Almost every major emitter now has some form of emissions reduction policy in the air. Japan and Mexico talk about 50% cuts by 2050. India vows not to exceed developed-world emissions. South Africa intends to peak in the 2020s, China projects it will peak in the 2030s.

It seems likely to me that Copenhagen will ratify this status quo – whatever individual nations feel capable of accomplishing – and will concentrate on auxiliary measures like carbon market integration, carbon credits for reforestation, energy R&D collaboration, technology transfer, and adaptation finance.

At some point it will become clear what sort of long-range CO2 concentration all those national targets add up to. Almost certainly it will be something above 450 ppm.

Targets of 350 ppm or less do now have advocates at these negotiations – namely, the most affected countries – but these are also the countries contributing the least to the problem.

My personal plan for getting to below 350 is as follows.

1) *Make zero-emissions economic development for this 350 bloc a conceptual focus.* If you add up all the LDCs and the members of AOSIS, you get somewhere over 50 states, with a combined population of hundreds of millions, but making a very small contribution to the world’s emissions. In a sense they encapsulate the world’s predicament: how can a large population get out of poverty without fossil fuels and deforestation? As Deepa Gupta said in a recent post, people, societies, and regions that are poor often have other forms of wealth. Nonetheless, those millions of people are striving for a better life, and it is in everyone’s interest that they should get there without exacerbating the climate problem, and those societies are beginning to take that goal on board as well (thus the Maldives’ intention to become carbon-neutral). By now people are interested in climate solutions coming from anywhere on Earth, and are similarly willing to share them widely; but I think those of us outside the “350 bloc” should pay particular attention to climate solutions (both innovative and conservative) coming from those countries, and to opportunities for collaboration. The LDCs and the island states can be a source of solutions, for the world.

2) *Work out the consequences of a zero-emissions policy for the major emitters, especially in energy and transport sectors, and get these scenarios into the discussion.* The current targets are weak because reductions have a cost, not just for the fossil-fuel industries but for everyone who currently relies upon them. While economics is certainly in need of a rethink, it is a mistake to rely solely on moral arguments or on the concept of an environmental emergency and to neglect the dour task of tallying up quantitative costs and benefits. If it looks like doing without coal is going to knock a few points off the GDP of your country, don’t avoid the issue; try to find out exactly how bad the problem is. I did this in a rough way for Anna’s home state of Queensland, here. At this stage, such estimates are more important as an exploration of possibility than as a formulation of policy; it’s not “we must sacrifice 5% of GDP in order to do our part” – though for some places it may come to that – but more like, “we can do it and it costs *at most* 5% of GDP”. (The readiness to bear a big cost must remain part of the discourse, but there should also be an openness to finding cheaper ways, or even ways that produce a net gain.) It will be a sign of progress when the policy discussion regularly considers the zero-emission option, but it won’t happen until a price-tag can be (tentatively) attached.

3) *Campaign for Copenhagen to institutionalize the possibility and desirability of deeper and faster emissions cuts than are initially envisaged.* As I said above, the various national trajectories as currently envisioned will almost certainly add up to a long-range concentration above 450ppm (and certainly above 350ppm). I think there is no chance that today’s targets for 2050 or even 2020 will remain fixed; by the time we get to 2020, everyone will be aiming for much greater reductions than were proposed in 2009. The governments of 2009 are unlikely to change their declared targets in 2009, and the governments of 2020 are likely to be much more ambitious; what is the rational way to deal with this situation? It would be easy enough to add some words to the treaty stating the desire of all parties to be as ambitious as possible in their future reductions, but that’s rather weak. Kyoto has proceeded in five-year commitment periods; if Copenhagen adopts this model, perhaps every five years there could be particular attention to the tightening-up of proposed emissions trajectories. I’m not really sure what’s best, I don’t know enough about the mechanism that Copenhagen is going to create, but as it is almost guaranteed that Copenhagen’s targets won’t be good enough and that there will be a strong reaction to this from many quarters, it will be desirable to build into the system avenues for constructive action by those who want better targets.