At the beginning of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, and following his meeting with French President in Paris, the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, in an interview with Canal Plus Television, anticipated that the ongoing Copenhagen Conference will be likely to conclude with a political agreement. This agreement would appease the parties concerned, and would upset no one; however, this agreement may not satisfy the demands for protecting the Earth's climate, at the criteria that would otherwise guarantee the survival of species and genus, and that would not wipe out island-nations, or destroy shores and damage coastal cities and towns. In fact, the summit at Copenhagen is no less significant than the summit of Montreal that was held around 22 years ago, and which ended in signing the protocol that was appended to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, the broad multilateral agreement which became by far, the most successful international environmental treaty. At the time, the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica led to the ratification of the Montreal Protocol and to its implementation by the member states of the United Nations. The protocol calls for the gradual phasing out of the production and consumption of a number of substances believed to be responsible for the depletion of the upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere. Subsequently, these countries drafted new laws and regulations to implement their obligations under this treaty. Equally, the threat to the planet resulting from the rise of its temperature is no different from the dangers of the ozone layer depletion; however, the mitigation of the effects of climate change are burdensome, and require intensive efforts that would, as a by-product, slow down economic activities worldwide, or increase its cost. If it shall be proven that global warming is the result of human activities solely, and that there are no underlying geological causes behind it, such as the increase of the temperature of the Earth's core, or the planet being exposed to other factors, this means that the world must choose between limiting its economic activities and curbing its growth rates, or developing eco-friendly technologies, and inventing equipments and machinery that can retrieve carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to render the climate more natural and less harmful. According to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the volume of carbon dioxide emissions in China will rise from 8.1 billion tons in 2007, to 16.2 billion tons in 2050, while it will rise in the United States from 6 billion tons to 7 billion, in India from 1.9 billion to about 7 billion tons, and from 4.6 to 5 billion tons in the European Union. If we take into account the uprooting of forests, the problems with [CO2] absorption become even more difficult. There is no doubt that the Earth's temperature is on the rise. The effects of global warming are in fact evident from the melting of glaciers and ice-caps in both the North and South poles, and of the snow and ice of the high mountains and the soaring peaks. The effects of global warming can also be seen in the expanding carpet of desertification, and in the extinction of a multitude of species of birds, fishes, land animals, plants and other forms of life. Global warming is even more evident when we examine the number of dried up landlocked seas, lakes, and the rising sea levels, coupled with the terrifying climate imbalances that are causing disasters, and threatening humans in their own habitats, pushing them in many instances to be displaced away from their lands and livelihoods. Faced with this evidence, along with the scientific warnings and studies and the problems affecting the agricultural sector such as the disasters caused by drought or floods, or the unsuitability of the climate for traditional agricultural products; faced with this, the delegates at the summit in Copenhagen cannot overlook the threats facing the planet, and which are affecting everyone. Also, their agreement on a new protocol will not mean that the problem has been resolved; rather, what is further required is the establishment of global regulations to control this problem, and which would address questions such as how to measure the quantity of greenhouse gases, and how to find the means necessary to raise the funds that the industrialized countries must pay to the developed nations, which are estimated to be at least 100 billion dollars annually, and the difficulty of securing such funds. What is thus hoped is that the world would begin to appreciate the dangers of climate change and global warming; away from Copenhagen, environmental awareness is spreading, while many scientists and NGOs have an increased interest in environmental conservation. Many governments are also enforcing further measures to curb pollution and emissions, whether by encouraging the production of clean and renewable sources of energy, or by adopting clean and eco-friendly means of transportation, and also by building eco-friendly cities and urban developments that consume less energy, or that attempt to extract energy from geothermal sources. Due to the high cost of the capture and storage of carbon dioxide, and the taxation that this operation entails which may amount to one hundred dollars for each ton, many officials are instead relying on preserving forests and on reforestations of the land. For instance, Newsweek reported that the governor of California “has resorted to his counterparts in Brazil and Indonesia, which contain more than half of the world's remaining tropical rainforests, in order to curb tree logging; this in fact considered to be the least expensive way to mitigate the impacts of climate change in the short term, in return for payments by power generation companies and other organizations that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, to state governments in Brazil and Indonesia to preserve their forests. The exact framework for this will be identified soon.” Therefore, the Copenhagen framework of climate action, which will most likely decide on a reduction of temperature by 1.5 or 2 centigrade, requires an international agreement on climate change that is environmentally effective and economically sustainable. It is thus expected that such a draft agreement will be complemented later on by more tools, frameworks for action and even innovations which would render the elimination of atmospheric toxins less costly. It is therefore clear that the Copenhagen Summit will usher in an era of new environmental industries.
