Editorial: David King: No cause for climate despair
What hope is there for a deal on climate change based on science? The answer seems to be 鈥渘ot much鈥�.
Climate negotiators , Germany, enjoyed a new spirit of bonhomie as they worked to heal the rifts created by the failure of UN talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, last December. At the close of talks on 11 June, they believed they were back on track to deliver a new climate agreement by the end of 2011.
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But diplomatic harmony has come at a price: sacrificing a cool future for planet Earth.
Until Copenhagen, the aim was to set targets for major emitters of greenhouse gases that would limit warming to 2 掳C. That required, as a first step, that by 2020 industrialised countries cut emissions by 25 to 40 per cent compared with 1990 levels.
While that target remains an option in draft deals, most negotiators say they will have to accept whatever pledges industrialised countries are prepared to make. Right now those pledges add up to cuts of between 12 and 19 per cent, according to the UN climate secretariat. And there are loopholes that could mean even these pledges amount to virtually nothing.
鈥淎s things stand now, we will not be able to halt the increase in global greenhouse gas emissions in the next 10 years,鈥� UN chief negotiator Yvo de Boer said in Bonn. 鈥淭he 2-degree world is in danger. The door to a 1.5-degree world is rapidly closing.鈥� De Boer is stepping down at the end of this month, and his successor, Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres, said her priority was 鈥渞ebuilding trust鈥� rather than setting objectives.
There is as yet no agreement on whether countries want a direct successor to the Kyoto protocol 鈥� which set out a global target to cut emissions and shared the burden among signatories 鈥� or a new and looser agreement based on national pledges, such as that outlined in the Copenhagen Accord that US president Barack Obama attempted to put together in December.
The only elements of the old Kyoto regime that received widespread support from industrialised countries in Bonn were those that would, if retained, further undermine promises of emissions cuts. Russia and Ukraine will have large stocks of unused emissions permits when the Kyoto protocol ends in 2012, and want to 鈥渂ank鈥� them so they can sell them later. The new mood of putting diplomacy before science means they are likely to be allowed to do this 鈥� enabling countries that buy them to emit more.
A second loophole concerns emissions from forests in rich nations such as Canada, Austria and Finland, which could allow an extra 200 to 400 million tonnes of CO2 a year to be emitted. According to John Lanchbery of BirdLife International, a long-time observer of climate talks, the negotiators in Bonn put little effort into eliminating this loophole. Several countries said that if they were held to account for their forests, they would cut their emissions pledges.
An analysis by the European Union published in March showed that the combination of banking Kyoto permits and discounting forest emissions will effectively reduce promised cuts from industrialised countries from between 12 and 19 per cent to 鈥渁lmost zero鈥�. That could be the price of a diplomatic deal.
Editorial: David King: No cause for climate despair
A new Kyoto deal by the back door
The demise of a global, UN-negotiated deal on emissions caps need not sound the death knell for a low-carbon future. Regional trading schemes could provide the impetus.
The largest international emissions trading scheme operating so far is the one run by the European Union. Its cap is set by the EU鈥檚 Kyoto protocol pledge to cut emissions by 8 per cent relative to 1990 levels by 2012, and its future was made independent of UN talks when the EU declared it would cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.
The EU scheme may not be alone for much longer. 鈥淚 think we will see parallel trading schemes emerge,鈥� says David King, director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. The American Power Act, if adopted, would establish a US emissions trading scheme, and Asian nations have also discussed a regional cap-and-trade scheme.
King argues that the emergence of several parallel schemes could bring about a global cap on emissions, albeit by a roundabout route (see editorial comment, page 3). Initially, regional schemes would lead to industries in different parts of the world paying different prices for emitting carbon. This would give an advantage to manufacturers in regions where the price of polluting is low. So to level things up, high-price countries would impose tariffs on imports from low-price regions, King predicts.
But such measures would run contrary to the WTO鈥檚 principles of free trade. 鈥淚t spells deep trouble for trade treaties and organisations,鈥� says economist William Nordhaus at Yale University. King argues that this would force the WTO to step in and 鈥減ersuade nations to get their act together鈥�. Because the WTO has strict rules that member nations must abide by, it may turn out to be a more persuasive forum for talks than the halls of the UN.
Catherine Brahic
