It is my honor to open the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference here in Copenhagen. And what more proof do we need of global warming than the unseasonably cold weather we’ve had to endure getting here.

Let’s begin.

Personkind has recently discovered that we have the ability to affect the global climate! This is truly an incredibly time to live. Personkind has evolved to the point where we can control the temperature of our planet.

Now, understandably, many of you are panicking over the thought that we have recently increased the temperature of our planet a bit. Shout out to the Maldives delegation - over there - in the hip waders. Living three inches above sea level no longer seems like a good idea huh? However, the most logical thing to do with our newly discovered superpower is to decide how we are going to use it.

The obvious (well, obvious if you want people to continue to thrive) first question is, “Now that we comprehend our ability to control worldwide temperature, what temperature do we want?” Think about it. If you move into a new apartment and the salesperson points out the thermostat, what’s the first thing you do? Of course! You set the thermostat to the temperature you want. It’s the same thing here, but on a global scale. Do we want it warmer, cooler, or keep it where it’s at? After we determine the best temperature for the world, then we’ll go ahead and figure the best way to achieve it.

Oh wait, we have to back up a bit. I guess the VERY FIRST thing is to decide how we are going to pick our target temperature. We have a bunch of options. We could set up a committee of some scientists to weigh all known factors and then determine an optimal temperature to maximize the benefit to Personkind. Or we could go with straight democracy, every country gets a number of votes equal to their population – I see China and India are smiling at that one. Or we could go with a GDP based voting system where every country gets a number of votes proportional to their portion of world GDP. But of course, since we are a United Nations body, we’ll just go with the UN-type voting system where every country gets one vote. 

What we’ll do is have every country write down their desired temperature, we’ll average all of the votes to get our new target world temperature.

Let’s get started. I’ll begin with just a few preliminary observations. 

What if we decide to make it warmer? Too cold kills more than too warm. What I mean is, bad cold snaps result in more deaths than bad heat waves. So that’s a benefit if we make it warmer. Plus, if it’s warmer, humans can get by with less things, like less insulation, less fuel for heating, less clothes. Also, there’s a lot of good land that is just too cold for much of the year – look at Canada, Russia, and the northern portions of the United States and Europe. Think of the benefits of longer growing seasons and milder winters there. Of course, there are some downsides to warmer. For example, the Maldives will become s diving resort. Many coastal cities may need to build some sort of dykes to protect themselves from rising sea levels – the Dutch say they’re willing to help anyone with cash. Apparently this is right up their alley.

What if we decide to make it cooler? We could lower sea levels – this could help disaster prone third world countries like Bangladesh and New Orleans. Some believe that Polar Bears would be happier (no difference in numbers though – since their population has been stable or growing with our current warming). Skiing could improve. More white Christmases ... Sorry – More white Holiday Festivals.

With that said, let’s get started with the vote. OK, remember, everybody gets to vote for their desired temperature and we’ll average the results. The first vote here is from the Maldives who vote to make it colder by ... 300 degrees Celsius. Um … guys, are you telling me you want the world average temperature to be about absolute zero? Let’s move on. Here’s the vote from Russia, and they would like the Earth to be hotter by 1,000 degrees and it says here “either Celsius or Fahrenheit, either way is good.”

OK, this isn’t going to work. Change of plan. Now that we know we can alter the climate, let’s do everything possible to not alter the climate. What we’ll do is take a guess at what the temperature would have been if we hadn’t messed it up, and then we’ll just go with that. If it would have naturally gotten warmer, we’ll let it. Or if it would have naturally gotten colder, we’ll let that happen. The important thing is not what global temperature would benefit Personkind, it’s what temperature the planet would be without Personkind. Because without us, the planet would be in perfect harmony. C’mon people, let’s get our priorities straight.