ANALYSIS:For all of the positive rhetoric in New York there is little sign of any breakthrough on climate change, writes FRANK McDONALD
WORDS, WORDS, words – they’re so easy to utter, even from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. But if rhetoric alone was sufficient, the world would be well on its way to staving off the devastating impacts of global warming.
With just 75 days to go before the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) convenes in Copenhagen, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has warned that we’re now in the “last-chance saloon” – and time is running out.
“The climate negotiations are proceeding at glacial speed. The world’s glaciers are now melting faster than human progress to protect them – and us,” he said, adding that failure to conclude a deal “would be morally inexcusable, economically short-sighted and politically unwise”.
That’s why he convened this week’s one-day climate summit at the UN headquarters in New York, bringing in as many world leaders as possible to give impetus to the negotiations, with a view to reaching a comprehensive and effective global agreement in Copenhagen.
The session on Tuesday drew more than 50 presidents and 35 prime ministers, as well as many environment ministers more closely involved in the endless round of climate talks. Its biggest catches, of course, were Barack Obama and Hu Jintao, representing the US and China.
UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer hyped up what the Chinese president would say. According to him, it would show that China was poised to be “a world leader on addressing climate change” – contrary to widespread perceptions in the US that it was “doing nothing”.
However, it had become evident to others in 2006 at the UN climate change conference in Nairobi that China had changed its tune. It has since established a thriving wind energy sector, made all the cars it produces much more energy-efficient than American “gas guzzlers” and taken a range of other initiatives aimed at curbing the growth in its greenhouse gas emissions – all without precondition.
It is clear, however, that China’s emissions – now the world’s largest, having overtaken the US – will continue to rise, at least in the medium term. What Hu pledged in New York was that the “carbon intensity” of its still-growing economy would be reduced over time.
This is redolent of the line that used to be repeated ad nauseam by US representatives at climate change conferences during the George W Bush era.
Todd Stern, the Obama administration’s chief climate change negotiator, described China’s latest proposals as “helpful”, but said Beijing would need to provide figures. ‘‘It depends on what the number is,’’ he told Reuters news agency. And ultimately, of course, it does.
Yet when Obama addressed the UN gathering, he didn’t provide any figures. As Greenpeace noted, he didn’t spell out any 2020 target for the US, or reiterate his pledge to keep the rise in global temperature below 2 degrees.
Obama and Hu are in different places. The US president is faced with a right-wing revolt against his healthcare proposals, fanned by vested interests, and this pattern is likely to be repeated when reactionary oil and coal-mining companies gang up against climate change legislation.
Hu doesn’t have to worry about getting his proposals through any equivalent of the US Senate; he heads a totalitarian regime. When it decides to do anything, it gets done.
The US congressional Bill aimed at tackling global warming and boosting energy security has yet to be adopted by the Senate. It is improbable that this will happen before the end of the year, leaving Obama’s negotiators with nothing to put on the table in Copenhagen.
Against this backdrop of realpolitik in Washington, French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposal for another summit in November would not change the odds that “Cop 15” in the Danish capital will merely produce a political declaration, rather than an all-embracing deal.
It’s no wonder then that environmental campaigners are so frustrated by the lack of real progress – apart from the recent pledge by Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, that it now planned to reduce emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels.
This matches the EU’s offer of a 20 per cent cut – or 30 per cent, if others follow suit. Such ambitious targets will now be easier to achieve as emissions are falling everywhere due to the global recession – and this trend could continue if we all planned for a “low-carbon” recovery.
“While Japan’s recent commitment to reduce its emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 falls short of what is needed and there are no details yet as to how it will be achieved, it is an example of the kind of leadership that is missing from the climate talks”, Greenpeace’s Martin Kaiser said.
With just one day’s pause, he said heads of state and government would have another opportunity “to break the impasse” on progress towards reaching a deal in Copenhagen at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, where climate finance for developing countries is on the agenda.
“Developed countries can . . . show they mean business by committing at least $150 billion [€101.5 billion] to help people in developing countries adapt to the escalating impacts of climate change and reduce their emissions”, according to Oxfam International’s Antonio Hill.
Next stop for climate change negotiators is Bangkok, where another round of intensive talks (scheduled to last two weeks) will open next Monday. This will be followed by a shorter session in Barcelona in early November, and then it’s on to Copenhagen, and whatever it produces.