A little over two weeks from now, the majority of the world’s nations will gather in Copenhagen to try and hammer out a new plan to save the world from the ravages of man-made climate change. The Copenhagen conference will be the latest in a sequence of ongoing negotiations that have actually been putting along since way back in 1997 a.k.a. the year I got pubic hair. And the year the Kyoto Protocols were first signed. It was a big year.

But, debate on the validity of climate change science aside (I’m almost positive that nobody here is properly qualified to wade into that eco-statistical shitstorm), the strange thing about all these negotiations is the fact that very few people seem really all that certain as to what exactly everyone is negotiating toward. An ‘agreement’, sure, but it seems like the need for an agreement of some description has become such a fait accompli of the process that it has left the surrounding debate to be reduced down to a series of “I hate the environment!”/”I love the environment!”/”I hate business!”/”I love business!” straw men. Vote Labor: I heart emissions trading. Vote Liberal: global warming is a junk science conspiracy. Vote Greens: I haven’t used electricity since 1994. Do you want a raw yam? But underneath all this muckraking, what does Copenhagen actually represent?

Well, potentially, not all that much. At a basic level, the Copenhagen conference was intended to produce a Kyoto-supplanting set of obligations that would guide the nations of the Earth toward a reduction in damaging emissions in line with that recommended by ‘the scientists’. Generally this required a 25-40% reduction on 1990 CO2 emissions by the year 2020, which was the minimum level thought to be required to avoid catastrophic climate change i.e. there’s still going to be some negative effects due to climate change, but we’re unlikely to find ourselves re-enacting Kevin Costner’s Waterworld quite yet. Thank God. That movie was awful.

However, it now seems unlikely that an agreement of this scale is going to be reached, or at least not this year. While it might seem kind of odd that the outcome of such an occasion should be pre-ordained before the agenda has even been finalised, the truth is that these diplomatic fiestas are very rarely determined by the happenings of the gathering itself. Instead, the long months of backroom bartering, domestic politicking and global posturing that precede the event itself inevitably end up setting the exact parameters of what’s going to happen once everybody arrives. It’s a bit like match-fixing, except the process of rigging the event is the match itself. That and the fact you’re gambling with the long-term survival of the human species. Intrigue!

So, who or what has derailed these negotiations? Well, primarily the US, although you can’t apportion the blame entirely to them. Basically, the US has spent the year so preoccupied with its health care maneuverings that it hasn’t even had a chance to think about global warming. And, as the world’s pre-eminent per capita polluter, the US’ active involvement has long been seen by the developed nations as a pre-condition to an effective climate change plan. Indeed, the EU has already declared that - in the absence of the US - it will significantly curtail the scale of its CO2 reductions over the coming years.  China, another key polluter, has also grown cagey about their commitments. But hey, its China. They banned YouTube. They’re not exactly a paragon of transparency.

Nonetheless, this all-or-none mentality amongst the richer economies simply ends up reproducing many of the divisions that plagued the Kyoto round of negotiations; namely the unwillingness of developed nations to take on more than their share of the burden (we have been dumping on things pretty heavily ever since the Industrial Revolution), and the unwillingness of developing nations to take on their proportional share of the burden (they have been dumped upon pretty heavily ever since the Industrial Revolution).

But in the end, the major impediment to collective action is that, well, this isn’t evolution we’re talking about here. A preponderance of scientific opinion aside, legitimate doubts still exist as to the extent to which climate change is a man-made issue and the extent to which we actually need to fear it. And that’s not to say either side is right here, but just to identify the fact that a lack of objective certainty about the scale of the threat poses a significant hindrance to the development of an international consensus. I mean, if Deep Impact taught us anything, it’s that you give humanity an incoming meteor and just watch us cooperate. But in the absence of such an immediate and obvious threat, the way of international politicking is generally to prevaricate and dither until you find yourself pressed into a corner where everyone weaker than you has already been compelled to act and everyone stronger than you hints that they will. And so it goes with Copenhagen. Until the US steps into the arena with a comprehensive, legislatively ratified plan for their own emissions reductions scheme the chance that the international community will do anything worthwhile without them is, well, shit to none.

And, unless that happens, I guess we all die. Right?

Kent Brockman: Professor, would you say it’s time to panic?
Professor: Yes I would.
Kent Brockman: Would you also say it’s time to crack open our neighbors’ skulls and feast on the sweet goo inside?
Professor: Yes, Kent. Yes I would.

In Part Two: Copenhagen! The Musical and a brief appraisal of what comes next. And whether that’s really as terrifying as everyone would have you believe. I’m looking at you, Roland Emmerich.