From Kyoto to Copenhagen

Beating climate change needs a global deal with social justice at its heart. And it needs us to act locally – and defeat the nimbys
John Prescott
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 September 2009 19.20 BST

As one-day summits go, the UN climate change meeting in New York packed a punch, with China really beginning to step up its game.
As the EU's negotiator at Kyoto, I know only too well how difficult it can be to get an emissions agreement among 47 countries, let alone the 180-plus that will need to give their consent at Copenhagen.
That's why I spelt out in a Guardian interview with Patrick Wintour last month that talks would probably collapse unless we had a plan B – a deal that has social justice at its very heart, by equalising emissions per head in each country in order to secure the consensus of all nations.
Great play is made of China overtaking the US as the world's greatest emitter of greenhouse gases. But if you strip it to emissions per head, as I argued, each American is responsible for more than 20 tonnes of CO2 per year, compared to China with just 5 tonnes per capita, India at 2 and North African countries less than one.
We always talk of the importance of the G20 and the G8. But for this deal, it all hinges on the G2 – China and the US. The US has to accept that China must have its growth, while China must realise that US will find it hard to meet tough CO2 2020 targets. But these two countries are responsible for almost half of all greenhouse gas emissions.
From my talks in recent weeks with Obama's climate change team and the Chinese, in my role as the Council of Europe's rapporteur on climate change, I've seen how seriously committed both sides are to finding agreement. The focus must be on carbon reductions whether it's by China's energy intensity targets now being implemented or the present CO2 emission goals. Both count as reductions.
The UK is still playing a leading role internationally on climate change, as we did at Kyoto. But public opinion does have to catch up and implement our renewable target. We can't lead the world when two thirds of our planning applications for windfarms are turned down. In fact, British nimbys are becoming world leaders in this field – saying they want renewables, but not near their homes.
This week, I've been going round the country delivering our New Earth Deal school presentation for the Council of Europe on climate change and the negotiation process. Today, I switched on to the local news in Birmingham to see villagers protesting against Scottish Power building a windfarm near the Vale of Evesham. Fittingly, I've been playing excerpts from the film The Age of Stupid, featuring the windfarm developer Piers Guy's struggle to get nine turbines built in Bedford against nimby opposition. Weeks later, Bedford experienced its worst ever flooding!
As at Kyoto, a Copenhagen deal will probably be settled at the 11th hour. The trick then is to implement it. That's why the 10:10 campaign to get people to cut 10% of their carbon footprint in 2010 is so important.
But we've got to start fighting back against nimbys who are determined to keep the "chocolate box image" at the expense of our national and global environmental interests. As we discovered in Bedford, it doesn't matter how pretty the view is – it looks a whole lot worse underwater.