My COP15 Christmas Wish List

With only a few days to go at COP15, the negotiations are intensifying but there is little sign of movement from countries with competing interests. The preferred target number I keep reading about is 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. That is the threshold where polar ice caps began to melt, and now that we are approaching 400 ppm, the thaw has only hastened. Given that emitted carbon has a shelf life of at least 100 years in the atmosphere, it's easy to see how far behind we are already. Regardless of the number agreed to in the final document produced in Copenhagen, here is what I'd like to see in the aftermath.

• Put a price on carbon emissions. This will allow consumers and businesses to make rational financial decisions which include the cost of carbon byproducts. It might spell the end of the dollar store and lead to higher gas prices, but there is no way we will meet the new targets unless we sacrifice.
• Share clean technologies with developing countries so that they can leapfrog the dirtiest elements of the Industrial Revolution that helped the West build its wealth.
• Don't let the tar sands off easy with smaller reduction targets. Story here. It would be like giving the dirtiest child in the family the shortest bath while forcing the rest of the kids to wash behind the ears. 

The time for wishing away our problems has long since passed. We need to try prevent an environmental crisis before we see the full impact of it. If we choose to wait until climate change hurts us closer to home, then we risk having to make even greater sacrifices to undo problems that could be too big to manage. Let's just hope the COP15 negotiators make the deal.