Climate-change summit: A positive vision from the chaos of Copenhagen

Telegraph View: The world should be investing far more heavily in green technology: just $10 billion a year is spent on it globally, a pathetically small amount.

Telegraph View Published: 7:53PM GMT 16 Dec 2009
Copenhagen has not been so wonderful after all. In fact, it has been shambolic. The demonstrations and organisational chaos have been matched by such sloppy chairmanship from the Danes that delegation walkouts have been an almost daily event. With world leaders arriving in force today and tomorrow for the closing stages, the climate change conference is perilously poised.
The original, over-ambitious hopes for a legally binding treaty have long since been abandoned and the summiteers are now looking to secure a "political agreement" that can be fleshed out in the months ahead. Some sort of text will be agreed – there can be no doubt about that. President Obama, Wen Jiabao and the rest of the global establishment are not going to overnight in Denmark for a non-event. But assessing what form that agreement might take is proving immensely difficult, both because of the complexity of the issues being negotiated and the fact that the heavy lifting is taking place behind closed doors.
What can be said without contradiction, however, is that two distinctive visions have emerged in Copenhagen – one rather bleak, the other less so. The first is personified by Al Gore, the Jeremiah of man-made climate change. Never one to undercook his message, he warned the summit that "the future of human civilisation is now threatened". Mr Gore sees deep cuts in carbon emissions, almost regardless of their economic impact, as vital, on the grounds that without them, mankind is doomed. Gordon Brown is in this camp and has, with France's Nicolas Sarkozy, proposed a tax on all financial transactions to raise money to compensate developing countries for the slower growth that is the downside of hitting emissions targets. The dismal record of aid payments to Third World countries suggests that only the manufacturers of Mercedes Benz cars will see much to cheer in this.
The alternate vision has been best articulated by, of all people, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor of California is a green evangelist, but a positive one. While he also sees emissions targets as essential, he also believes they must drive the new technology that will make the burning of fossil fuels unnecessary. He is right. The world should be investing far more heavily in green technology: just $10 billion a year is spent on it globally, a pathetically small amount. At the same time, there should be major investment in adaptation measures, to prepare countries most at risk from the impact of climate change. Such a strategy may ultimately prove far more effective than just the imposition of hard-to-verify emissions targets.