Climate change's cold reality

The UN has ensured the failure of a global climate change deal by ignoring the US and embracing Kyoto's flaws
Muhammad Cohen
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 September 2009 17.00 BST
The United Nations is hosting a summit on climate change Tuesday in New York. Secretary general Ban Ki-moon has invited world leaders, hoping to build momentum for an agreement at the UN's global warming extravaganza in Copenhagen, just 11 weeks away.
The Copenhagen conference is supposed produce a new treaty on greenhouse gas emissions as a successor to the Kyoto protocol. To avoid a global temperature rise beyond 2C that would pose significant dangers, the UN wants industrialised countries to reduce emissions 25-40% by 2020, as part of an 80% global cut by 2050. But the UN has ensured the failure of its prize project and continued carbon emissions growth by embracing Kyoto's flaws.
Kyoto and its Copenhagen successor ignore the elephant in the thermometer. Despite the extraordinary threat from the global warming, the UN thinks it just takes a handful of nations to fix it.
Only 40 industrialised countries – the US, all of Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Russia – must limit their emissions under the UN's Copenhagen strategy. Other nations, including the world's biggest polluter, China, will face no limits on emissions.
Developing countries will account for an estimated two-thirds to three-fourths of greenhouse gas increases over the next decade, yet nothing in the Copenhagen agreement will even slow that trend. Industrialised countries simply must hope – and pay an estimated $140bn annually – for developing countries to pursue green policies.
Copenhagen foresees exempting countries producing half of the world's total emissions. Emissions from unrestricted countries now surpass 70% because the US didn't ratify Kyoto, objecting to the developing country exemption compared with a mandated 7% cut in its emissions output. Climate change doubter and oil man George Bush is gone, but Barack Obama won't simply fall in line with UN demands.
US negotiators say any deal must comply with US law. Given the current level of public vitriol over healthcare reform proposals, that's a political imperative: Imagine the political firestorm if Americans were told to trade in their SUVs by order of the UN.
US participation in a Copenhagen agreement is critical, but the UN hasn't engaged Washington meaningfully on the issue in the dozen years since Kyoto was negotiated. Instead, the UN has embraced green groups, inviting nearly 1,000 NGOs into the Copenhagen process.
Aligning with green groups could be helpful if it translated into grassroots support to bring the US and others aboard. But environmental NGOs bring to the table a 40-year record of failure to build public enthusiasm or lead substantial progress on the core issues of the climate change debate.
With that legacy of futility, green groups bring their ethos that America, its allies and corporations form an axis of evil. They insist climate decisions must follow what scientists recommend, with no room for debate or compromise. "If scientists were being elected to lead our countries, I'd agree with that," Obama's special assistant for energy environment Joseph Aldy told me at the Bali climate change conference in 2007. "In the end, it's about what politicians will agree to."
Fortunately, the US and China, jointly accounting for more than 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, are pursuing bilateral talks to limit emissions and nurture green development. They signed a preliminary co-operation agreement in July that carries political support from Obama and Hu Jintao, includes business as well as science and could bring aboard other big polluters to produce real emissions cuts along with economic growth.
By contrast, the UN's best-case scenario for Copenhagen is an agreement pretending to cut global emissions that is designed to fail, in the tradition of the UN and its NGO allies.
Mother Earth deserves better.