30 January 2010

Pop Quiz -- Who Said What?

How well have you been following the climate debate?

Nature asked six climate change experts their views on the significance of the Copenhagen Accord. Before I provide the link, I've listed the experts below and a passage from each. Your job is to match the expert with the phrase. No cheating!

Feel free to enter your guesses as comments. I'll update this post with the answers after the weekend. Have fun guessing!
A- Mike Hulme, UEA
B- Jonathan Lash, WRI
C- Bill McKibben, 350.org
D- Roger Pielke, Jr., CU
E- John Shellnhuber, PIK
F- David Victor, Stanford

1 -“The US and China decided they didn't want these pesky [little] nations burdening the talks with their unreasonable demands for survival, so they cut their own pact. But in some sense, the US and China, having broken the UN process, also bought it.”

2 - “The Copenhagen Accord is a much bigger — and better — deal than many people realize.”

3- “If 'dangerous' is 2 °C, then I suspect we are toast. A lot of people will lament that, but one has to wonder whether this is not a failure of governments but rather a failure of people.”

4 - “It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. [Yet] many in the climate debate seem ready to put the Copenhagen experience out of their minds and gear up for doing it all over again in Mexico City. Insane!”

5 - “. . . we need to set near-term targets that are pragmatic and technology-based, and they should be achievable on the basis of credible social, technical and economic analysis, not aspirational targets driven by IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] science.”

6 - “. . . the many small countries were not the problem in Copenhagen; [the problem was] primarily the United States and China. If those two were willing to cooperate on climate protection then the UN system would also work fine.”
The Nature piece with the full comments from the six experts is here.