The clock is often viewed as a barometer of the threat posed to the planet by nuclear power, and a key reason for the minute move is given as a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach to disarmament and arms reduction in general due to U.S government efforts since President Obama’s election.

However the Doomsday Clock takes into account many different threats to civilisation, including climate change, and this was given as the other key reason for our step back from the brink — which many people might find surprising considering the shambles that was the COP Climate Change Conference.

But, if anyone should know about climate change, the BAS should. There are many eminent scientists on the Science and Security Board, which is in charge of the ‘clock’, and the change was made in consultation with the BAS Board of Sponsors, which includes 19 Nobel Laureates. The minute-gain has been widely reported, however there are some really interesting comments and observations from members of the BAS Boards, as follows:

Jayantha Dhanapala, member, BAS Board of Sponsors, president, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and chair, 1995 UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Conference, said: “In the saga of human history civilizations have been threatened both by natural causes and by man-made folly. Some have survived by making the necessary rational responses to the challenges. Others have gone under leaving only their ruins. Today it is the entire planet that stands imperilled by the danger of nuclear weapons and the real risk of climate change inexorably threatening our ecosystem. Both impending disasters are within our capabilities to remedy. The opportunity must be seized now out of a recognition that these are global dangers that transcend national boundaries.”

Pervez Hoodbhoy, member, BAS Board of Sponsors, professor of high energy physics, and head, Physics Department, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, said: “We may be at a turning point, where major powers realise that nuclear weapons are useless for war-fighting or even for deterrence. Threats to security are more likely to come from economic collapse, groups bent on terrorizing civilians, or from resource scarcity exacerbated by climate change and exploding populations, rather than from conflict between nuclear-armed superpowers. Against these new threats, nuclear weapons are a liability because their possession by a few countries stimulates desire in other countries and complicates things immensely.”

Stephen Schneider, member, BAS Science and Security Board, professor of environmental biology and global change, Stanford University, co-director, Center for Environment Science and Policy of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and senior fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, said: “We can no longer prevent global warming—it is upon us. Rapidly melting polar icecaps, acidification of the oceans, loss of coral reefs, longer droughts, more devastating wildfires, and sea level rise that threatens island nations and seacoasts everywhere are clear signs of change in Earth’s climate. Disruptions of the monsoon seasons in India and China already threaten crop yields resulting in more frequent and severe food shortages than in the recent past… If we continue ‘business as usual’ our habitat could be disrupted beyond recognition, with consequences for our way of life that we cannot now foresee. Without vigorous and immediate follow-up to the Copenhagen conference and well-conceived action we are all threatened by accelerating and irreversible changes to our planet…”

Lawrence Krauss, co-chair, BAS Board of Sponsors, foundation professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics departments, associate director, Beyond Center, co-director, Cosmology Initiative, and director, New Origins Initiative, Arizona State University, said: “The time to begin to free ourselves from the terror of nuclear weapons and to slow drastic changes to our shared global environment is now. We encourage scientists to fulfil their dual responsibilities of increasing their own — as well as the public’s — understanding of these issues and to help lead the call to action. We urge leaders to fulfil the promise of a nuclear weapon-free world and to act now to slow the pace of climate change. Finally, we call on citizens everywhere to raise their voices and compel public action for a safer world now and for future generations. Even though we are encouraged by recent developments, we are mindful of the fact that the Clock is ticking.”

Because of where and how they live, many of the Debatewise Global Youth Panel are highly aware of the fact that the ‘Clock’ is ticking. That’s why they’ve decided to continue the GYP’s climate change debate activities beyond Copenhagen and into the future — to encourage ‘vigorous and immediate follow-up to the Copenhagen Conference’, to ‘raise their voices and compel public action for a safer world…’, and more simply just to let as many people as possible hear their voices and opinions.

Now that the ‘Civilisation’ of Earth has moved a minute further away from it’s figurative end, and although it’s not the point of the Doomsday Clock, it has to be worth speculating on how many seconds would be left to civilisations in places such as Bangladesh, parts of Africa and some of the small island states, if the same calculations were applied on a local, rather than a global level. In fact maybe every country should have its own Doomsday Clock, based on the same parameters, to give a fair and simple comparison that would be understood by everyone. After all, a whole Earth is just the sum of its parts.

I am by nature an optimist. I’m a big fan of Google by choice. I’ve also had a thing for Google Wave ever since I saw the I/O video in May. All of which I declare upfront because as someone who believes fundamentally in the value of honest debate I think it’s important to state my influences first.

That said, I think Wave is the nuts. I do. Now I’m aware this is not a universally shared view, criticism seems to fall into either the ‘it’s buggy’ or ‘what do I do with it?’ camp. The first I don’t get, we’re talking about very new technology in an early stage of development; I’d actually be less impressed if it didn’t have bugs.

The second I have more sympathy for. First impressions of Wave can be a bit ‘meh’ unless you’ve got people to Wave with and – crucially – things to Wave about. Wave is great for many-to-many conversations where at the end some kind of consensus needs to be formed. Not sure about you but I seem to have more and more of these these days. Use Wave for this once and you wont want to go back. I also think there will be a whole range of new uses it can be put to too, one of which I proudly present to you here.

My name is David Crane, I run the non-profit debating web site debatewise.org, and we put together a group of 1,000 young people from over 130 countries and asked them to use Google Wave to debate issues arising from the Copenhagen climate change conference.

We had people sign-up from Iran, Iraq, North and South Korea, Burma, Bhutan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, 25 countries in Africa, 30-odd in Europe, many parts of Asia and both halves of the Americas. As you’ll imagine, not all these people are equipped with fast machines or blessed with deep technical expertise. Most don’t speak English as a first language. To cap it off we only came up with the idea for the project in mid-October. Six weeks before the conference started.

So it’s fair to say we took on a challenge or two. The tight deadline meant we had to use Wave out-of-the-box. The differing levels of geek knowledge meant we had to get a good few people Wave’d up in a short space of time. And as anyone who’s worked with large groups of people knows, working with large groups of people is hard.

Of course the benefit of these kinds of intense projects is the amount of learning that goes on. I hope to share some of that with you now.

Wave is not a whole new world
In many ways, we found managing conversations in Wave much like managing them in any other online environment: create reward mechanisms for the things you want to encourage, develop ways of dealing with the things you want to prevent. Praise good activity publicly, deal with the bad in private. Understand and deliver what people want in return for giving of their time and expertise. Find the champions amongst your users, they want to do more to help. Offer people a variety of ways to get involved and make it easy for them to transition from lurker to participant.

Some people need a bit of coaxing, others will only get involved in particular issues. So we’d create Waves on a range of different debates from the general “Is Copenhagen going to be a success?”, to the specific “Should Bangladesh get 15% of any climate fund?”. We found provocative topics useful but they needed to be employed with care. The Yes/No/Maybe gadget and other voting tools helped people take that tentative step towards participation.

It is not enough to create opportunities for involvement though, some people need active encouragement. Our approach was to repeatedly invite them in, create a welcoming environment when they arrived, reassure them that their communication skills were good enough and step in before disagreements turned to flaming.

One thing we want to do more of in Phase Two is develop our reward mechanisms, even though there are doubts about their value. The first school of thought is that people give to these kinds of projects simply because they want to get involved and reward mechanisms, even for things as basic as karma, devalue their contributions and can drive people more towards earning points than saying what they feel.

The second, the one I tend to lean towards, is that reward mechanisms are useful in helping encourage the sort of behaviour you’d like to see more of. Multi-dimensional award systems, such as those on reddit.com, reward people for different kinds of activity, not just those the majority agrees with. I think these tools are useful in a very new environment where the ground rules haven’t yet been established.

And that’s the other thing the hippy in me wants to stress. I don’t like lots of proscriptive rules and believe that the best communities are the self-moderating ones. However, I also believe that new communities benefit from having a set of guidelines that state what is and isn’t expected, valued, tolerated and appreciated. These can evolve over time of course, but if the basic framework is set from the off it gives the community a good chance of growing in the direction you’d like to see it go.

Wave is different enough
George Bernard Shaw once said: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself”. An understanding which tends to sail high over the heads of people like drug war warriors but is one web professionals generally get. It’s certainly true here.

A lot of people find Wave a very new environment and when in very new environments most people look for clues about how to behave. Not everyone of course, one person told me, and I quote: “Oh I thought I could delete anything because Google Wave is in preview”. Luckily, the majority of people are decent and reasonable and want to do the right thing. And they’ll err on the side of caution until they’re sure what that is.

The problem of course is that people don’t generally read manuals. Web users are notoriously short of time, are prone to scan and detailed instructions have about as much chance of getting read as the T&Cs on the next major release of the iPhone software.

Users prefer show to tell, hence the popularity of screencasts. Happily this principle is one of the less-heralded benefits of Wave. Wave is an editable conversation (which, along with 99 levels of undo and a universal find, are the three things I’d like in life 2.0). The ability to edit any part of the conversation sets Wave apart from a wiki and allows us to model the behaviour we’d like our users to adopt.

In our case, we wanted people to form summaries of the discussion in the first blip. We tried asking and telling people to do this. But what seemed to work best was modelling it by leaving little notes in a blip saying “Part of point added to the summary”. This rewarded people publicly, highlighted the type of conversation we wanted to see more of and demonstrated the action we hoped others would take.

These notes can also be used to gently steer people back on topic, guide them towards further information or a more suitable Wave or explain why part of their blip has changed (hopefully only to add value, remove abuse or fix spelling and grammar errors). The appearance in your blip of somebody else’s icon can be disconcerting. These notes help clarify the situation and demonstrate to all what you’d like to see more of.

Other things we learned, in no particular order:
People route around obstacles provided they think the objective is worth the effort. Access to technology did not in itself prevent people taking part. Confidence with technology, lack of desire and I’m sure a good few personal reasons, did. In the main we were delighted with just how many of our technically disadvantaged panel managed to have their say.

Waves pick up speed. The first blip may take a while to get a response, the second blip less time, the third even less, and so on. I think there are two reasons for this, people prefer joining in busy Waves and more blips means more things to respond to. If you want to bump a blip to the top of a busy inbox a little edit will do the trick.

The real-time typing feature takes a bit of getting used to but often saves time (knowing osirisx11 has entered text was always frustrating for me, post-Wave it seems pointless), this feature also created dynamism and buzz around the debates, which encouraged more participation.

Broadly speaking the feedback we’ve got from users was very positive. Most people found Wave intuitive and were able to get their head round it quickly. They enjoyed the experience, found it less formal than a forum and thus easier to jump in to.

Phase two of our project starts on the 18th January and will see our panel organised into countries or regions and asked to debate how decisions made in Copenhagen will impact on them. In the true spirit of debate we will also ask people to argue from the opposite position to the one they would normally adopt. For example, Bangladeshis could be asked to argue why they do not deserve 15% of any climate fund while the rest of the world argues that they do.

If you’d like to get involved in this in any way, by writing code, finding panel members or adding expert views please get in touch. We’d love to have your help.

An agreement implied that everyone is happy with the outcome, as in: “Are we all in agreement? Yes? Good!”

A deal is generally something that not everyone is necessarily happy with, but it’s the best optimum solution to satisfy an objective, as in: “OK, here’s the deal…”

An accord is neither an agreement, nor a deal, but an acknowledgement, for example: “OK, so we all acknowledge that we’re all unhappy about this proposal, but we’re in accord that it’ll do for now, because we don’t have to agree, or sign anything.”

After two years of negotiations to try and find a new treaty to replace Kyoto – 192 countries, 120 heads of state; plus however many lawyers, officials, climate change experts and the rest – have failed to reach an agreement, couldn’t reach a deal, and instead have settled on an accord.

But while this may have delivered some degree of self-satisfaction to most of those involved in the UN climate change theatre in Copenhagen, the post-performance reviews have been far from favourable.

The main criticism is that the accord is full of holes, almost inevitable when you patch up something hastily at the last minute. There is no agreement to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2C – which was a main aim of the conference. There are, in fact, no legally binding agreements whatsoever, but at least that made it safe to be in accord about anything, for example that a 2C rise should be probably be recognised as the critical threshold for any kind of climate stability. Crucially, not one nation is forced to make specific cuts.

An accord isn’t an agreement, so you don’t need to overcomplicate things and get everyone involved. Such as a section of the G77 block who were told by President Obama that an accord had been reached – as he announced it on TV.

It’s difficult to be enthusiastic about any small positives that might happen as a result of this summit. There were promises of financial aid – $billions to help developing countries. China did agree to set emissions targets for the first time – even if they will inevitably be totally inadequate (and remember this is an accord, so there’s no legally-binding agreement). But in the end, the accord was reached to do nothing more than prevent Copenhagen being called a shambles and a failure – oops! Even that didn’t work. Other comments to emerge over the weekend, including: ‘Brokenhagen’, ‘disaster’, ‘anger’, ‘condemned’, ‘disgusting’, ‘a suicide-pact for Africa’. The scale of the failure of COP15 should not be underestimated. Success was imperative, not optional.

Shakespeare wrote a line for Marcellus in Hamlet: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” – spoken after he’d just seen a ghost. You can’t help wondering whether we’re now staring into the faces of ghosts. The consequences of the failure of COP15 in Copenhagen will undoubtedly hang around to haunt our future.

But why put so much effort into the last 24 hours? Everybody involved in the Copenhagen summit talks will be seasoned conference negotiators. There are senior representatives from just about every country present, all of whom would have known what was on the table even before the conference began. Surely the amount of effort being put in during this last day should have been invested into every day of the conference?

Today sees the final sprint to the finishing line to secure a deal. But it’s more a case now of saving face, rather than saving the planet. Which is why there are fears that any agreement will do in order to declare the conference a success.

But this isn’t about the success of the conference. It’s about global warming, emissions, deforestation, drought, floods, homelessness, displacement, global security, life and death.

The rumoured option is to call it quits for this year, and pick it all up again in Mexico in 2010. The reasoning being that it’s better to have a good deal then, rather than a bad deal now. But, as discussed in an earlier blog, these aren’t simply a random collection of international officials involved in abstract discussions. They are our representatives negotiating on behalf of all of us. They are making decisions that will affect our lives and environment, and even if not ours, then our children’s. So is it good enough that they can’t reach an agreement? Is it right that they should take a breather until next year, then pick it all up again?

You have to ask what good a deferral will do anyway: If a deal can’t be agreed in Copenhagen, then why should we presume that Mexico will be any different. And if an agreement can be reached in Mexico, why can’t that same deal be done now?

How about another option: The great and the good at Copenhagen have chosen, or been chosen, to work on our behalf and come up with a solution that will ensure the best possible future for our planet. So why not make them all stay where they are until they’ve done exactly that, regardless of whether it takes another day, another month or more. After all, what else could they have to do that’s more important?

Al Gore and Gordon Brown are among those to suggest that if the right deal can’t be reached in Copenhagen, then COP16 in Mexico should be brought forward to  summer 2010. But what do the Debatewise Global Youth Panel think? Here you have young people, many from the world’s poorest countries, who are likely to be most affected by the outcomes of Copenhagen. We asked them ‘ Is bringing forward COP16 in Mexico is a better option than a poor deal?’ So far in this ongoing debate, 70%  think it isn’t a better option, with comments including: “We need some action now… better to deal with it and make a start today than leave it for later. We can always use COP16 and later conferences to review if required. If a deal somehow happens, I hope it allows for some flexibility as we learn more.”

Throughout the UN climate change summit, everyone on the Debatewise Global Youth Panel has remained balanced, open-minded, considerate, concerned and intelligent – perfect qualities for negotiators if there is a COP16 in Mexico.

“What?”

“Not sure, but it needs fixing.”

“How do you know there’s something wrong with it?”

“Well, all that smoke coming out of the back for a start…”

“It’s always done that.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s OK.”

“Well how much will it cost to fix?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think it will be cheap.”

“But I’m not working at the moment, I haven’t got any money.”

“Well we can split the cost between all of us.”

“What? Evenly?”

“Sure, why not?”

“But I don’t do half as many miles in it as anyone else does?”

“Maybe not, but you have it for the same amount of time as everyone else.”

“Yeah, but Joe does ten times the mileage I do, so does Thomas! And Chen really hammers it!”

“Don’t worry, they know you’re a bit short at the moment, so they’ve offered to give you some money to help you pay for your share.”

“But I don’t want to borrow money!”

“No, not a loan – they’ll just give it to you.”

“…OK, but how much?”

“What does it matter if they’re giving it to you?”

“Well, it might not be enough.”

“I’m sure it will be enough, but I’m not sure exactly how much.”

“No! That’s not good enough. I need to know how much, and whether it’s going to be enough.”

“But we don’t know exactly what’s wrong with the car yet, or how much it will cost to fix.”

“So? What’s the problem? Just find out.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it will be quite expensive to find out what’s wrong with it.”

“But I’m not working at the moment, I haven’t got any money.”

“That’s OK, because the rest will give you the money.”

“I’ve already told you, I don’t want to borrow money.”

“But they’ll give you the money, it won’t be a loan.”

“How much?”

“I’m not sure, because we don’t know how long it will take to find out what’s wrong with it.”

“I’m not happy.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll still be paying the same as everyone else.”

“But they’re giving you the money, and you do have the car for exactly the same number of days as everyone else.”

“That’s not the point, it’s the principle of it. I don’t use it as much.”

“If it makes you feel any better, we’ve written up an agreement for us all to sign, so that we each know where we stand.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing. It doesn’t change the principle of it. Besides, I’m not sure I want so sign it until I know exactly what’s wrong with the car, and exactly how much it’s going to cost to fix.”

“But until you sign it, we can’t find that out!”

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t get the money until the agreement’s signed, and without the money we can’t find out what’s wrong with it.”

“So you’re asking me to sign something to agree to pay to find out how much to pay for something when I don’t know how much it’s going to cost, and without even being sure that it can be fixed anyway.”

“Well … yes.”

“That’s crazy! Nobody in their right mind would do that!”

“Look, we’re all in this together, we just have to trust each other.”

“So can you promise that if I sign, the car will get fixed and everything will go back to how it was before?”

“Well no, not really, because we don’t know exactly how serious the problem is.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not signing.”

“But you have to, everyone’s coming around later.”

“I don’t care. We’ll have to pay to find out first, then I might sign.”

“But we won’t have the money until you sign.”

“We’ll we’re stuck then aren’t we.”

“Looks like it.”

“I may as well go home.”

“Well I’ll ask everyone to give it some thought, and we’ll organise another meeting.”

“OK, that’s fine by me. See you soon.”

“Er – how are you getting home?”

“By car – it’s my turn.”

“You can’t really do that.”

“Why?”

“It needs fixing.”

This is despite efforts including Gordon Brown arriving at the summit days earlier than planned to try and sort things out, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying the US was prepared to work with other countries towards mobilising $100bn a year to help meet the needs of developing countries. Japan has already promised poorer nations $10.6bn over three years, while a six-member group, of Australia, France, Japan, Norway, the UK and US will also commit $3.5bn over the same period to combat deforestation. Most of the proposed funding is dependent upon an agreement being signed at Copenhagen. However China has said that, even though it remains committed to negotiations, it sees no possibility of a detailed agreement to tackle global warming coming out of Copenhagen.

The problems seem to be not just about the money and a 2C, 1.5C or even 1C limit, but the fact that the talks have descended into a labyrinth of talks about the talks, rather than about the agreement itself – a point raised by Ed Miliband, the UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary. After more than 12 meetings in 24 hours – and after waiting more than 20 hours for one group of nations to assemble – he voiced his frustration that the main problems were over ‘procedural wrangling’: “It would be a tragedy if we failed to agree because of the substance but it would be a farce if we failed to agree because of the process”, he said.

The final two days of the conference should be the part where the agreement is nailed down by heads of state and government. Some 130 world leaders are due to join the talks today (17 December), hoping to sign the climate change agreement tomorrow, when President Obama arrives also. In answer to rumours that he might not attend, Hillary Clinton said: “The President is coming tomorrow. Obviously we hope there will be something to come for”.

A non-result would be a major embarrassment for all kinds of reasons. Not the least of which is because of the subject of this conference. It would mean that all the extra energy and CO2 generated by the hundreds of flights to and from the conference, all the commuting, heating the conference and hotels, the food and other consumables, not to mention the amount of waste produced and the paper used – was all generated for nothing more than a load of hot air.

So what do our Debatewise Global Youth Panel debaters think? When it started to become clear that there was a very real threat of the target of the summit not being reached, we posted the debate: ‘Can leaders manage a deal in the last two days?’ And, even after almost two weeks of observing the climate change conference, so far the majority of our GYP (64%) remain optimistic that a deal will be done, against 27% who think it won’t.

The last word should then go to one of our ‘Yes’ debaters: “I still have hope, and its the hope that will make me go on and keep hoping for a fair climate agreement”.

Among the latest twists of drama was the resignation of Connie Hedergaard, the president of the UN climate change conference. Her replacement is the Danish prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen. There have also been more arrests today (16 December), 230 to add to the 1000 arrested over the weekend. Today’s arrests were mainly at demonstrations held about the exclusion of NGOs from the conference centre.

Friends of the Earth international, Avaaz, and TckTckTck were among mainstream environmental groups refused entry this morning. No formal explanation was given by conference officials. Further demonstrations are planned for later today to help push the urgency of the need to reach an agreement that will make a difference.

All the NGOs expressed deep concern that by being excluded, the conference was excluding the voices of civil society. Friends of the Earth were offered 12 places later in the day, but declined them.

Throughout the conference, the G77/G8 temperature debate has been about the difference between a 2C or 1.5C rise in global temperatures. Neither of these is acceptable to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who today called for the hold on temperature increases over the next century to be just 1C. He also proposed an international climate court of justice to prosecute countries for climate ‘crimes’.

As if that wasn’t enough for one day – there were side-shows too. US senator John Kerry announced in a side event that the US was prepared to act if an agreement was signed at Copenhagen, but it would not sign an agreement, or pass a climate change deal in Congress unless China and other developing countries meet its demands for accountability on their emissions cuts. This has increased the chance of a US – China showdown over the next couple of days. While in a back-room, British officials were trying to persuade the US to offer high cuts in emissions – when Barack Obama arrives on Friday, even though they admit they don’t stand much of a chance.

Of course no drama would be complete without a knight in shining armour or two. In Copenhagen Street Gordon Brown is one of several informally-appointed ‘lead negotiators’. Since landing in earlier this week he’s been galloping from meeting to meeting, talking to leaders and representatives from Europe, America, China, India, Africa and other developing countries. There’s even a meeting scheduled with Al Gore this evening. It seems like the only person missing is Simon Cowell.

In our blog on Monday (14 December), we asked whether it was worth speculating on whether it is wrong for the entire focus of the conference on reaching a fixed agreement: “What’s the better outcome: the signing of a 1.5C or 2C agreement? Or for each and every country to do what we all need to do: make a genuine commitment to – first of all acknowledging there is an issue of global warming, and secondly doing everything possible to cure it as quickly as possible”.

South Korea is the first developing nation to agree to an absolute reduction in its emissions rather than a reduction based upon the business as usual level which most are thinking about. We posted a topic today (16 Dec) to debate: “More industrialised countries should follow South Korea’s lead’. It’s early days yet of course, but so far it’s the only debate that has attracted a unanimous 100% vote: ‘Yes’.

Talks only resumed when they were split into two, as the G77 group demanded. But five hours is a long time in the highly pressurised arena of this summit, so there are also now worries about the speed of negotiations, and the hopes of reaching any kind of conclusion as leaders start to fly in from around the world.

There is also criticism of the fact that these talks will create more carbon emissions than any previous climate conference: an estimated 46,200 tonnes of CO2 – 40,500 of this from flights by delegates, observers, journalists and activists (Reuters). This is the same amount produced each year by 2,300 Americans (2006 figures), or 660,000 Ethiopians.

The popularity of the conference – about 18,000 visitors per day –  has meant that temporary building have had to be put up. These are not well insulated and are being heated by oil heaters. Most of the energy used at the conference is generated by coal-fired power stations. It does make you wonder whether December in a cold climate is the best time and place for a conference on climate change and global warming.

As you can see, there is no shortage of material to debate. ‘Africa was right to walk out over fears the rich won’t renew Kyoto’ was started late on Monday evening and: ‘Delegates and leaders show their disregard for the issue of limiting emissions – by arriving by plane’, kicked-off at midday on Monday.

These two debates are still ongoing at the time of writing, however on the Africa walkout votes are currently split evenly – 35% each for ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. On the travelling by plane topic, most of our debaters don’t think that delegates and leaders have shown a disregard for limiting emissions – so far 78% have voted ‘No’, and 18% have voted ‘Yes’.

Comments in the travelling by plane debate include: Yes – “Many nations are sending large amounts of delegates. Australia for example is sending 95 delegates, Australian delegates undoubtedly need to fly to get to Copenhagen but does it really need all of them? could they not have a few negotiators – say 10 and then have most things handled back in Australia?” While on the ‘No’ side: “Delegates from Asia, Africa, Oceana and the Americas can’t be expected to find greener means of travelling, they have come too far for there to be other realistic options. For a big meeting such as this there is no way they could be connected in by videolink and still keep abreast of all developments that affect their delegation”.

The question of why technology can’t play more of a part in the climate change summits must have crossed the minds of many of us. It’s something that must happen eventually – if not for the entire summit, then for the largest part of the initial period of negotiations. Who knows – in a couple of years we might even see them happening on Google Wave.

On Friday (11 December) an EU summit in Brussels pledged to raise €2.4bn from January to help the world’s poor countries cope with rising seas floods and famine. This is part of an estimated annual €7bn package from industrialised nations around the world. On 4 December, it was announced that public sector support for the UK bank bailout was £850bn (€945bn).

It’s impossible to calculate the financial cost of dealing with climate change – both to control global warming, and to pay for the effects of catastrophes – because nobody knows for sure to what extent the temperature will rise and over what period. Predicted outcomes vary from inconvenient to apocalyptic depending on how high the thermometer climbs. However, it’s estimated that averting catastrophe could cost as little as 1% of global output – as long as that amount is invested in well designed policies. The cost of saving the world’s banks was 5% of global output.

The topic: ‘Is the EU contributing its “fair share” to combating climate change?’ was introduced on Friday into our GYP climate change debates. The debate is still ongoing at the time of writing, but views being posted, include: ‘…the EU countries are doing much more than any other nation’, and: ‘No matter how much the EU agrees to contribute, some will always claim that it is not enough’.

Many people raise the point that it’s not simply a question of how much money is contributed, but what nations also do themselves to combat climate change, such as pledging to cut CO2 emissions and tackling deforestation. Current results are Yes: 62%; No: 23%; Maybe: 15%

The day’s other hot topic was: ‘Climate change is a security issue’ – introduced following President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, during which he said:
“The absence of hope can rot a society from within. And that is why helping farmers feed their own people — or nations educate their children and care for the sick — is not mere charity. It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action — it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance.”

Climate change as a security problem is slowly gaining political ground. In our own debate more than 68% agree that it is a problem. If the US truly believes that it is, then it remains to be seen whether it will shift its position from investing heavily in combating the effects – the security issue, to investing heavily in solving the cause – the climate issue.

Of course there is the vague, intensely-remote chance, that one-day somebody in a dusty corner of the White House or Whitehall might link climate change to the banking problem – then we’ll see how quickly the problem gets solved, and how much money gets thrown at it…