The Copenhagen Climate Conference was a complete flop… or was it? Ranjendra Pachauri who just a few short years ago was given the Nobel Prize for climate research and was recently discredited because of comments regarding the estimated time for the Himalayan meltdown. Is this true? Will the countries of the world still continue the indecision so prevalent in Copenhagen and forever argue about how to raise the funding for assistance of developing nations in building green industry. It would seem so.

Geoffrey Lean, The United Kingdom’s foremost environmental reporter points out in his regular column that these setbacks that seemed so dominant just two months ago have already been set aside. Apparently the ideas set into place in the Copenhagen Conference have taken hold as 66 of the countries involved with the summit yet unable to reach any agreement have individually begun to place in action plans for lowering their greenhouse emissions potential.

Dr. Pachauri has successfully fended off his overzealous statement as the general scientific consensus admits the Himalayan glaciers are on a downward meltdown spiral that could escalate to the proportions not quite as dire as his prediction, but still very severe. So what if the meltdown which results in hundreds of millions of people no longer having a source of water happens in 100 years instead of thirty. Are the great grandchildren of the peoples in those nations any less worthy of consideration?

Since the Copenhagen Conference, India, China, South Africa, Indonesia and Brazil have all taken active steps towards reducing short and long term emissions. These are countries who just two months ago were busy hemming and hawing over every little point of discussion.
Finally, as noted by Geoffrey Lean, a panel set up by both the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and Ethiopia, representing far sides of the industrial spectrum, has set to work on the problem of how to raise the 100 billion dollar a year funding for developing nations environmental aid that is predicted to be needed. A banking transfer tax which could raise 250 billion a year already has the support of France and Great Britain.

In November the countries of the world will meet again in Cancun, Mexico to attempt again the reestablishment and expansion of the soon to expire Kyoto Protocol. With so much positive progress having been made since Copenhagen, one expects that the Mexican Showdown could very well turn into a reaffirming rubber stamp of approval for progress already underway.