Last week, news from Singapore caught many off guard and left more disheartened. The two-day closed-door meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation concluded that next month’s UN climate summit in Copenhagen will not include specific targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

To avoid Copenhagen becoming synonymous with “failure,” Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen flew overnight to attend a breakfast meeting at the APEC summit. To a room of 44 half-awake heads of state desperately sipping coffee, Rasmussen proposed a “one agreement, two steps,” approach to COP15. Instead of the legally binding agreement that many hoped for, Rasmussen argued for a “politically binding” agreement to reduce emissions, thus skillfully avoiding the question of specific national targets.

Rasmussen’s “one agreement, two steps” approach calls for the deferral of a Kyoto-like agreement in Copenhagen, breaking the promise made by the international community in Bali two years ago. Instead, the approach opts for an inclusive talk, with 192 countries signatories to an agreement on the four main pillars of the negotiations: mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer, and finance. Following Rasmussen’s approach, the details will have to wait until the next meeting of COP16 in Mexico City in 2010.

President Obama chimed in by stating that the leaders “must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” When pressed about why Obama had failed to take bold action on climate change, his administration blamed Congress for its lack of coordination to pass climate legislation. Unfortunately, such legislation, even if successfully endorsed before Copenhagen through divine intervention, will still not reach the Senate before next year.

Our own prime minister, Stephen Harper, was eager to restate his unflagging line that no agreement can come to pass without the full inclusion of all nations, including the small island states, the African continent, and all the other least developed countries of this world. Quite a rich statement considering Canada’s greenhouse emissions have increased by 26 per cent of 1990 levels.

This APEC compromise has been widely reported by major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Globe and Mail. However, these reports gloss over the fact that not all members of APEC willingly endorsed Prime Minister Rasmussen’s suggestion to opt for a short-term agreement while extending the deadline to 2010. Developing countries continue to demand that rich economies cut their emissions by at least 40 per cent below 1990 base levels by 2020, and that the rich economies also provide one per cent of their collective GDP per year (around $400 billion) to finance various mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Needless to say, no developed country has yet to sign on. What they have also failed to do, however, is to counter the demands of the developing countries with concrete demands of their own. While Harper urges India and Brazil to commit, it remains unclear what, exactly, he wants them to commit to.

The gap persists between what the Copenhagen Agreement must accomplish in principle, and what remains realistically feasible. Former Rhodes Scholar and the first African to lead an environmental NGO, Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace International, argues that anything short of a legally binding treaty must be viewed as a failure in leadership. Yet Janos Pasztor, climate change advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon states that a two-step process, much like the one proposed by Rasmussen, is the only possibility.

World leaders must develop a bold and binding commitment for real action. This will happen only with the delivery of a miracle by a certain head of state with the most expendable political capital: Barack Obama. But those who understand this careful balancing act of international affairs also understand that Obama—with health care reform, a precarious economy, and two wars to address—is unlikely to wield his star power for a UN treaty that yields little political capital.

Flights to Mexico City are already filling up with those who have given up on COP15. But at the risk of sounding too hopeful, Copenhagen just might give birth to a treaty with concrete targets.

If we are serious about holding global warming from rising more than two degrees Celsius, this should be realized in Copenhagen and not elsewhere. The world stands at a tipping point. Only in the next few weeks will it enjoy the charged political climate it does now. Copenhagen need not be a bygone conclusion, just yet.

So get out. Participate in a climate flash mob. Go write to your MP or submit a letter to the editor of your favourite daily. Insist that ministers seal the deal. Most of all, engage in direct action.