Last
month, world leaders announced
that they no longer expect to reach a fully binding legal agreement in
Copenhagen, but Barack Obama's last-minute decision to attend the final day of
the conference signals that the U.S. president now thinks there will be
something significant to announce on that date. (And perhaps to take credit
for?) Until then, here are some developments to watch. How these debates play
out could determine what, if anything, will emerge from this month's gathering.
Sometimes the best is the enemy of the good – and sometimes
“good enough” is the enemy of all mankind.
That is why Jim Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute
for Space Studies and one of the world's leading climate
scientists, wants the global summit on climate change in
Copenhagen to fail.
“I would rather it not happen,” he told The Guardian in
London recently.
“The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is
better to reassess the situation.”
In diplomacy, “good enough” solutions predominate because of
the need for compromise, but in this case, Hansen argues, it
is better to have no deal than the wrong deal.
He's right and most of the negotiators at Copenhagen know it.
Almost everybody involved knows what the one really fair and
effective deal would look like, although they feel doomed to
settle for something much worse.
In this case, the fair and effective deal would take full
account of the history, and it would look like this.
It would require the rich, industrialised countries to take
really deep cuts in their emissions: 40% by 2020, say, and
another 40% by 2035.
The developing countries would cap the growth in their
emissions at a level not much higher than where they are now,
but they must be allowed to go on growing their economies,
which means that they will need more energy.
All that extra energy has to be clean, or else they will
break through the cap.
They will therefore have to get their new energy from wind
farms or solar arrays or nuclear plants, all of which are
more expensive than the cheap coal-fired power plants they
rely on now.
Who pays the difference in the cost? The rich countries do.
What makes this lopsided deal fair is the history behind it.
Emissions in the developed countries have stabilised or
declined slightly (except for Canada, where they continue to
soar), but they are still at a very high level.
Indeed, what has made these countries rich is burning fossil
fuels for the past 150-200 years – and in doing so, they have
taken up almost all the available space.
In the early 19th century, the concentration of carbon
dioxide in the air was 280 parts per million (ppm).
It is now 390ppm, and four-fifths of that extra CO2 was put
there by the ancestors of the people who live in developed
countries.
The point of no return, after which we risk runaway warming,
is a rise in average global temperature of 2degC – the
equivalent to 450ppm of carbon dioxide.
All we have left to play with is the distance between 390ppm
and 450ppm, and on a business-as-usual basis we'll cover it
in less than 30 years.
All the economic growth of rapidly developing countries like
China, India and Brazil – 3-4 billion people – has to fit
into that narrow band of 60ppm that the developed countries
left for them.
That is why the post-Kyoto deal must be lopsided – but it is
still politically impossible to sell that deal to people in
the developed countries.
What we have on the table instead at Copenhagen is a bastard
version in which rich countries buy the right to go on
emitting lots of greenhouse gases by subsidising clean power
and other emissions reductions in the poor countries.
The Copenhagen summit will certainly fail to deliver the
right deal.
The danger is that it will lock us into the wrong deal, and
leave no political space for countries to go back and try to
get it right later.
Public opinion is climbing a steep learning curve, and the
assymetrical deal that cannot be sold politically today might
be quite saleable in as little as a year or two.
So the best outcome at Copenhagen would be a ringing
declaration of principles, and an agreement to get back round
the table and do the hard negotiations over the next 12-18
months.
Since the US Congress has still not mandated any reduction in
American emissions and Canada will do its best to subvert the
proceedings, that is also a quite likely outcome.
Gwynne Dyers latest book, Climate Wars,
was published recently by Scribe.
Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol
The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents.
The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.
The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.
The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.
The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.
The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”.
A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:
• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;
• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called “the most vulnerable”;
• Weaken the UN's role in handling climate finance;
• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.
Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.
“It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process,” said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.
Antonio Hill, climate policy adviser for Oxfam International, said: “This is only a draft but it highlights the risk that when the big countries come together, the small ones get hurting. On every count the emission cuts need to be scaled up. It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed.”
Hill continued: “It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN. That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks.”
The text was intended by Denmark and rich countries to be a working framework, which would be adapted by countries over the next week. It is particularly inflammatory because it sidelines the UN negotiating process and suggests that rich countries are desperate for world leaders to have a text to work from when they arrive next week.
Few numbers or figures are included in the text because these would be filled in later by world leaders. However, it seeks to hold temperature rises to 2C and mentions the sum of $10bn a year to help poor countries adapt to climate change from 2012-15.
