COPENHAGEN (AlertNet) Â? In the end, two weeks of posturing and negotiations by 192 countries produced a climate deal -- of sorts.
The accord does not set binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, as the Copenhagen meeting was intended to do. Nor does it detail where a promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing nations adapt to climate change and cut their own emissions. It does not even set a deadline for when such big omissions might be rectified.
"The deal is a triumph of spin over substance," said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International. "It recognizes the need to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the big decisions on emissions cuts and fudges the issue of climate cash."
So is there any good news? A bit. The United States, which has long dragged down international climate negotiations by refusing to make promises, brokered this deal, showing new leadership. It also managed to bring on board not only China, now the worldÂ?s biggest carbon emitter, but many of the worldÂ?s most important developing countries who will produce an increasing share of the worldÂ?s emissions in decades to come.
That is important not only because it lays the groundwork for reducing carbon emissions in the years to come, but because it may give Obama the ammunition he needs to push through legislation in the U.S. to cut carbon emissions, perhaps the most crucial missing element in the international negotiations to date.
U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged the agreement was "imperfect" and "not sufficient." In the end, the Copenhagen talks came nowhere close to delivering what people around the world had been told was crucial from the meeting -- a deal with firm promises and a firm move toward action.
But by getting China to agree to some level of monitoring of its planned emissions curbs -- a key point towards getting U.S. legislative approval of an emission cutting deal in the United States -- the deal represents a step forward.
It also will push at least some action. Under the agreement, all countries must submit plans to curb climate change to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat by the end of January 2010.
"For the first time in history, the United States is joining with other major emitters to take real action against global warming," said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the strongest proponents of Copenhagen agreement. The deal "is not all we had hoped for. ThereÂ?s still more work to be done," he said. But it "sets the stage for further action in the months ahead."
While the new accord does not include deadlines, it calls for passage of a binding international climate deal Â? the original aim of the Copenhagen talks Â? at the next climate talks in Mexico City, near the end of 2010.
The Copenhagen accord, ultimately approved by all but a half-dozen nations, even won support from many of the low-lying atoll nations, who said that winning agreement on clear and ambitious emissions cuts and substantial financing at Copenhagen was crucial to their survival.
"ItÂ?s too early to take stock of whether we succeeded or failed," an exhausted Dessima Williams, a Grenada negotiator and spokeswoman for the island states, said as the talks ended.
In the end, she said "history will decide."
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