International politics and diplomacy has brought to where we are today. The United States is ready with a provisional emissions reduction target and so are the developing countries ready with their voluntary carbon intensity reduction targets. But as leaders from more than 190 countries prepare to meet at Copenhagen’s Bella Center to discuss the framework of the next climate treaty one wonders if the politics should give way to the climate science.

Never before have the United States and the developing countries proposed to reduce their carbon outputs. This has been a result of the concentrated diplomatic effort of the Obama administration which single handedly convinced the Chinese to volunteer for emission intensity reduction. China’s announcement was followed by similar announcements by other developing countries like India, South Africa and Brazil.

But the targets announced by almost all countries are not in sync with the IPCC recommendations. The IPCC report recommended that the global carbon emissions need to come down by 25-40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. Most of the developed countries are proposing emission cuts of less that 25 percent and some have changed the base year from 1990 to a value which suits their national interets.

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