Patched up and full of holes PDF Print E-mail
Wednesday, 24 February 2010 08:10
3945439186_20c988a9aa__optExactly what does the Copenhagen Accord add up to?

This was a talk shop of the worst kind. Plenty of hot air, many delegates living well in their per diems. Yet, watching television and listening to radio it was difficult, if not impossible, to understand what all the gobbledygook was all about. I believe that this article by Michael McCarthy, published by The Independent (UK) in December 2009, is one of the best pieces of writing to emerge from the Danish capital.

David Linsell, Editor

  The last-minute agreement is a major setback, and the world will have to regroup in its struggle to contain climate change.

Is it true that the world has a new agreement to fight climate change?

Yes, the Copenhagen Accord, signed at the United Nations climate conference in the Danish capital late on 18 December 2009.

What does it do?

For the first time, it enshrines the recognition of all the world’s countries that we should work together to keep the global temperature from rising more than two degrees Centigrade above the level pertaining before the Industrial Revolution about 200 years ago, when we began burning fossil fuels on a seriously large scale. (It is the emissions of carbon dioxide from the coal and oil and gas we burn in power stations and cars, and also of the CO2 that comes from deforestation, which are trapping the sun’s heat in the atmosphere – acting like the panes of a greenhouse, and causing world temperatures to rise.)

Two degrees above the pre-industrial level has come to be regarded as a sort of safety threshold, below which the effects of global warming may, with quite a degree of adapting, be bearable by human society and the natural world.

But any rise above that, the risks of tremendously damaging new climatic effects quickly rise, such as devastating droughts, fiercer hurricanes with more intense rainfall that will bring flooding on an entirely new scale, sea-level rise and the consequent disruption of communities around the globe.

This, in turn, is likely to bring about mass migration of millions of climate refugees, and a new era of wars.

How long would it take to get to the C threshold, via the pathway we are on at the moment?

Nobody really knows the timescale, although it would almost certainly be in the lifetime of people born today, but in temperature terms, two degrees above the pre-industrial is not that far away.

The world as a whole has warmed by about 0.75 °C already, and it is estimated that the delayed effect of the CO2 already in the atmosphere commits us to a warming of another 0.6 °C, whatever we do. So we are already on course for about 1.4 °C – this much of the target is already taken up.

Two degrees, it should be remembered, refers to the global average temperature, which will be more in higher latitudes such as the British Isles – perhaps over 3 °C, which is a very big rise.

If you look out your window this weekend on a snowbound landscape and wonder what all this global warming fuss is about, you should perhaps be reminded that, according to the Met Office, the average temperature in Britain has risen a full degree centigrade in the past 40 years – that is, just since the Beatles broke up.

If the snow makes you think that is nonsense, wait until the spring comes: you will find that oak trees in southern England are opening their leaves on average 26 days earlier than they were in the halcyon days of John, Paul, George and Ringo, as our springs become warmer and warmer.

Is that all the Copenhagen Accord does?

No. It also formally engages the developing countries, from the giants such as China and India down, to do something about their rapidly rising CO2 emissions. This is an enormously important point.

When, 20 years ago, the world first became aware of the threat of climate change and began trying to deal with it, the greatest CO2 emitters in the world by far were the rich, developed countries, led by the United States. In 1990 the US, with 4% of the world’s population, was responsible for 36% of global emissions.

But since then the Chinese economy has exploded, with growth rates never seen before in modern times of more than 10% a year, and China’s own carbon emissions have soared in a way no one imagined possible only a few years ago: in less than a decade, they doubled from three billion to six billion tonnes annually, and two years ago China overtook the US as the world’s biggest emitter.

India, as it struggles to bring its people out of poverty – hundreds of millions of them still have no electricity – is on a similar economic growth/emissions growth path, and so are Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and others, and it is estimated that 90% of all future growth of emissions will come from the developing countries.

If these emissions continue to grow unchecked, climate change will be impossible to reverse.

Have the developing countries not been required to take action about their emissions before?

They have not, for two reasons: First, when the world began to deal with the threat of climate change, their emissions were very much less; and second, the vast majority of the CO2 now in the atmosphere was put there by the developed countries – such as Britain.

When the first international emissions-cutting agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, was signed in 1997, it committed developed countries to take legally binding actions to cut their carbon emissions, but did not require the developing countries to take on any cuts whatsoever.

Has the Kyoto Protocol been a success?

Yes and no. It kick-started the huge, long and complex process of nations trying to turn their economies onto low-carbon growth paths, with the whole panoply of carbon-saving initiatives with which we are now so familiar – from the construction of wind farms and the installation of solar panels, to the personal choice of taking the train rather than flying.

And it introduced firm emissions-reduction targets for nearly 40 “Annexe 1” or developed countries, with the objective of cutting their emissions to 5% below 1990 levels by about now.

But there are three glaring gaps in Kyoto: First, many of the developed nations have simply not acted decisively enough and have not met their targets.

Second, in a decision of enormous consequence, President George W. Bush withdrew the US from Kyoto in March 2001, shortly after assuming office. The third great gap is the absence of the developing nations, whose emissions are growing so fast that the world can no longer afford to ignore then.

So has the world decided to replace Kyoto?

Not quite. But a critical moment came almost three years ago, with the publication of the fourth report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which gave the most urgent warning yet about the dangers of global warming.

So at the UN climate meeting in Bali in December 2007, it was decided to negotiate a new treaty that might bring America back into the fold – as the US was never going to rejoin anything with Kyoto in its name – and at the same time, require developing countries to take actions of their own to reduce emissions, while committing the rich nations to adopt even tougher targets, of cutting by 25-40% by 2020.

Yet, because the developing countries were very attached to Kyoto, as it required them to do nothing while forcing the rich nations to cut their emissions, they did not want to abandon it – and negotiations for it to be renewed for several more years were set in train at the same time, and in parallel, to the negotiations for a new climate treaty (which was referred to as the “Bali Road Map”).

This quite bizarre twin-track negotiating arrangement has been continuing for the past two years and was due to come to a climax in Copenhagen, when a new climate deal for the world – one new treaty? two new treaties? – was due to be agreed upon.

Well, which was it? One or two?

They could not resolve it, even after talking for two years in the run-up to the meeting.

It was remarkable. The European Union and the British government wanted a single new treaty, into which the basic elements of Kyoto could be incorporated and taken forward, but the developing countries – particularly the bloc known as the G77 plus China – resolutely refused to give up Kyoto or contemplate a single new agreement.

It became clear [in the 24 hours after the talks] that much of this opposition was orchestrated by China, which was desperate not to have a single new treaty that ultimately may make it, and other emerging economies, legally bound to take action on emissions.

So what happened?

Complete stalemate. By [16 December 2009], the negotiations between 192 countries had run into the ground, nothing of two years’ work on a climate treaty was likely to be agreed and the following day, 120 heads of state and government were arriving in Copenhagen to set the seal on the deal.

So Gordon Brown, who arrived in Copenhagen a day ahead of every other leader, drafted – with his senior officials – a completely new text for an agreement that world leaders could sign on the spot.

He got a key group of 26 countries to support the idea, and they began negotiations on it early on the morning [of the 18th].

In a full day of talks, the Chinese insisted on a number of key points being withdrawn.

The opening statement that the world should strive to cut its carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, a proposed timetable to make the new pact legally binding, and new short-term emission targets for all countries, have been put off until next year, when they will be “listed” in an annex to the accord.

But the Chinese did agree to have an emissions target in an international agreement for the first time, to international verification of its performance, and to the C threshold figure.

Is there anything else of note in the Copenhagen Accord?

Yes, a new deal on climate finance. There will be $30 billion of “fast start” funding over the next three years to help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to global warming, plus a promise from developed countries to “mobilise” a climate fund for them of $100bn per year by 2020.

You may have seen the Copenhagen Accord being criticised for being full of holes.

It is, and its provisions are not remotely adequate to combat climate change, while all the work of the past two years on a new Kyoto/new treaty has been parked for another year.

But at least complete collapse of the world’s efforts to fight global warming was avoided [in December] (though it came very close) and the Copenhagen Accord – last-minute, ad hoc, patched up, full of holes as it is – at least gives the world a continuing way forward in the struggle to contain the greatest threat that human society has ever known.

Michael McCarthy

The Independent (UK)
 

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