Climate talks on their own terms

Powerful global leaders – including Obama – are still refusing to take proper action to prevent a 2C+ rise in temperatures

Joss Garman
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 June 2009 19.00 BST

To observe the UN climate talks play out here in Bonn is to watch the governments of the world write the biography of my generation in advance. As the assembled delegates trawl over each line in the negotiating text that may eventually become the Copenhagen treaty this December, it's as if every single cultural and economic dispute in the earth's history, each grievance legitimate or otherwise, must be resolved before progress can be made. Stepping into the conference hall, that energetic sense of purpose and urgency which the climate movement outside instils in you, saps away. You find yourself faced with a room full of government negotiators arguing over trade rules, the complexities of different market mechanisms ... anything, it seems, other than the breakdown of our climate. It is frightening how detached this process has become from climate science, terrifying that what's on offer from the developed countries here is a recipe for a nightmarish 4C of global warming.
For years now, scientists have said – and most world leaders have acknowledged – that the imperative for a new global climate treaty is that it must keep the world below a 2C rise in temperatures. If warming of more than 2C isn't avoided, the UN estimates up to four billion people will become vulnerable to water shortages, agriculture will cease to be viable across whole swathes of the world, causing widespread famines, and the Amazon rainforest will collapse. It is clear this 2C consensus should determine the sorts of carbon-reduction targets countries must take on, and should set the parameters of a strong Copenhagen treaty. Anything else would be a pact for mutually assured destruction.
Yet it seems the US, even under Obama, is afraid that acknowledging this imperative would expose how their proposals are scientifically illiterate. It can only be for this reason that the US is consistently trying to dodge any promise of striving toward the necessary 2C goal. Asked this week if he's committed to it, Obama's slick chief negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, said the US was still looking at the science. Questioned by a youth delegate if he would pledge to try and save the communities whose very survival is already at stake because of rising seas, Pershing refused. It's obvious that the US is not so much "back" as "back to form".
For those of us who hoped Obama's team would be different, it's gutting to already be sensing a sinking feeling on this issue. You want to stand up and shout, "Yes we can. Remember?" Maybe it was naïve to think Obama might be strong enough to take on Big Carbon's stranglehold on the Hill, but I still believe if anyone can, he can. He was elected on a ticket of ending Bush and Cheney's eight-year assault on reason and with it the era of special-interest politics. With his dream team of science advisers and a global population willing him on, he could still do it.
Yet instead of signing up to a science-led global agreement, his US negotiators here are arguing that in the Copenhagen agreement countries should be able to set their own targets according to what they perceive to be politically feasible in their countries. They want to write our generation's history on their terms and on their turf.
You only have to look at the climate law passing through the US Congress at the moment, the so-called 'Waxman-Markey Bill,' to see what this would mean for the level of ambition we could expect to see in Copenhagen. Waxman-Markey commits the US to just a 4% cut in US emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels. Set this against the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change analysis showing that at least 40% cuts in emissions in developed countries are required, and you see the huge gap between the carbon budget being prescribed by scientists and the one being considered by politicians. The Waxman bill isn't even as ambitious for America as the Kyoto Protocol obligations that were put forward 12 years ago, and to add insult to injury, the proposed law would allow for 2bn tonnes of carbon offsets, meaning that the US wouldn't have to make any reductions domestically at all until the late 2020s.
Every new acronym I hear turns out to be another dirty trick designed to allow rich countries to go on with business as usual. For example, one dubious accounting measure being proposed here would mean that for every tree planted a country would receive a carbon credit, but for every tree felled they may not be debited. For millions of species and indigenous peoples, this would signal extinction as it would incentivise deforestation of ancient forests and pave the way for plantations.
America is far from alone amongst developed countries in dragging its feet. Canada is making desperate moves to prop up its tar sands and logging industries. Even supposedly clean, green New Zealand has no 2020 carbon target. Neither does Japan. Of course these industrial countries are joined by the caricature comedy baddies of the UN arena, rogue states like Saudi Arabia and Russia who throw regular wrecking spanners into the process.
But what's most worrying is that the European countries with the most engaged constituencies are themselves failing to stand up. Europe is only committed to a 20% cut in emissions by 2020, and Brown, Sarko et al have given no indication of how much money they'll put forward for developing countries to rescue those who would otherwise drown or starve because of our addiction to the black stuff.
With Copenhagen just six months away, targets that are completely inadequate, and no money forthcoming to help the most vulnerable, at the moment this is a race towards an empty treaty. The poorest and most vulnerable countries could very well walk away in December. And who could blame them?