The Copenhagen summit on climate change won't do much to slow the rising emissions of carbon dioxide. It will take a sizeable rainforest to soak up the CO2 produced by airliners bringing delegates to the event, not to mention the many meetings that went before it.
The official Danish web site for COP15, "the fifteenth Conference of the Parties under the United Nations' Climate Change Convention," boasts that "up to 140 aircrafts bringing VIPs to Copenhagen will stretch its airport's capacity to the limit." Then there are the 15,000 delegates, most of whom will travel on commercial air routes.
http://en.cop15.dk/blogs/view+blog?blogid=2703
There is some small consolation in the airport's boast that its "unique location on the Oresund strait" offers "the option of using 'green departures'". A greener strategy might have been to pick a venue with better rail connections.
The International Union of Railways (UIC) has noticed this small irony and has organised a special train from Brussels to Copenhagen on the 5 December. Another train is taking the long route from Kyoto.
http://www.traintocopenhagen.org/
If you are serious about saving the world from CO2, stay at home and read some of the documents related to transport and climate change. And these days trees don't have to suffer in the process; these documents exist mostly in electronic form.
The event itself seems to be a bit thin on detailed evidence. The COP15 website may be adorned with logos from an impressive roster of sponsors, some in the transport sector, but the material related to transport will not detain anyone for long, despite the importance of the issue. The website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is also hard to navigate on the subject.
http://unfccc.int/
So we have to look elsewhere for serious treatment of the issue.
One report worth reading comes from the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in the USA. The report's title, "A Transportation Research Program for Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change and Conserving Energy," says it all. This detailed analysis looks into, among other things, the possible effects of climate change in the transport infrastructure.
One observation makes particularly interesting reading. "Also not well understood are the policies and practices that should be considered for adapting the transportation system to changes in precipitation, flooding, storm surges, and wind loadings that are likely to occur in the future as climate changes."
Yes, worry about reducing the emissions from transport and invest in electric cars, but also prepare for the changes that global warming could wreak on the infrastructure. And this is action that has to happen nationally, away from the grandstanding opportunities on offer in Copenhagen.
In the UK recent floods in the Lake District have shown how transport systems can suffer from the weather extremes that could result from climate change.
This is not a new concern. Six years ago the UK government's Foresight Programme warned of transport's vulnerability in its reports on Flood and Coastal Defence.
http://www.foresight.gov.uk/OurWork/CompletedProjects/Flood/index.asp
The Queen's speech outlining the last parliamentary session of the current government promised legislation "to protect communities from flooding". Transport infrastructure has to be in there too, or there won't be any roads for new generations of electric cars to travel.
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