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http://postcarbon.webvanta.com/article/54564-the-meaning-of-copenhagen

The Meaning of Copenhagen

.........Because petroleum has been the driver of most economic expansion during the past few decades and there is no ready substitute for it, peak oil basically means the end of economic growth as we have known it. And without economic growth, our entire financial system comes apart. Indeed, that's exactly what we've been seeing over the past 18 months in the failure of trillions of dollars' worth of bets on future economic expansion. (For a discussion of the role of peak oil in the financial crisis, see "Temporary Recession or the End of Growth?".

No politician can ignore the worldwide economic crisis, yet its significance for the climate talks is rarely discussed. Now that people can't afford to drive as much, or even heat their homes in many cases, global carbon emissions have declined during the past year. That means that if the economy is in only a temporary state of "recovery" and resumes its swoon (as many financial analysts anticipate), and if global oil production has indeed peaked, then global carbon emissions have probably already peaked too. In which case, the world has achieved its first major goal in mitigating climate catastrophe.

Economic crisis makes climate change much harder to solve in the way everyone wants to see—i.e., with lots of green-tech growth. But it makes almost inevitable a "solution" that nobody wants: dramatic economic contraction leading to sharply declining energy demand. This is similar to famine "solving" overpopulation.

Responsible officials can discuss none of this in public lest investors lose their nerve and head for the exits. But a conversation that excludes such essential realities is delusional.
How might that pivotal Friday night negotiation in the Bella Center have gone if it had been grounded in reality?

President Obama might have said something like this: "Colleagues, global oil production has peaked and we have witnessed the resulting carnage in the global economy. We have likely seen the last of economic growth, in an overall sense. We are in an entirely new era. Adopting strict carbon emissions caps will help us end our dependence on fossil fuels—which we must do both to mitigate climate change and also to reduce the economic impacts of fuel scarcity. While giving up fossil fuels means reducing opportunities for growth, continuing to use them is no longer an option. We must adapt to this new reality."

The Chinese delegate would have objected: "But our nation needs to continue using coal in ever-increasing amounts. If we don't continue to grow our economy at 8 percent annually, the people will revolt. We're doing all we can to develop renewable energy, but only coal can give us the growth we need." To which Obama might have replied: "Your coal production will be peaking during the next few years anyway, and you won't be able to import enough from Australia and Indonesia to maintain growth in total energy production. Your economy is about to stall in any case—it is heavily dependent on exports, and Americans just aren't going to be buying a lot more Chinese goods. Your only hope, as ours, is to build renewable energy infrastructure at top speed, provide as much of a basic safety net for citizens as we can, try to enlist them in the overall energy transition, and hope for the best. Meanwhile, a strong climate agreement can at least help us change direction toward reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, and we are obligated to produce such an agreement anyway for the sake of the planet and future generations. Let's get this done."

But that's evidently not what transpired. Instead, all accounts suggest the negotiations amounted to a theatrical set piece in which each player stayed rigidly on script.

If governments are having a difficult time addressing climate change in any serious fashion, they're not doing much better with regard to any of the other problems mentioned. Key nations are going about "solving" their financial crises by shoveling money by the billions and trillions at bankers who were largely responsible for creating the mess to begin with. Peak oil is regarded by heads of state as a subject unworthy of mention. The crisis of fresh water scarcity is being dealt with by pumping ancient aquifers until they're dry. Topsoil erosion has slowed in a few places, but overall continues at a staggering pace.

These problems, which will shape our destiny over the next few years and decades, are for the most part discussed only by experts in relevant fields. Meanwhile citizens are subjected to a steady stream of "infotainment" and political rhetoric utterly divorced from crumbling physical reality. This is easy to illustrate with ludicrously disinforming statements from industry-backed climate-change deniers. But responsible advocates of a strong climate policy are often nearly as soaked in delusion.

Here's just one example. Professor Mark Maslin, Director of the Environment Institute at University College London, was recently quoted as saying: "The science tells us that we must drastically cut the amount of carbon going into the atmosphere to avoid catastrophic climate change. But we must also protect the moral and ethical right of countries to develop and achieve the same standard of living as we have in the west." This is a completely unremarkable statement with which nearly everyone at the climate talks in Copenhagen would probably have agreed—at least publicly. But think about it: what does this "development" consist of? The assumption is that poor countries can and should use more fossil fuels while rich ones wean themselves. But there just aren't enough fossil fuels available to enable that to happen. Poor countries will never achieve "the same standard of living as we have in the west." Rather, in the decades ahead, as nonrenewable resources deplete, people in the west will involuntarily give up their material standard of living until their way of life is supported only by renewable resources and the recycling of non-renewables. That means economic contraction, big time. We have a very long downward ramp to negotiate until that sustainable baseline is achieved..........

........To summarize: three factors—the need for resilience, the lack of effective policy at national and global levels, and the tendency of the best responses to emerge regionally and at a small scale—argue for dealing with the crushing crises of the new century locally, even though there is still undeniable need for larger-scale, global solutions.

Does this mean we should give up even trying to work at the national and global levels? Each person will have to make up her or his own mind on that one. To my thinking, Copenhagen is something of a last straw. I have no interest in trying to discourage anyone from undertaking national or global activism. Indeed, there is a danger in taking attention away from national and international affairs: policy could get hijacked not just by parties even less competent than those currently in command, but by ones that are just plain evil. Nevertheless, this writer is finally convinced that, with whatever energies for positive change may be available to us, we are likely to accomplish the most by working locally and on a small scale, while sharing information about successes and failures as widely as possible.

A final note: As 2010 begins we are about to enter the second decade of the 21st century. Historians often remark that the character of a new century doesn't make itself apparent until its second decade (think World War I). Perhaps peak oil, the global financial crash, and the failure of Copenhagen are the signal events that will propel us into the Century of Decline. If these events are indeed indicative, it will be a century of economic contraction rather than growth; a century less about warnings of environmental constraints and consequences than about the fulfillment of past warnings; and a century of local action rather than grand global schemes.

I suspect that things are going to be noticeably different from now on.