COP15- this is it.

Throughout this entire journey of COP15, party members and NGOs alike have been saying that this is it, this is our final chance to make a meaningful policy for climate change that will work effectively with the shrinking amount of time we have left. Unfortunately what we want is not always what we get.

Although no major policy was formed out of COP15, five counties with major economies drafted their own policy to help combat climate change. The US, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa all signed an agreement with good intentions. Their agreement has no specific plans on cutting emissions, only that they will not let global temperature rise 2 degrees C. This may not sound like much but it is a huge step in the right direction. During the Kyoto Protocol, the US and developing nations butted heads, but now the US is on board with India and China, and not in disagreement with them like they were in the past. "This is a consensus that will serve as the foundation for global action against climate change for years to come," stated Obama, obviously pleased with this outcome.

Many small nations and developing nations are very displeased with this outcome. "This is a declaration that small and poor countries don't matter, that international civil society doesn't matter, and that serious limits on carbon don't matter," said Bill McKibben, the head of the environmental activist group 350.org. "The President has wrecked the U.N., and he's wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming." Some people believe that this agreement is just the same as if nothing had come out of COP. Either way you choose to look at it, the US and China as still the big emitters and because they have not agreed to binding limits on their emissions nothing is going to change.