The Refinishing Touch Blog

For the past two weeks, it feels as if the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen took over the world. The summit will take its place in history as the largest international environmental meeting to ever take place as some of the world’s most powerful leaders convened in Denmark’s capital to tackle the issue of global climate change.

While the conference wasn’t without its controversy and disagreements–at one point the conference reached a stalemate as delegates from developing nations walked out of the talks due to a dispute over how to fairly regulate how richer and poorer countries approach cutting emissions–in the end, it seems that the leaders and delegates of the world’s nations were able to find some common ground and signed an interim deal called the Copenhagen Accord.

The deal in many respects is not perfect as it does not require the world’s largest polluters to further cut their emissions and has yet to be signed into a legally binding treaty. In spite of all this, the interim deal is a strong foundation for a promising new treaty to be signed into law in the near future. It calls on countries to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees above preindustrial levels by reducing emissions and providing billions of dollars in aid to poorer nations.

The most important aspect of this deal is that it brought together some of the world’s biggest polluters, who after two weeks of often times heated and strained discussions found a way to begin working together to prevent any further damage to the environment. With any luck, they will take this deal and the momentum it has created and reach a strong and binding agreement that will have far-reaching and positive effects on the environment throughout the world.