A tale of two treaties

Very few people noted that 2009 was the two-hundredth anniversary of the Treaty of Schönbrunn, a shabby deal which ended the fifth coalition against Napoleon, dismembered Austria, and gave the French emperor control of lands as far east as modern-day Slovenia and Croatia. It was described thus in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1809 (courtesy of Wikipedia):

This Treaty is certainly one of the most singular documents in the annals of diplomacy. We see a Christian King, calling himself the father of his people, disposing of 400,000 of his subjects, like swine in a market. We see a great and powerful Prince condescending to treat with his adversary for the brushwood of his own forests. We see the hereditary claimant of the Imperial Sceptre of Germany not only condescending to the past innovations on his own dominions, but assenting to any future alterations which the caprice or tyranny of his enemy may dictate with respect to his allies in Spain and Portugal, or to his neighbours in Italy.

The main difference between this and the "non-binding agreement" from Copenhagen - at least the Schönbrunn "deal" was more honest. No doubt over the next few days, more information will come out that will help us to unravel the reasons behind the dismal failure of the summit last week.

However, it seems the key sticking point was the basic unwillingness of the developed countries to offer cuts in their carbon emissions of anything like the magnitude required to tackle global warming, and instead offering a "bung" of $10 billion a year or so to the developing world in return for restraining or reducing their own tiny CO2 output. In effect, the countries involved are jockeying for position over who can have the rights to emit so much carbon dioxide, with the rich nations unwilling to give up their share so the poor can have more. Just as in 1809 the squabble was over land, now it's over the ability of the atmosphere to absorb the CO2 we produce.

The bottom line is that any future deal will have to be based on equity - that is to say that each person on the planet should have the right to emit the same amount of CO2. Given that the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb carbon without causing climate change is finite, that means that the rich countries must reduce their emissions so that the world's poor can have a bigger slice of the pie; they should not be able to wriggle out of this using loopholes such as the "clean development mechanism" in the Kyoto treaty. It seems that the willingness to do this just wasn't there.

Perhaps the only upside to this fiasco is that the deal that might have come from Copenhagen was so bad that at least there is now no fig leaf behind which people can hide, and the pressure will still be on politicians to deliver over the next few months. For everyone's sake, let's hope so.