Copenhagen Climate Talks- Talking the Same Language

The Copenhagen climate talks began today amid much excitement, anxiety and hope. As representatives from around the world negotiate key issues such as emissions reduction commitments and monetary assistance to developing countries, they should keep in mind one goal that will facilitate the agreement to and monitoring of all other climate deals: establishing a common metrics for measuring and declaring emissions reductions.

Citizens for Global Solutions has advocated the establishment of such a common metrics, and today the Washington Post released an article making the same point. Fredd Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund said that climate change mitigation efforts should be "measured in the same units -- tons of carbon" in order to facilitate private capital investments for mitigation funds to assist developing countries. This editorial demonstrated one of the many beneficial effects of setting a standard of how to measure emissions reductions.

Currently, countries use different methods of measurement when announcing climate change action. Most use a percentage reduction in emissions below a base year, but even the base year used by countries is not uniform. For example, the U.S. has announced targets of reducing emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, and the European Union has talked about accepting cuts of 30% below 1990 by 2020. Moreover, when individual countries make commitments in terms of percentage reductions, it is extremely difficult to calculate how close the total global emissions reductions are to the level that the scientific community says we need to achieve to avert the worst effects of climate change. Setting a common language to speak about emissions reductions needs to be on the Copenhagen Agenda!

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