With the climate change conference scheduled to run in just a few weeks, I thought I would write about my ideas on the debates about to take place. In my spare time from being a Toronto realtor, I enjoy contemplating and reading up on worldwide problems. An area that holds my interest is the climate and its development.

From the 7th – 18th December this year Denmark is holding the United Nations Climate Change Conference. People showing up at the conference are trying to reach a decision on lessening the intensity of climate change from 2012. However, we shouldn’t see this conference as a meeting ground of climate change activists. With many differing thoughts it will definitely be a lively debate.

Forceful developments in climate change mitigation were hoped for when Barack Obama became president. The puzzle is what this time should look like. The Kyoto protocol was heralded as the way forward at one time, but now even environmentalists are distancing themselves from it.

Although the protocol was determined in 1997 it is recognized that the need the agreements made need to be discussed again. By the year 2020 its is hoped that GHG emissions will be reduced by 20% based on the 2005 figures. Still, this is exactly what Kyoto was about (getting 5% below 1990 rates). The protocols of Kyoto are being alleviated further even though there is a very lax stance to keeping the the schedule in the first case.

There is another area of discord that this issue is connected to. The North concludes Kyoto and expected environmental actions will have the biggest impact on its economy, while the huge polluters of the South (like China, India, Brazil and South Africa) will remain untouched. The South as a whole believes it’s in the right, because the North owes them a lot – southern countries are much more altered by climate issues than those in the North. With China arising as a world power and the economic issues around the world, developing countries such as India and Brazil are not happy about making sacrifices; though the North acknowledge the need for higher fuel emissions in developing countries.

The emissions trade is another problem that worries the anti-climate change campaign. Adversaries to change see opportunities arising for scams and the black market, but advocates who are mainly government officials, believe that market rules could offset any detrimental economic impact the restrictions could have. What they are wanting to see and calling for is the majority of the power and control to be handed to local communities, which should hopefully stop any climatic disasters.

The UN Climate change conference may agree some important decisions, but in my opinion they are not going to be anything spectacular. The agreements may not be new, but what is new, is now pressure groups are starting to form across the whole world. This means that there are more and more voices asking for improvements this year, and that can only be a fantastic thing.