Mike Tidwell, head of the Maryland-based Chesapeake Climate Action Network, is in Copenhagen with thousands of other environmentalists pressing world leaders to agree to reduce greenhouse gases. The views expressed here are his - feel free to share yours.

First of all, imagine this: the people of Copenhagen, Denmark, generate one-sixth of the greenhouse gas pollution  per capita as people living in Washington, D.C. One sixth! That’s the first thing you notice when you come to Copenhagen, as I have, for the international climate talks. I’m here to represent my Maryland nonprofit, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. I’m also here to see the future.

Denmark as a nation gets nearly 25 percent of its electricity from wind farms. The city of Copenhagen itself is full of bicycles. They’re everywhere. And the subway system is world class. I saw a guy on the subway Sunday in Copenhagen carrying a Christmas tree. On the train. People do everything here, go everywhere, without cars! And Danes, at the same time, are consistently ranked in surveys as some of the happiest people on Earth.  Radically low-carbon and happy people.

So I’m seeing the clean-energy future in practice this week. Too bad the world’s top leaders – from 192 nations – can’t seem to agree on a treaty format that makes that same future possible for the rest of us. Things are not going well here.

One big problem is that the richer countries won’t agree to supply a modest $10 billion per year to poorer nations to help develop clean energy there as part of the treaty. Heck, America spends that much every year in tax-payer subsidies to coal and oil companies! I say we end those subsidies to make way for clean-energy wind farms in places like Africa and South America.

But beyond this, the biggest problem at the Copenhagen treaty talks is simply a number: 350. World leaders can’t seem to agree on that number:  350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere .  That’s the only level of climate pollution that’s safe for human civilization, according leading climate scientists like Dr. James Hansen at NASA.

But given the weak pledges of pollution cuts so far from America and many other nations, a team of MIT scientists here in Copenhagen has calculated that if the treaty talks ended today, the world would be committed to a scenario by 2100 of 770 parts per million carbon in the atmosphere!!!

We’ve got to do better. Obama’s negotiating team must pledge much more than the modest four percent cut (below 1990 levels) of carbon emissions by 2020 in America. To help the world get to the 350 carbon level by 2100, America needs to cut its emissions as high as high as six or seven times that much. We can’t do it? Denmark , today, is proof we can.

Frankly, a bad climate treaty, one that locks us into a ghastly 770 ppm carbon by 2100, is worse than no treaty at all. One thing is certain: No matter what happens here, we’re going to have much more work to do pushing Obama and the US Congress back home in 2010.

But I’m not discouraged, no matter what happens here. That’s because I’ve visited the future. I know it’s possible. I’ve been to Copenhagen.

Sincerely,

Mike Tidwell