With the climate change conference scheduled to run in just a few weeks, I thought I would write about my feelings on the arguments about to take place. In my spare time from being a realtor from Toronto, I enjoy contemplating and reading up on global affairs. Climate progression is one special area that engages me.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place in the Denmark capital during the first half of December. People turning up at the conference are expecting to reach a decision on lessening the intensity of climate change from 2012. The opinions on climate change differ alarmingly so not everyone is starting this from the same angle. The campaign is anything but united.

When Barack Obama became president, many activists hoped for a new era in climate change mitigation. What people are wanting to be told is how can we move this problem forward. The Kyoto protocol, understood to be a springboard for conferences of this kind, is less and less praised, even by environmentalists themselves.

It has been over 10 years since the emission rates were decided in this treaty and they now need to be reviewed. Built on GHG emission rates of 2005, individuals around the US president are asking for a further 20% reduction by 2020. While people call for this decrease they fail to remember that Kyoto didn’t work and that called for a 5% reduction on the 1990 levels. Many activists are up in arms about the lackadaisical attitude towards the reduction schedule and the loosening of conditions imposed by Kyoto.

There is another area of discord that this concern is linked to. The North concludes Kyoto and subsequent environmental actions will have the greatest impact on its economy, while the huge polluters of the South (like China, India, Brazil and South Africa) will remain untouched. The South as a whole believes it’s in the right, because the North owes them a lot – southern countries are much more altered by climate problems than those in the North. Northern countries admit that developing countries may need to generate higher emissions to literally fuel their growth (although some activists see such aggressive ‘slash-and-burn’ development as a dead end route anyway), but with the economic troubles and China’s emergence as a world power, countries like India and Brazil are less inclined to make any sacrifices.

The emissions trade is another point that worries the anti-climate change organization. While advocates (largely government officials) claim that introducing market rules can offset the negative economic repercussions of emission restrictions, opponents see it as another chance for black market trade, cheating and scams. What they are desperate to see and calling for is the bulk of the power and control to be given to local communities, which should hopefully stop any climatic disasters.

If your aiming for open-minded decisions, then you likely to be disappointed with any agreements made in Denmark. But maybe more important is the mobilization of lobbyists across the whole society, which can be seen nowadays. This means that there are more and more voices shouting for improvements this year, and that can only be a great thing.