In a short, snappy video interview with Nature, Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider veers between hope, resignation, and realism. He makes a good case for what can be salvaged from Copenhagen, and why that matters. Along those lines, he offers this clever twist on an over-used phrase:
We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the mediocre.
In other Copenhagen news, I see there's been some leakage that Bill McKibben calls a "smoking gun. Speaking to what's revealed in the leaked document, McKibben is quoted at Dot Earth:
There's a parade of world leaders standing up here today and speaking on and on and on about proposals that'll keep us below 2 degrees and pretending that the stuff on the table has any hope of doing that.And the U.N. itself knows that it's going to go at least 50 percent hotter than they're pretending.
So if he's right, that got me thinking: forget about all the sideshows outside, wouldn't it be great if there was an actual reality show about the negotiations. It might not be as entertaining as the Osbornes, but it sure would be illuminating.
