What we need from the Copenhagen Climate Summit - and are unlikely to get!

Developed countries have yet to show a serious commitment to making the required reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions reductions in developing countries, especially those with large national emissions, particularly China and India, are also critical for an effective international agreement. Both India and China, however, have per capita emissions and incomes that are much less than US levels, and are therefore unlikely to be willing to commit to emission reductions until the developed countries are clearly committed to and have begun taking serious measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Developing countries are skeptical, given the lack of evidence of zero-carbon economies, that emissions reductions of the necessary global scale would not dramatically constrain poverty alleviation, economic growth and human development. We need a climate regime will allow for global emissions to come rapidly under control, even while the developing world vastly scales up energy services in its ongoing fight against endemic poverty and for human development. The Greenhouse Development Rights framework provides an approach under which this can occur by allocating national shares of global obligations on the basis of a combined indicator of capacity (based on income and national income distribution) and responsibility (contribution to climate change)