By Lee Barken, IT practice leader at Haskell & White, LLP

As we begin the final day of the Conference of Parties (Cop15) climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, the grueling hours and stressful conditions are surely taking their toll on official delegates. It is, however, extremely impressive to see how tactful and diplomatic the country representatives are, even when speaking with observers and civil society participants.

After one particularly late night at the Bella Center, home of Cop15, I waited at the Metro station at 1:30 a.m. in the snow and freezing temperatures and happened to engage in conversation with a negotiator from Bolivia.

The position of Bolivia and others in the region is that the atmosphere is polluted with emissions lingering from the dawn of the industrial era. In other words, developed countries spewed all these gasses into the air and now the developing world is suffering the consequences. This is sometimes called the “equity” or “fairness” argument. What is our responsibility to pay for the “sins of the past”?

I suggested to my new Bolivian friend that the Carbon Debt argument reminded me a little bit of the cigarette lawsuits. Sure, we all know now about the dangers of cigarettes and the link between smoking and cancer. However, the demands for reparations only made sense when it could be demonstrated that cigarette companies intentionally and knowingly caused this harm.

Did he really believe that we’ve been polluting for the last 200 years knowing that undeveloped countries would later suffer? He conceded that while we may not have known 200 years ago, we should have known in the last 20 years about the effects of carbon emissions.

Still, the 500 gigatons or so of carbon that he claims is floating around in the atmosphere certainly didn’t all appear in the last two decades. In addition, since CO2 molecules don’t have country of origin labels attached, it will be very difficult to assign responsibility.

Coming to Copenhagen has been a remarkable experience. Although metro station exchanges at 1:30 a.m. may not change the world, my hat’s off to the organizers for creating this two-week conference where conversations can take place between participants from over 190 countries. Interactions with other delegates have been extremely positive and provide hope that constructive dialogue can lead to meaningful progress.

Lee Barken, CPA, LEED-AP is the IT practice leader at Haskell & White, LLP and serves on the board of directors of CleanTECH San Diego and the U.S. Green Building Council – San Diego chapter. Lee writes and speaks on the topics of carbon accounting, green building, IT audit compliance, enterprise security and wireless LAN technology. He is currently in Copenhagen attending the COP-15 conference. You can reach him at 858-350-4215 or lbarken@hwcpa.com.

Tags: COP-15 Climate Summit, Copenhagen, Haskell & White, Lee Barken

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