Leading up the UN climate change summit which took place last December, leaders around the world talked up the importance of the summit as a way to jumpstart real changes for the environment. The summit was considered a failure by most accounts but did succeed in getting some agreement about how carbon emissions would be treated, as well as raise awareness about the importance of the issue. Some world leaders expressed disappointment that a binding resolution was not signed by all countries and since then there has been a lot of finger pointing about who to blame for the failure. Even though no binding resolution was signed there was the Copenhagen Accord in which countries did make pledges to curb their carbon emissions.
Since the summit fifty five different nations have handed in their pledge to the UN climate convention which outlines their plans on how to cut emissions. In some cases countries actually lowered their commitment to lower emissions which underscores exactly how big of a failure the summit really was. Many are now saying that the whole thing was just a façade to dupe the world into believing certain countries planned to change, only to have them back out of their commitments once they were out of the public spotlight. Even though the UN committee says that they are excited about the pledges, which they claim will jumpstart the efforts, environmental groups are saying that this is not nearly enough.
Even though most of the major players signed the accord, many, such as the U.S. added weaker language which made their pledge more ambiguous in nature.
|
|
