weapon stockpiles. Importantly, the trust gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was bridged and ultimately sealed through verification.

Today, the gap to bridge on climate change exists between the United States and China and the "I won't move until he does" syndrome is strangely reminiscent of the last years of the Cold War. The Copenhagen Accord hopefully goes some way to bridging that with the text of Paragraph 4 on targets for Annex I Parties and in Paragraph 5 on implementation of mitigation actions and verification for non-Annex I parties. The main deliverable from this text may well be a U.S. cap-and-trade system in 2010 leading to a steady decline in U.S. emissions over the coming decades. China of course must also clearly show that it is delivering on the carbon efficiency of its economy, as promised.

But the Accord does more than deliver a single outcome, while at the same time it fails to deliver on numerous important issues - presumably this is what the negotiations throughout 2010 will focus on. In terms of success side I list three major achievements (there are others, but these are mine):

• The need for developing countries to take verifiable mitigation actions, agreed up front.
• The creation of a specific action focused fund - the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund.
• The identification of the need for a forestry mechanism to incentivize REDD+.

On the still to be resolved side I have another three (apart from the obvious lack of an actual global emissions pathway):

• The Accord does not deal with the Kyoto Protocol in any way other than allowing it to persist. While I have argued in previous postings that Kyoto has many strengths, the reality is that it is not a sustainable approach.
• There is scant mention of the need for a global carbon market - not one set by the Accord itself, but one that the Accord would enable through underlying structure. This is the main strength of Kyoto, but of course the U.S. is not a participant.
• There is no mention of aviation and shipping or how international bunkers should be treated. In fact by perpetuating the Kyoto Protocol, international marine and aviation emission reductions could remain limited to Annex 1 country actions.

Much remains to be done in 2010 - starting on January 31st when the Accord requires that nations submit their commitments through to 2020. The Accord as it stands today does represent a small step forward and perhaps even a giant leap for President Obama and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, but it lacks the true substance necessary to deliver significant and sustainable reductions through to 2020 and beyond.

Even though the climate change PR machines are spinning away in the aftermath of Copenhagen’s COP 15, a few of the Copenhagen Accord’s more troubling consequences are not getting the attention they deserve.

Senator McCain called “the agreement to take note of the accord” reached by the United States and a handful of developed nations a “nothing burger.” Senator Kerry, on the other hand, believes the accord is important and called China’s participation “the most critical thing” to ensuring Senate passage of the national energy tax, even though few observers believe China will actually do anything to curtail their growing use of carbon-based energy. Meanwhile, the question of whether the outcome in Denmark was enough to advance international efforts to control emissions can best be summarized by Henry Derwent, president of the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association, who noted that the climate talks were a “step backward” in terms of a signal that will support carbon prices.

While the Copenhagen Accord does not represent a major change from the status quo, there are a few troubling aspects of the U.S. effort in Copenhagen worth noting.

First, U.S. negotiators opposed efforts from China and India to ban the use of border tariffs on energy-intensive exports. That means the U.S. actively fought to leave the prospect of Smoot-Hawley-type trade wars on the table for Senate cap-and-trade negotiators. The United States has benefited greatly from free trade; now the U.S. government is opposing free trade.

Second, unlike China and other developing countries, the U.S. will allow “international consultations and analysis” of our greenhouse gas emissions. It is not clear how intrusive these international consultations will be, but with millions of sources of greenhouse gas emissions, it's hard to believe that they won't in some way encroach on U.S. sovereignty.

Third, the U.S.’s commitment to hand over billions of dollars a year in taxpayer money was a premature gesture that will only serve as the new floor for developing nations in the next round of international talks. Why would nations in the third world operate under this agreement if they can now see that the starting point for COP 16’s bargaining talks is $30 billion?

Fourth, we must consider the sheer size of the U.S. delegation; press accounts reveal that in addition to the President, five cabinet officials, four other high ranking officials, one czar, over thirty Members of Congress and a host of staff attended all or part of the conference. The United States spent millions to send a small army to Copenhagen to forge a non-binding “accord” that very few Americans view as a priority.

Finally, contrary to Senator Kerry’s hopes, China’s willingness to sit at a non-binding negotiating table will not ease the pain a national energy rationing cap-and-trade tax will cause for American families and is certainly not a sufficient gesture to justify its passage.

Ultimately, Copenhagen will have no impact on the outcome of the cap-and-trade legislation moving through Congress. As we have just seen in the health care debate, Senate passage of this increasingly unpopular measure will depend on how much taxpayer money Majority Leader Reid is willing to give away to his fence-sitting colleagues to reach the 60 votes necessary to move this bill forward.

The climate conference at Copenhagen may go down in history as the most carbon intensive waste of money in the history of diplomacy.

Given how many passenger miles the huge amount of delegates traveled to get there it is likely that for the major days of coming and going Copenhagen was at the height of its net carbon additions.

It was hyped beyond any common sense.

It had too many delegates.

The leadership engaged only at the end.

The disputes were well-known yet not well handled.

It was a botch up all around.

The President and other leaders need move in more productive and realistic directions and leave the holier-than-though preaching of the unrealistic to the soap boxes not the negotiating tables.

All of this was predicable and I said so on this site a couple of weeks ago.

Now is the time to do the real tough negotiating. This time it should be done quietly, in less intense surroundings, and by the real pros who know how to get things done. It may take a decade, but at least some realism will prevail.

There was nothing elegant about the scenes during the closing hours of the climate summit in Denmark. In the small hours of Saturday morning delegates were to be seen in a daze walking around the Bella Center not quite knowing what to make of the outcome.

Over the past two weeks, those of us at the talks, were witnesses to politics in the raw. What started with great expectations ended with frustrating uncertainty.

It was two years ago in Bali when the nations agreed to work on a new, legally-binding deal to combat climate change which was to be sealed last week in Copenhagen.

There have been many intergovernmental meetings over the past 24 months, including large interim gatherings in Poland, Thailand and Spain. In spite of all these efforts and the participation of over 100 world leaders last week, the much heralded prospect of Denmark facilitating a new treaty to slash greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) were buried late Friday evening.

When politicians emerged from the talks declaring that there had been a historic agreement made to fight global warming, it was hard to know whether more energy had been put into saving face than saving the planet
In reality, the hopes of the environmental movement were dashed as countries agreed simply to "take note" of a watered-down agreement that feel far short of their expectations.

The summit was supposed to deliver an international commitment to enact measures to prevent average temperatures rising by more than two degrees centigrade, beyond which scientists say we might face irreversible climate problems.

After all of the impressive rhetoric from presidents and prime ministers who unanimously conceded that urgent, internationally-orchestrated measures are required to tackle the threat of climate change, it seems hard to believe that these talks have ended in stalemate.

But chaos had reigned all fortnight in Copenhagen. The pandemonium seen outside the conference center with thousands of delegates waiting for up to 12 hours to obtain their security badges was mirrored by the dysfunctional nature of the fraught negotiations going on inside.

However there is some good news to report.

Over the past fortnight there has been no argument over the science of global warming or the urgency with which action is required.

Failure to achieve international agreement on how to halt global warming should not overshadow the significant unilateral steps being taken by almost every country. China at the United States, who together produce half of the world's GHGs, both confirmed their commitments to making reductions.

It's arguable whether a dispute between these two nations over the vexed issue of verification of CO2 cuts led to these talks falling short of expectations. But news that they are determined to move forward with their own climate change mitigation measures regardless will give some comfort to environmentalists.

And the European Union, the world's largest trading bloc, has already introduced legislation to ensure it reduces GHGs by 20 percent in 2020 from 2005 levels.

A parade of developed and developing counties alike made crystal clear that they would implement their national plans to tackle global warming and build the clean energy economy not because they were required to do so, but because it was simply in their own national best interests.

Expectations may not have been met, but the agreement which was reached has all the ingredients necessary to construct a final treaty.

At the very least, this summit has clarified with word's determination to set a mitigation target of 2 degrees Celsius, establish nationally appropriate action plans, create a mechanism for international climate finance, and provide transparency with regard to national commitments.

Copenhagen has turned out to be an unlucky city for President Obama. His last whirlwind trip in support of Chicago's bid for the Olympics ended in failure, and this visit has concluded with considerable uncertainty.
But the President has made much progress in past on climate change since his arrival in the White House. With the pending the American Clean Energy and Security Bill, and encouraging proposals on the table for stimulating green jobs, there can be no doubt that the U.S. is moving towards a low carbon economy.

And Obama has unequivocally reaffirmed his commitment to work towards reaching a global, comprehensive and legally binding to fight climate change.

There will be much commentary and interpretation of the outcome of Copenhagen over the coming days and weeks which will give rise to yet further confusion.

Perhaps expectations for this summit to deliver a deal were unrealistic.

There may have been failure to seal a deal, but the conference has certainly taken awareness of the climate crisis to new heights.

Growing public concern will inevitably increase pressure on the politicians and it's surely only matter of time before the cumbersome processes of the United Nations finally deliver what the world so badly needs.
But if the climatologists are to be believed, time is running out for the planet, as it may be for some politicians too.
The inability of Copenhagen to deliver an accord bereft of binding obligations and without any targets or time tables will undoubtedly unleash the wrath of the Non-Governmental Organizations who have been pushing for a treaty for nearly twenty years.

Many have already grown tired to political inaction, and these deliberations have further magnified the imperfections of international politics.

We are now certain to see campaigning groups turn their attention to the corporate world, in the hope that they can encourage business to deliver where government has failed.

As for the political road ahead, let's hope that nations will be prepared to outline how much they propose to cut their emissions at another meeting now expected early in 2010 in Bonn, Germany - or at the latest, at the next climate summit in Mexico at the end of the year.

"The political price for not delivering in Copenhagen is so high that no one can afford to pay it", said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish chair of the conference before it started.

In the wake of what has happened last week, I wonder what she is now thinking.

Although Copenhagen was a failure, humanity has no choice but to treat it like a first step. The scientific imperative of stemming, stopping and reversing climate change is unquestioned except by a few flat earthers. The saddest irony is that the United States could have brought so much more tangible to the table, things that are achievable in the short term and technologically feasible: black carbon reductions both in the U.S. and the developing world, methane reductions that spur natural gas recapture, and full implementation of the existing Clean Air Act (e.g., mobile sources, stationary sources and national ambient air quality standards). Why didn't the Obama administration do this? Because in the current political game of "hot potato," it has cynically bought into the fiction that "we need Congress to pass comprehensive legislation." That we need more from Congress than its constitutional duty to authorize funding is false despite the mainstream media's pre-occupation with "cap and trade.". The reality is that we already have the Clean Air Act (and other laws such as the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act) that possess ample authority to reduce greenhouse pollutants, stem ocean acidification and steer federal money toward truly renewable energy purposes. All of this can be done now. Immediately. Today. But our elected political leaders seem much more comfortable in talking than doing. The only way to avoid the lowest common denominator of two year election cycles is much more straight-forward action by the White House and its agencies.

After years of preparation, the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) commenced on December 7^th, 2009, and adjourned some two weeks later on December 19^th after a raucous all-night session. The original purpose of the conference had been to complete negotiations on a new international agreement on climate change to come into force when the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period comes to an end in 2012. But for at least the past six months, it had become clear to virtually all participants that such a goal was out of reach — and the COP-15 objective was publically downgraded in mid-November to a non-binding agreement by heads of state at a meeting in Singapore of the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference.

I begin by describing what were reasonable expectations going into the Copenhagen negotiations and appropriate definitions of success for COP-15, and then turn to the unprecedented process which unfolded over the final 36 hours of the conference. Next, I describe the fundamental architecture of the sole product that emerged – the Copenhagen Accord – and describe its key provisions, with an assessment of each component. I close with an examination of the major pending issues and the available procedural routes ahead.

Sensible Expectations and Definitions of Success for Copenhagen

There was much hand-wringing in the months leading up to COP-15 about how difficult the negotiations had become. I saw this as something of “A Silver Lining in the Climate Talks Cloud,” because the difficulty was largely a consequence of key countries of the world taking very seriously the task of expanding the coalition of the willing.

Going into Copenhagen, the challenge was very great, largely because of fundamental economic (and hence political) realities, as I explained in a previous post, “Chaos and Uncertainty in Copenhagen?” Given legitimate concerns about issues of efficiency, on the one hand, and distributional equity, on the other hand, it was not surprising that the industrialized countries (particularly the United States) insisted that China and other key emerging economies participate in a future agreement in meaningful and transparent ways, nor that the developing countries insisted that the industrialized countries foot much of the bill.

The key question was whether the negotiators in Copenhagen could identify a policy architecture that is both reasonably cost-effective and sufficiently equitable to generate support from the key countries of the world, and thus do something truly meaningful about the long-term path of global greenhouse gas emissions. There were (and are) some promising paths forward, as we have documented in the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, and as we examine in a pair of current books (Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Summary for Policymakers; and Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Implementing Architectures for Agreement).

At the final hour in Copenhagen, the leaders of a small number of key countries worked creatively together to identify a politically feasible path forward. I have previously argued (“Defining Success for Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen”) that the best goal for the Copenhagen climate talks was to make progress on a sound foundation for meaningful, long-term global action, not some notion of immediate, numerical triumph. That has essentially been accomplished with the “Copenhagen Accord,” despite its flaws and despite overt challenges from five of some 193 countries represented (Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Sudan, and Venezuela).

An Unprecedented Process Before turning to the substance of the Copenhagen Accord, it is worthwhile taking note of the quite remarkable process that led up to its “last-minute” creation. From all reports, the talks were completely deadlocked when U.S. President Barak Obama arrived on the scene at 8:00 am on Friday, December 18^th, the scheduled final day of the conference. Through a series of bilateral and eventually multilateral meetings of President Obama with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and South African President Jacob Zuma, a document gradually emerged which was to become the Copenhagen Accord. It is virtually unprecedented in international negotiations for heads of government (or heads of state) to be directly engaged in, let alone lead, negotiations, but that is what transpired in Copenhagen. Although the outcome is less than many people had hoped for, and is less than some people may have expected when the Copenhagen conference commenced, it is surely better – much better – than what most people anticipated just three days earlier, when the talks were hopelessly deadlocked. The Copenhagen Accord – Its Fundamental Architecture The fundamental architecture of the Copenhagen Accord is one we recently analyzed in the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements in “A Portfolio of Domestic Commitments: Implementing Common but Differentiated Responsibilities,” and about which I blogged at the end of November (Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments). Essentially, under such an approach each nation commits and registers to abide by its domestic climate commitments, whether those are in the form of laws and regulations or multi-year development plans. This is essentially the “schedule approach” introduced by the Australian government in spring 2009. After its release, President Obama characterized the new Accord as “an important first step” at his press conference shortly before returning to Washington. I would prefer to amend that characterization to call the Accord a potentially very important third step. Step One was the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which produced the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Step Two was the Kyoto Protocol, signed in Japan in 1997. But what many policy wonks (myself included), not to mention the United States Senate, immediately recognized was the absence from the Kyoto Protocol of involvement in truly meaningful ways of the key, rapidly-growing developing countries, a small set of important nations that are now better termed “emerging economies” – China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, and Korea. This was a primary deficiency of Step Two, as well as the lack of serious attention to the long-term path of emissions (as opposed to the five-year time horizon of Kyoto). The Copenhagen Accord establishes a framework for addressing both deficiencies, and thereby can be characterized as a potentially very important third step – expanding the coalition of the willing and extending the time-frame of action. With this step, all of the seventeen countries of the Major Economies Forum– which together account for some 90% of global emissions – are agreeing to participate. Nevertheless, let’s be honest about the difference between the outcome of the 1997 negotiations in Kyoto (a detailed 20-page legal document, the Kyoto Protocol) and the outcome of the 2009 negotiations in Copenhagen (a general 3-page political statement, the Copenhagen Accord). Still, it remains true that the COP-15 negotiations were “saved from utter collapse” by the creation and acceptance of the Copenhagen Accord. The Copenhagen Accord – Key Provisions and Preliminary Assessment It is unquestionably the case that the Accord represents the best agreement that could be achieved in Copenhagen, given the political forces at play. Indeed, were it not for the spirited – and as I suggested above, quite remarkable – direct intervention by President Obama, together with the other key national leaders, there would have been no real outcome from the Copenhagen negotiations. That said, let’s take a critical look at the Accord, item by item. The key provisions (as I interpret them, with my own numbering, not that of the Accord) are these: 1. The signatories validate their will to “urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.” The signatories agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required to hold global temperature increases to 2 degrees Centigrade, and commit to take actions to meet this objective, “consistent with science and on the basis of equity.” Assessment: Although the Accord notes the importance of the frequently-discussed 2 degrees Centigrade target, it does not spell out actions that will achieve it. The Accord also notes the importance of the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which is of great importance to developing countries. 2. Action and cooperation on adaptation is urgently required, particularly in the least developed countries, small island developing states, and Africa. Developed countries commit to provide financial resources to support adaptation measures in developing countries. Assessment: Recognizing the importance of adaptation and providing financial resources to support it in developing countries is an important departure from Kyoto. Targeting the funds to the “least developed countries” is sensible. 3. Annex I Parties of the Kyoto Protocol (the 1997 list of the industrialized countries and the emerging market economies of Central and Eastern Europe) commit to implement mitigation actions (specified in Appendix I), and Non-Annex I Parties (the developing world, as defined in the Kyoto Protocol) also commit to implement mitigation actions (specified in Appendix II), all of which will be submitted to the UNFCCC Secretariat by January 31, 2010.

Assessment: These appendices (“schedules”) of domestic mitigation targets, actions, and policies are the heart of the Portfolio approach, as I described above. This is where the action is.

It is unfortunate (but was probably politically necessary) that the Accord maintains the distinction of Annex I versus non-Annex I countries from the Kyoto Protocol. I have characterized this distinction in the Kyoto Protocol as the “QWERTY keyboard” (unproductive path dependence) of international climate policy, because it has been the greatest impediment to developing a meaningful international arrangement. It is because of the presence of this distinction that developing countries have insisted on a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol for a second (post-2012) commitment period.

Note that even if the Annex I list was appropriate in 1997, it surely no longer is: more than 60 non-Annex I countries now have greater per capita income than the poorest of the Annex I countries.

An important improvement would be to employ a formulaic mechanism that takes a variety of factors into account, including per capita income, to determine the stringency of ambition, targets, or actions for individual countries, rather than the dichotomous distinction of having targets or not ("Global Climate Policy Architecture and Political Feasibility: Specific Formulas and Emission Targets to Attain 460 PPM CO2 Concentrations").

If a continuous spectrum with all countries listed in the same table is not politically feasible, then a mechanism is needed for countries to transition from one list to the other. Korea and Mexico joined the OECD six months after Kyoto, but they remain off the Annex I list.

4. Emissions reductions for the Annex I parties will be measured, reported, and verified according to guidelines (to be established), which will be rigorous and transparent, whereas mitigation actions taken by non-Annex I parties will be subject to domestic measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) reported through national communications, with international consultation and analysis. Assessment: There was a great deal of attention to this issue in Copenhagen, with all members of the U.S. delegation talking about the importance of “transparency.” The compromise seems acceptable: developing countries employ domestic measurement, reporting, and verification, but it is subject to “international consultation and analysis.” Interestingly, the Accord is silent on the issue of “international competitiveness” and the possible use of border adjustments (border taxes or import allowance requirements in national cap-and-trade systems). This is a controversial point, since inclusion of such mechanisms is important in domestic U.S. politics, but is anathema to China, India, and other developing countries. 5. Least developed countries and small island developing states may undertake actions voluntarily and on the basis of support (from other countries). Such actions will be subject to international measurement, reporting, and verification. Assessment: This is the third element of the national schedules, reserved for the poorest developing countries (which contribute only trivially to greenhouse gas emissions), and it seems acceptable, although a graduation mechanism would again be desirable. Interestingly, if their actions are funded by developed countries, then those actions are subject to the most stringent MRV. So-called technology transfer mechanisms are included in this context. 6. The parties will establish positive incentives to stimulate financial resources from developed countries to help reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation. Assessment: This is a potentially important change, as the lack of meaningful attention to retarding deforestation was a significant deficiency of the Kyoto Protocol. We have investigated appropriate mechanisms in the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements (“International Forest Carbon Sequestration in a Post-Kyoto Agreement”). 7. The parties agree to pursue opportunities to use markets to achieve cost-effective mitigation actions. Assessment: As we have documented in the Harvard Project (“Linkage of Tradable Permit Systems in International Climate Policy Architecture”), it is very important that future international agreements facilitate or at least not discourage voluntary linkage of national and multi-national cap-and-trade systems. Needless to say, this provision in the Accord – like virtually all of the provisions – will require specific details to make it operational. 8. Predictable and adequate funding will be provided to developing countries for emissions mitigation, reduction of deforestation, and adaptation. There is a collective commitment from developed countries “approaching” $30 billion for the period 2010-2012, “balanced between adaptation and mitigation,” with adaptation funding being prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries.

Assessment: To whatever degree the funding for mitigation is of government-government form (expanded foreign aid), legitimate concerns exist about both the feasibility of marshalling the necessary amounts and the efficiency of its use. The private sector needs to be employed, as I have previously argued (“Only Private Sector Can Meet Finance Needs of Developing Countries”).

A preliminary Copenhagen Accord document indicated a U.S. pledge of $3.6 billion for this period, along with pledges of $10.6 billion from the European Community, and $11 billion from Japan. Fulfillment of the U.S. pledge would be contingent on Congressional action. 9. The developed countries commit to a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion annually by 2020 from sources both public and private.

Assessment: It is important that the Accord notes that the funds can come from either public or private sources. Governments can — through the right domestic and international policy arrangements — provide key incentives for the private sector to provide the needed finance through foreign direct investments for emissions mitigation (clearly a role exists for government assistance for adaptation). For example, if the cap-and-trade systems which are emerging throughout the industrialized world as the favored domestic approach to reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions are linked together through the existing, common emission-reduction-credit system, namely the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), then powerful incentives can be created for carbon-friendly private investment in the developing world.

Clearly the CDM, as it currently stands, cannot live up to this promise, but with appropriate reforms there is significant potential. Of course, problems of limited additionality will inevitably remain. Therefore, what is needed is for the key emerging economies to take on meaningful emission targets themselves (even if equivalent to business as usual in the short term), and then participate directly in international cap-and-trade, not government-government trading as envisioned in Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol (which will not work), but firm-firm trading through linked national and multi-national cap-and-trade systems.

Such private finance stands a much greater chance than government aid of being efficiently employed, that is, targeted to reducing emissions, rather than spent by poor nations on other (possibly meritorious) purposes.

10. Evaluation of the Accord’s implementation is to be completed by 2015, including consideration of strengthening the long-term goal as the science indicates. Assessment: Depending upon when the Accord is implemented, completing an assessment by 2015 might or might not be reasonable. A provision to strengthen the long-term goals of the Accord may be sensible, but it would seem that the provision should provide more generally that the long-term goal should be “adjusted as the science indicates,” so as not to pre-judge what future scientific research may reveal. 11. In the official version of the Accord released by the UNFCCC, Appendix I (quantified 2020 economy-wide emissions targets for Annex I countries) and Appendix II (nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing country parties) are blank, but an earlier version obtained by the Wall Street Journal includes three detailed tables of information: specific numerical pledges for emissions reductions made by Annex I parties; specific numerical voluntary mitigation pledges of developing country parties; and specific numerical pledges by developed country parties for financial resources for the period 2010-2012. Assessment: It is unfortunate that the completed tables were not included in the version officially released by the UNFCCC Secretariat. On the one hand, those tables make clear that the Accord will not – as the current pledges stand – achieve a target of limiting concentrations of greenhouse gases to 450 ppm of CO2 –equivalent, which is what many observers wanted. On the other hand, the specificity of the tables – both the numerical pledges from 15 Annex I countries plus the European Union (EU-27) and the “voluntary pledges” of 11 developing countries, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Korea, and South Africa, would have exhibited the compelling substance of the Accord, and would have given the agreement greater credibility, at least in news media reports. Furthermore, the numbers are surely meaningful as a launching point for further negotiations. The Way Forward Many details regarding these elements of the Accord as well as other unspecified issues remain on the table, and will presumably be examined and negotiated if nations move forward with the Copenhagen Accord and the basic architecture it promulgates. We are already at work on many of these issues in the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, including: · metrics for evaluating commitments · climate policy review mechanisms · compliance mechanisms · afforestation and deforestation mechanisms · facilitating international market linkage · fostering technology transfer · methods of negotiating and updating climate agreements · methods of providing incentives for developing country participation · methods of carbon finance · making an international climate agreement consistent with international trade rules Whether the next step in international deliberations should be under the auspices of the UNFCCC or a smaller deliberative body, such as the Major Economies Forum (MEF), is an important question. Given the necessity of achieving consensus (that is, unanimity) in United Nations processes and the open hostility of a small set of nations, bilateral and multilateral discussions, including via the MEF, could be an increasingly attractive route, at least over the short term. The climate change policy process is best viewed as a marathon, not a sprint. The Copenhagen Accord – depending upon details yet to be worked out – could well turn out to be a sound foundation for a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments, which could be an effective bridge to a longer-term arrangement among the countries of the world. We may look back upon Copenhagen as an important moment – both because global leaders took the reins of the procedures and brought the negotiations to a fruitful conclusion, and because the foundation was laid for a broad-based coalition of the willing to address effectively the threat of global climate change. Only time will tell.

The Copenhagen accord was neither a dissapointment not a relief - although it had elements of both. The accord represents a major transition and a step forward to the future - and much more work will be needed in the months ahead to complete the work started in Copenhagen.

The accord represents a transition to a new world regime where the US becomes part of the international community in sharing the responsibility for overcoming the risks of climate change, as the largest wealthy nation carbon emitter. It comes on the heels of the 2007 US Supreme Court Decision to allow the President to impose emissions limits under the Clean Air Act, the June 2009 Waxman - Markey Climate Change Bill that is a mini version of the Kyoto Protocol with emissions caps and trading, the recent decision of the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions as dangerous, the first unilateral offer ever from the US, President Obama' offer to reduce 17% of US emissions by 2009, and an offer by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to participate in a $100 bn/ year Fund for adaptation and mitigation in poor nations that are small emitters, which was a watered down version of a Fund proposal I published earlier in the FT and the National Journal in Washington DC, and which I discussed in Copenhagen with the US Department of State, US Treasury, the US delegation in Copenhagen, and the G77.

The Copenhagen accord obviously did not go as far as many had hoped for - prominently, it did not establish binding emissions limits for the post 2012 period - the needed continuation of the Kyoto Protocol limits that end in 2012. Binding limits from the wealthy nations, who emit the overwhelming majority of global emissions, was the hope of the great majority of the nations and of the participants in the Copenhagen event - but it did not happen.

Furthermore, since the accord was signed only by five nations - US, China, India, South Africa and Brazil - and the rest did not sign on - it remains a "good will offer" from those nations - and the Kyoto Protocol remains the single agreement we ever had and we continue to have to deal with global warming.

The Parties reaffirmed in the Copenhagen meetings the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, and the document itself provides a reaffirmation of this principle.

The document also reaffirms the United Nations 1992 Convention that was signed and ratified by the US -- and the principle that developing nations' first priority is to alleviate poverty, as provided in the Convention Article 4.

Beyond the dissapointment that many felt - there is a silver lining to the clouds. The accord can only be seen as a strenghtening of the Kyoto Protocol in the sense of smoothing down certain rough edges that some objected to, with its provisions for voluntary verifications of emissions by all nations.

The accord is also a reaffirmation at least in words of the historic nature of the climate change problem that all nations - as President Obama said - must face and resolve together; and the agreement at least by the 5 nations who were involved, to commit to no more than 2 C temperature increase - an issue that is a positive step forward even though it can be said to be little and too late.

The Copenhagen results were a show of unity for the international community - even if the results are slower than one would have hoped and is needed. Ideally this accord would have been reached 5 days before the end of the Copenhagen round and more ambitious targets could have been achieved in the last few days when all heads of state were there. Temperature increaesa of 2 C can lead to the dissapearence of 25% of the UN nations - the 43 Small Island States - and thus must be reduced to 1.5 C at most. The 2015 deadline for binding emissions is clearly too little and too late.

The hope is that the transition that the document represents takes us into a self - reinforcing situation where it is clear that change will happen - that the tipping point has been reached - and through the economic incentives of the carbon market that all sides support, this can lead to accelerated action in the months and years ahead, by the business and the political communities.

I found it very rewarding that the carbon market that I designed and crafted into the Kyoto Protocol is enthusiastically accepted and supported by almost everyone in the Copenhagen round, and to have been able to introduce in these two weeks in Copenhagen the concept of negative carbon into the CDM -- which is the only way that small emitter nations in Africa, Latin America and Small Isalnd States can benefit from the Clean Development mechanism to invest in clean technologies for sustainable development.

But as a Mathematician who studied Economics because human organization seems to be our species' weakest link, I have to admit that the weakness of this link was in full display in Copenhagen. One cannot fail to observe that, if such delays, chaos and conflicts as we observed in Copenhagen are a natural consequence of making difficult global decisions - one must be seriously concerned about the strain that climate change will create not just on physical systems -- but predominantly on the organization of human societies.

The outcome of Copenhagen brings to mind the observation that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It also reminds me of an exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Through The Looking Glass, “When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less. The question is,' said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things." The COP process proves that delegates can make words mean whatever they want them to mean.

For the first time a COP did not end with claims of great success. And because of that, I view COP-15 as a great success. The coalition of true believers has started to come apart as EU zealots continue to demand targets and timetables for future reductions which are totally unrealistic, developing countries increase their demands for bribes to take actions that are not in their self interest, and the US, China, and a few other developing countries agree to “Pledge and Review” and the wisdom of the Rio Treaty.

President Obama revealed to the world the well known secret that Kyoto didn’t work and that a new process was needed, one similar to how the World Trade Organization works. Time will tell whether this is the path forward or whether the President’s remarks were just spin to let him claim success for jetting off to Copenhagen. It is too bad that he continues to be wedded to cap and trade legislation that would cause additional damage to our economy, although Copenhagen probably didn’t improve its prospects.

The worst part of the COP was the focus on raising $100 billion dollars for developing countries. Money is not what they need because a large percentage of it will simply enrich corrupt elites. What developing countries need is not bribes but assistance in creating the type of institutions that reflect the rule of law, protection of property rights and personal liberty, and which encourage productive private investment. These countries are the homes for over 1.6 billion people who live in abject poverty, who have inadequate diets, high rates of mortality and disease, and who lack commercial energy and potable water.

It is indeed a tragedy that 193 nations spent so much time focusing on a possible but distant climate change problem while ignoring a real human problem of immense proportions that has existed for too long. Copenhagen was the ultimate example of hypocrisy.