Welcome to the real world. Thankfully, the official delegations in Copenhagen — and thousands of other people attending the U.N. climate confab there — aren’t wasting the time by arguing whether climate change is real, caused by people and a grave threat to our prosperity and civilization.

They’re proceeding with the well-founded understanding that it’s time to act — which is a difficult enough challenge given the fault lines inherent in the issue: developed nations vs. developing ones; producing nations vs. consuming ones; and rich ones vs. poor.

The 110 nations involved in the talks staked out innumerable positions in the first of the conference’s two weeks. Three of those positions have taken the form of drafts that amount to stalking horses marking three basic positions in the debate:

• The so-called “Danish text,” which was leaked early in the week, envisioned moving away from the U.N. structure that’s governed international climate negotiations since the 1992 Kyoto Protocols. It proposed hard per capita emissions caps for both developed and developing nations, along with a limited amount of aid from wealthy nations for poorer nations — but only for nations facing the most severe threats from climate change. The caps would allow more carbon emissions per rich-world person, than per poor-world person. While the “Danish text” got a lot of attention for the anger it provoked among developing nations, it was really more of a discussion draft being circulated among developing nations — not an actual proposal.

• Led by the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, 43 countries that face grave threats from climate change proposed more dramatic cuts in emissions (tied to keeping global temp rise to 2.5 degrees Celsius), arguing that their very survival depends on it. Developed powers didn’t like their proposal because it would demand more of them; developing powers didn’t like it because it would require them to face hard emission caps; and the Saudi delegate really didn’t like it (I wonder why!). The proposal was ruled out of order, prompting a protest during which the small nations were joined by environmental activists. Even though it didn’t get very far officially, it did serve as a bit of a pull in the direction of a more forceful treaty.

• And finally the official negotiating body released a draft treaty that will likely form the basis from which a more advanced draft will be hammered out next week. Here’s how Yale Environment 360 describes it:

Negotiators released a six-page draft of a climate treaty Friday that calls for limiting global temperature increases to 2.7 to 3.6 degrees F and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least half by 2050. The draft, distilled from a 180-page document, now becomes the focus of negotiations as leaders from 110 nations descend on Copenhagen next week in an effort to forge a treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The draft left many questions unanswered, as it called for reductions in greenhouse gases by mid-century ranging from 50 to 95 percent. It makes clear that wealthy nations must bear the main responsibility for slashing CO2 emissions in the next decade, stipulating that they set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas output by 25 to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Current pledges add up to about an 18 percent reduction. The draft text does not require developing countries, including China and India, to agree to specific emissions reductions targets, but states that they “may undertake autonomous mitigation actions” to limit the increase of their emissions. Negotiators had set a target of holding global temperature rises to 2 degrees C (3.6 F). But pressure from island nations — which face inundation as sea levels rise — and poor nations persuaded negotiators to set a maximum temperature target ranging from 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F) to 2 degrees C.

One sure-to-be-controversial point that appears to accompany the draft treaty is its call for only $10 billion in annual contributions by wealthy nations to a fund to help the poor nations most likely to be harmed severely by climate change. That number — the same amount floated in the Danish text — is way too little to go around, given the global needs and given the contribution of rich nations toward the problem in the form of greenhouse emissions. U.N. officials have floated a number of $30 billion instead. It appears to be one of the issues of debate going into the weekend.

Meanwhile, more pressure is being placed on China and the United States to be more aggressive in reducing emissions. On Thursday, Japan even threatened to abandon its commitment to reduce emissions by 25 percent by the year 2020 if the world’s two largest greenhouse emitters didn’t commit to large cuts of their own.

Somewhat hearteningly, Copenhagen seems to have prompted the powers that be in D.C. to take positive steps to combat climate change. On Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued its long-awaited finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, clearing the way for regulation limiting greenhouse emissions. While the administration insisted that the finding simply was what it was, it also was taken as a kick in the pants for Congress to get off its butt and deal with the problem.

Since September, the House’s cap-and-trade-based climate bill has awaited Senate action. But miracle of miracles, the senators finally stirred this week: On Thursday, senators John Kerry, D-Mass., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., announced that they’ll sponsor bipartisan climate change legislation. Some environmentalists are wary of their approach because it would rely on nuclear power for a fair amount of the reduction, and the target of cutting carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020 still is rather meek compared to what the rest of the world’s attempting. Still, the senators said they’re shooting for cuts of 80 percent by 2050, which is inline with other countries’ targets.

Finally, today, a second bipartisan approach was proposed by Democrat Mary Cantwell of Washington and Republican Susan Collins of Maine. It’s based on the idea of “cap-and-dividend” — under which the revenue from carbon credits purchased by polluters would be refunded to consumers. The New Republic notes that financiers and coal-state senators don’t like the idea as much as the more conventional cap-and-trade approach (each for their own reasons), which will make it more difficult to get the votes needed for passage.

The bottom line is that, between the two bipartisan bills, you get the sense that Senate Republicans won’t be as united in saying “no” to climate legislation as they have been to health insurance reform. That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t plenty of Republicans in Congress who are still in a state of angry denial over the issue.

A gaggle of them are headed next week to Copenhagen to try to convince a world that already is seeing the effects of climate change that everyone’s being fooled by a global conspiracy of greedy scientists. I suspect they’ll be as out of place as the Ugly Duckling was — or more aptly the cuckoo bird.

Climate change deniers already were making quite a show of it in Copenhagen. They’re holding their own shadow conference, which isn’t being taken seriously by the scientific and political delegations at the main confab, but has grabbed quite a few headlines. Some of those headlines were unintentional, as when the quirky English rightwing aristocrat, Lord Monckton, who is considered a leading “skeptic”), insisted that a Jewish student who said his grandparents escaped the Holocaust was a “Hitler youth.”

One assumes that the discussion and the media coverage of it will become more elevated next week when more than 100 heads of state arrive in Copenhagen. Prime among them, of course, will be President Obama, whose stature not only rose because of the state-side stirring last week over the issue, but because just a ferry ride away, in Oslo, Norway, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ever the policy wonk, while in Norway, Obama threw his weight behind one of the specific policy discussions already underway in Copenhagen, by backing a plan:

… put forward by Norway and Brazil which would protect the world’s rainforests with funding from rich countries that cannot meet their commitments to cut emissions domestically.

“I am very impressed with the model that has been built between Norway and Brazil that allows for effective monitoring and ensures that we are making progress in avoiding deforestation of the Amazon.

“It’s probably the most cost-effective way for us to address the issue of climate change – having an effective set of mechanisms in place to avoid further deforestation and hopefully to plant new trees.”

Related posts:

1. COP15: more progress than disaster
2. Copenhagen so far: Accord or babel?
3. Copenhagen: Developing countries walk out
4. Copenhagen day 3 roundup
5. Copenhagen days 2 & 3: action|reaction