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Mr. Obama goes to Copenhagen
2009-11-26

President Obama said yesterday that he will attend the climate conference in Copenhagen on 7-18 December and he will not do it empty handed, U.S. agree to cut emissions by 17% by 2020.

With Obama's presence there is still a possibility that we may see a new agreement in Copenhagen to replace the current Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. It is the first time the U.S. put up a concrete goal in the international negotiations on how much emissions must be reduced, which may provide additional tailwind for the negotiations. But, It should be reminded that there are still many obstacles on the road. The most critical and inhibiting barrier is the question of how emission reductions shall be apportioned between poor and rich countries and the extent of reductions in the poor countries to be funded by the rich countries. China and India has also demanded that industrialized countries reduce their emissions by 40% by 2020 compared with 1990 levels to get even with the poorer countries. Although China and India, particularly China, is now big emitters they belive that they don’t have to take equal responsibility compared to the industrialized countries since the latter accumulated emissions accounts for the bulk of emissions, see the graph below.

More than 200 government leaders have been invited to the climate meeting and so far about 65 have accepted the invitation including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

The majority of the cumulative emissions accounts U.S. and the EU-25 for
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