Copenhagen cop-out?
Our environment editor, Laurie Michaelis, looks at the prospects for a meaningful deal at the Copenhagen talks.
Over a hundred world leaders converge on Copenhagen next week for the high level segment of the UN climate talks. They hope to conclude two years’ negotiations on greenhouse gas emission cuts for the rich world, limits on emission growth for the poor, and mechanisms for financial and technological co-operation. At least twenty Quakers are going too, and you can follow their experience on the Quakers at COP blog.
Climate change is a huge, complex challenge and international negotiations are inevitably slow. The press has been full of reports that hopes for an agreement in Copenhagen were being abandoned. But with all those heads of state present there will be huge pressure for a positive outcome. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN climate convention secretariat, has sounded increasingly optimistic about some kind of deal, leading to a binding treaty by June 2010.
The hardest sticking point has been the American inability to commit. Barack Obama has announced that the United States will achieve a seventeen percent emissions cut in 2020 below 2005 levels – only 3.6 per cent below its emissions in 1990, most countries’ benchmark year. The US Congress has agreed the target but the Senate may well reject it, with climate sceptics buoyed by the Climate Research Unit e-mail scandal.
The European Union has pledged a twenty percent emission reduction in 2020 relative to 1990 – thirty percent if other rich countries make similar commitments. But even these cuts are not enough to ensure that the world avoids dangerous climate change.
Prominent climate scientists say it would be better to scrap the process and start again, rather than adopt an inadequate treaty. Our Quaker experience is that waiting can often lead to a better decision. Let us hope that governments can acknowledge if agreement is not yet ripe, and return to the negotiations over the coming months.
