Global climate deal hopes melt away

The predictable failure of Copenhagen will be compounded when the US and China agree not to have any legally binding rules on emissions. This is of no surprise although total and utter failure may lead to some benefits......

Of course a "shift to a less amitious goal might help". Why was this no pursued in the first place given the inevitable failure of the more ambitious goals?

The only real solution in my opinion is for the big six or even the big two (US and China) to sign their own bilateral deal. This is the only real way to make any progress on CO2 emissions in the short term.

The "will" has been "sapped" and will take time to recover.

Giving Up Climate Treaty May Unblock U.N. Deal [PlanetArk]

The prospect of a global climate treaty is fading as the world's top two carbon emitters, China and the United States, avoid legally binding action. Experts say a shift to a less ambitious goal might help.

Less focus on a new treaty might resolve a tangle of disputes over the legal framework and drive concrete action, for example to preserve rainforests or to help developing nations cope with droughts, heatwaves, floods or rising seas.

U.N. climate talks to try to agree a tougher, wider successor to the present Kyoto Protocol entered their third year at an April 9-11 meeting in Bonn, Germany, the first since a fractious summit in Copenhagen in December.

Copenhagen was billed as the world's best chance to agree a new treaty. Failure to achieve a treaty or the smaller goal of binding carbon cuts for rich nations has sapped momentum and is forcing a search for less ambitious solutions.

"We can't afford only to keep coming back year after year, we have to explore other options," said Annie Petsonk, international counsel at the U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund, adding that a treaty was still possible.

Annual U.N. climate meetings have failed to achieve any major breakthrough since signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. The present round of that pact expires in 2012.

Experts note a less formal deal, outside a legal framework, may now emerge, building on the actions of individual nations.

More than 100 countries have backed a non-binding Copenhagen Accord to mobilize $30 billion in climate aid from 2010-2012 to help poor nations face the impacts of climate change, underscoring what could be agreed outside a legal framework.

"It used to be said that countries would only act if there was a treaty, but that's not the case," said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at Natural Resources Defense Council.

"A lot is happening even though we don't have an international agreement," he said, referring to the accord.

MEXICO

Mexico, which will host the next annual talks after Copenhagen in Cancun in late 2010, said that demands for a legally binding treaty should not get in the way of progress at that meeting.

"We do not want to get ensnared in the legal stuff so that we will be prevented from moving. What we want is to achieve a sensible global mobilization," Mexico's chief delegate Fernando Tudela said.

"If a legally binding treaty is possible and helps, we are all for it. But it's not a pre-condition for moving in the right direction." One senior developing country delegate accepted privately that the U.N. process may never agree a legal pact.

The difficulty of agreeing a binding treaty centers on the United States and China, who "remain in a dance about this issue," said Jennifer Morgan, from the World Resources Institute.

"There's not a legal treaty until you break this Gordian knot of the U.S. and China in particular having very different views of what it means to be legally binding," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

U.S. legislation to cut emissions is stalled in the U.S. Senate. And the United States will balk at binding targets unless China makes its own actions accountable in some international way.

Another roadblock to any treaty is a requirement for unanimity in U.N. talks -- absent in Copenhagen and which remained elusive in Bonn, as developing nations notably Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela rejected any attempt to build agreement in smaller groups.

One of the reasons why a treaty has been the goal, especially of developing countries, was because it allows for sanctions on rich countries which miss their targets. Enforcing a non-binding deal is far more difficult.

Petsonk advocated an approach where rich nations tied developing countries and each other to certain minimum action before benefiting from a $125 billion carbon market.

That would draw upon a voluntary World Trade Organization model which has widened free trade by offering the benefits of WTO membership.

The biggest buyer of carbon offsets, the European Union, has already laid plans to limit its financing of carbon-cutting projects in emerging economies which do not bolster climate action. The United States, Japan and Australia plan cap and trade schemes which would scale up that carbon finance carrot.

Without such an approach the only crutch to a non-binding deal may be international criticism. "Naming and shaming may be what we end up with," Meyer said.

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China achieved Copenhagen targets

Following on from the "China is evil" and sabbotaged Copenhangen:

Did China kill hope and the planet at Copenhagen?[China Economics Blog]

Copenhagen was never going to up with a decent environmental agreement. The result is better than nothing but only just. Are China really the bad guys in all this?

The left leaning Guardian puts the boot in. It is a surprise that they think it is a surprise that China would act in this way.

China are flexing their muscles and toughing it out - they can afford to do so without voters and upcoming elections. China's stance has internal and external logic. China will cut emissions and they will probably do a lot better then the West at hitting them but will do so on their own terms.

At least the Guardian accepts Copenhagen was a disaster. It always was. If you read previous posts on this blog such a disaster was inevitable. Can I provide a solution? No.

not surprisingly comes news that China are pretty happy with the result from Copenhagen.

China Says Achieved Goal In Copenhagen Climate Deal [PlanetArk]

BEIJING - Chinese negotiators achieved their goal at Copenhagen climate talks in ensuring financial aid for developing nations was not linked to external reviews of China's environmental plans, its top climate envoy said on Saturday.

Britain, Sweden and other countries have accused China of obstructing the climate summit, which ended last month with a non-binding accord that set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius but was scant on details.

China would never accept outside checks of its plans to slow greenhouse gas emissions and could only make a promise of "increasing transparency," Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, said at a forum.

Developed nations' promise of $100 billion in financial aid by 2020 to help poorer countries adapt to climate change offered a good stepping stone for negotiations, he said.

"Next time, we can talk about when will they pay the money and how much each country will pay," he said.

Xie also said that China was well on track to meeting its goal of cutting energy intensity -- or the amount of energy consumed to produce each dollar of national income -- by 20 percent over the five years through 2010.

It had already made a 16 percent cut as of the end of last year, he said.

"As long as we continue to make efforts, we are likely to achieve the targeted 20 percent cut this year," he said.

Xie added that China was drafting tough guidelines for reducing the carbon intensity of its growth in its next five-year plan for economic development, which will cover the 2011-2015 period.

China has pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of economic growth by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.

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The copenhagen editorial

I was bored by Copenhagen before it even began. This blog especially has been talking about the problems and obstracles to a deal for what seems like years so it depressing to only now see these arguments in the mainstream.

For the record here is the big "editorial". I will not be posting endless "Copenhagen updates" due to the pain of having to do so.

Copenhagen climate change conference: 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation' [Guardian]

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.
• How the Copenhagen global leader came about
• Write your own editorial
• The papers that carried the Copenhagen editorial
• In pictures: How newspapers around the world ran the editorial

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature".

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

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No deal in Denmark

Followers of this blog will have known I have long predicted no deal in Copenhagen. This was hardly a left field prediction - it was simply never going to happen.

The gulf between developed and developing countries is simply too large and Obama already has enough on his plate. Even Obama running out of time was inevitable many months ago - so many wasted column inches.

A pointless few days is ahead of us.

Copenhagen climate talks: No deal, we're out of time, Obama warns [Guardian]

Obama acknowledged today that time had run out to secure a legally binding climate deal at the Copenhagen summit in December and threw his support behind plans to delay a formal pact until next year at the earliest.

During a hastily convened meeting in Singapore, the US president supported a Danish plan to salvage something from next month's meeting by aiming to make it a first-stage series of commitments rather than an all-encompassing protocol.

Postponing many contentious decisions on emissions targets, financing and technology transfer until the second-stage, leaders will instead try to reach a political agreement in Copenhagen that sends a strong message of intent.

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Should Europes poor help the rich to help the poor?

Poland have a good point. When the EU promise such massive transfers of wealth from the EU to the developing world to mitigate climate change where exactly does the money come from? For sure some of it comes from the poor countries of Europe such as Poland.

There is a long long way to go - the chances of success at Copenhagen are increasingly slim. The differences between and within regions are just too large.

Economists are pessimistic in nature but it is increasingly difficult to see the light at the end of this particular tunnel.

Poland refuses to pay poorer nations' climate tab [EU Business]

(BRUSSELS) - Poland on Friday put a giant spoke in European negotiations on financing the fight to tame global warming when it refused to stump up for richer, western partners.

"Quite frankly, from our point of view it's totally unacceptable that the poor countries of Europe should help the rich countries of Europe to help the poor countries in the rest of the world," said Polish Finance Minister Jan Rostowski.

"We will not agree to a mechanism which would lead to such a completely unjust proposal," he added.

European Union finance ministers are meeting in Gothenburg seeking to agree on who pays how much into a pot aimed at convincing newly industrialised countries to sign up to a post-2012 global pact.

The European Commission estimates that five billion to seven billion euros annually will be needed in the 2010-2012 period until long-term "financial architecture" is put in place, hopefully, at a UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

Brussels says the annual figure needed to help developing nations combat and deal with climate change will hit 100 billion euros (147 billion dollars) per year by 2020.

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Disagreements have also emerged among EU member states on Franco-German ideas for a carbon tax on imports from regions with poor environmental standards.

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WTO and Copenhagen linked in a death spiral?

If, as is likely, Copenhagen ends in failure will it spell trouble for the WTO? Pascal Lamy, head of the World Trade Organisation, certainly seems to think so. The FT report.

I happen to believe him. There are some rather odd proposals on how tariffs can be used to "punish" emitters although these are fundamentally flawed in my opinion.

This debate is what this blog is all about. The link between trade, FDI and the environment is absolutely crucial but needs to be understood. The US proposal to tax carbon in imports is madness.

Lamy fears spillover between climate and trade talks [FT]

Failure to find agreement at United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen in December would threaten a much needed overhaul of the international trading system, Pascal Lamy, head of the World Trade Organisation, warned on Thursday.

His comments highlighted concerns that a breakdown in discussions about reducing greenhouse gas emissions may spill into the trade arena – with devastating effect, as some countries seek to exclude goods from high emitters.

India has already protested to Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, about the threat of carbon tariffs from environmental legislation proposed by the Obama administration.

Speaking as trade ministers from 39 countries met in New Delhi to progress the WTO’s Doha round, Mr Lamy cautioned against adopting trade measures to force changes in environmental behaviour.

“I sincerely hope that [agreement] will happen in Copenhagen. If it doesn’t happen, our job at the WTO will become more difficult,” Mr Lamy told the Financial Times. “Go-it-alone measures will not achieve the desired results. Relying on trade measures to fix global environmental problems will not work.”

He said world leaders, who meet at the Group of 20 in Pittsburgh, US, later this month, had to prioritise agreement on tackling climate change, ahead of discussion of how trade policy might be used to deepen environmental protection.

“I am of the firm conviction that the relationship between international trade and climate change would be best defined as a follow- up to a consensual international accord on climate change that successfully embraces all major polluters,” Mr Lamy said.

Some developing countries have expressed concerns about environmentally linked tariffs on imports by developed nations, as the pressure to cut greenhouse gases intensifies. They claim such tariffs are in effect protectionist measures.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed by the House of Representatives in June, has fuelled concerns among developing countries that it may lead to punitive US border adjustment mechanisms, shutting out trade.

At a time when the developed world is trying to persuade growing economies like China and India to agree greenhouse gas emissions cuts, some climate change experts say threats to resort to trade measures are “dangerous”.

“The discussion of trade and climate is already out there,” said one expert. “That is a big risk for Copenhagen. Counter-measures are not a helpful dynamic. We have got to talk collaboratively.”

Trade negotiators are hoping that a successful conclusion of this week’s meeting in New Delhi will help put the revival of the stalled Doha round firmly on the agenda of the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. Many view a trade deal as an economic stimulus to help the global economy recover from its downturn.

However, Mr Lamy said world leaders had to find the political will to embrace tougher global financial regulation to prevent a repeat of last year’s banking crisis and prepare the ground for the Copenhagen talks on climate change.

Anand Sharma, India’s commerce minister, on Thursday played down the prospect of a swift conclusion of the Doha round in spite of calls by some of his counterparts to home in on a few outstanding issues.

“Let’s be frank in acknowledging that even the unequivocal expression of political resolve has not been translated into action . . . It has been suggested that most issues have been settled almost in ‘end-game’. However, it would be apparent that there are still a few gaps and a large number of unresolved issues.”

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Copenhagen posturing: Africa I

Ahead of the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen there are going to be many countries and regions threatening many things, walk outs, veto's and boycotts being top of the list.

This is all about political game playing and posturing ahead of the conference and can be largely ignored. There is nothing new "minimum positions" but it is true that Africa will bare the brunt of climate change and yet did very little to cause it. There is an issue of justice there somewhere.

The odds of Africa's minimum position being met are close to zero in my view.

What is does show however is just how difficult it will be to come to any sort of agreement that will have any chance of having any effect in terms of greenhouse gas emission mitigation.


Africa threatens walkout from climate talks [Daily Nation]

ADDIS ABABA, Thursday - Africa's climate change negotiators led by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi have threatened to withdraw from the upcoming global climate change talks.

The Ethiopian PM said Africa might have to walk out if the December climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, failed to agree with Africa’s minimum position.

“If need be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent,” he said.

Mr Zenawi told Africa ministers and European partners gathered in Addis Ababa to consolidate Africa’s expectation and position for the next global climate negotiations.

According to Africa's common position paper, the continent wants huge financial support (estimated at US$300 billion) and technology transfer from the West for mitigation and adaptation activities to curb the impact of climate crisis on the continent.

Mr Zenawi, however, hinted that his delegation will not claim compensation but fight for global action to reduce the impact of climate change.

“We will never accept any global deal that does not limit global warming to the minimum unavoidable level, no matter what level of compensation and assistance is promised to us,” he said.

“We will not be there to express its participation by merely warming the chairs or to make perfunctory speeches and statements,” Mr Zenawi said.

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Africa demands that developed countries should commit 0.5 per cent of their GDP for climate action in developing countries and commit to new and innovative sources of public and private sector finance, with the major source of funding coming from the public sector.


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Rich nations need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 80 to 95 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Africa also demanded from the West better climate change adaptation fund worth US$67 billion per year by 2020.

Developed countries should commit to the deployment, diffusion and transfer of technology to developing countries, based on principles of accessibility, affordability, appropriateness and adaptability.

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China needs developed countries to lead the way on climate change

There are going to be an increased number of articles on climate change in the run up to Copenhagen at the end of 2009 and all manner of posturing from participating countries.

China gets an early shot in. Nothing has changed though and same old entrenched views remain.

China urges developed countries to further fulfill commitment to greenhouse gas emissions cuts [China View]

China on Thursday urged developed countries to further fulfill their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, saying it is the key to the success for the meeting on the climate change to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark at the end of 2009.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu stressed at a regular press briefing "the substantive difference" between the voluntary emissions cuts of the developing countries and compulsory emissions cuts of already developed countries.

The developed countries and developing countries shoulder different responsibilities and obligations. The results of negotiations in Copenhagen should reflect the consensus reached in the Bali Roadmap so as to fully implement the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, Jiang highlighted.

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China and some other developing countries have made great efforts to handle climate change, Jiang said, adding that if the developed countries "honor their commitment" on providing funds and transferring technology for the developing countries, "more contribution could be made by the developing countries".

The total volume of China's greenhouse gas emissions remains high because of its intense population, Jiang explained, citing the fact that the greenhouse gas emissions volume per capita and the volume of China's cumulative greenhouse gas emissions were at a very low level.

The spokesperson also pledged that China would continue to work with other developing countries and actively participate in the relevant international cooperation in aim to fulfill its due contribution on tackling climate change.

The Chinese government, which attaches great importance to climate change, has enacted policies to address issue of climate change. According to a five-year plan, the energy consumption per-unit GDP is expected to drop by about 20 percent by 2010 compared to that of 2005.

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