Given that there's virtually no chance a finished climate treaty will come out of the upcoming talks in Copenhagen, one might be forgiven for asking what, exactly, the world's diplomats are actually going to do these next two weeks in Denmark. Already, further talks are scheduled for next year—including yet another big climate summit in Mexico City in 2010. But with only so many negotiating sessions to go around, most climate-policy experts agree that tangible progress needs to be made at Copenhagen if there's to be a chance of a new global treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012.
I asked Jake Schmidt, the director of international climate policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, to get a better sense of what the big goals are for Copenhagen—and the obstacles to getting them accomplished. Basically, there are three major areas where countries need to strike rough agreements in order for the summit to be considered a success
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