Top Climate Scientist Says Copenhagen Meeting Could Be a 'Disaster'

James Hansen, a leading climate scientist who was influential in convincing the world to take notice of global warming, says this month's climate summit in Copenhagen is on "a disaster track," The Guardian reports. Despite believing climate change is a serious danger, Hansen said that it will be better for the world if the Copenhagen meeting ends in collapse.

"The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing, then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means," Hansen said, referring to the Kyoto Protocol, which has had little effect since being ratified by many nations in 1997.

Hansen said the issue requires much more drastic measures, and that he has no patience for the compromise mentality that characterizes world leaders' deliberations. "This is analogous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill," he said. "On those kind of issues you cannot compromise. You can't say, let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50 percent or reduce it 40 percent."

Hansen says he was spurred to move from scientist to activist during the Bush administration, and has repeatedly testified before Congress and spoken throughout the United States about the threat of climate change. He calls the Obama administration's policies on the issue "half-assed."