Barack Obama must attend Copenhagen climate summit, says Lord Stern

Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor

The world “desperately needs” President Obama to attend the United Nations meeting in Copenhagen if an effective deal on tackling climate change is to be reached this December, according to one of the world’s leading climate experts.
In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford threw down the gauntlet to the US Administration, claiming that American leadership was urgently required if this historic opportunity presented was not to be squandered. “President Obama should be there. His leadership would make an enormous difference. My message to President Obama would be: come to Copenhagen, come in a collaborative spirit and take this message to the American people.”
Lord Stern, who was chief economist at the World Bank and is the author of the landmark 2006 study on the economics of climate change, was speaking after The Times disclosed on Saturday that Mr Obama was unlikely to be there, adding to concerns that Copenhagen is unlikely to yield a workable agreement amid continued deadlock between the US, China and India over pledges to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
Lord Stern has a blunt message for the world’s politicians. “If we continue with business as usual we would be looking at temperature increases of 5 degrees centigrade by early next century,” he said.

“We have not seen those sort of conditions for 30million years. These kind of changes will have huge consequences — southern Europe is likely to be a desert; hundreds of millions of people will have to move. There will be severe global conflict.”
It is a crisis, he said, that “will come to us incredibly fast and the scale of the risk is huge”.
So far, he said, public opinion in this country and around the world had simply failed to grasp the significance of the December meeting, the intention of which is to prevent catastrophic climate change by curbing emissions enough to prevent a rise of more than 2 degrees centigrade in average global temperatures.
“People need to understand just how big this is,” he said, adding that consumers needed to face the fact that dealing with climate change would mean higher costs for a range of basic goods, including energy and food.
“Politicians and others should be honest about this. Some prices will go up. In the short run, you are going to see an increase in electricity bills as companies are regulated into using new technologies.” But, he said, society needed to treat this as an investment in the future.
“High carbon growth will kill itself . . . So we are setting up a process that will be extraordinarily beneficial in terms of energy security and biodiversity,” Lord Stern said. “These are benefits that go well beyond tackling climate change. If we get this right and introduce strong policies then we will kick off a process of industrial change that will be more profound than the industrial revolution.”
Lord Stern said that Copenhagen presented a unique opportunity for the world to break free from its catastrophic current trajectory. Despite scepticism about whether a deal could be struck, most governments now agreed on the basic parameters of an agreement, he said. At Copenhagen, the world needs to agree to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 25 gigatonnes a year from 50 gigatonnes now. By 2050 emissions need to have fallen to below 20 gigatonnes per year.
Rich countries would need to commit themselves to spending $50billion (£31billion) a year by 2015 to help poor countries to deal with the costs of adapting to the climate change that was now inevitable. The US would need to provide perhaps $20billion of this total, he said, while the UK would need to spend $5billion a year — equivalent to £53 for every man, woman and child.
“In the next five years if the rich world can’t put $50billion on the table then there will be real questions about whether or not they are serious,” Lord Stern said. “I would see the US as giving at least $15billion to $20billion, but that is small beer in terms of the US economy. I believe President Obama understands this very well.”
Developing countries, led by China, which is the biggest carbon polluter in the world, and India, say that at Copenhagen the developed world needs to commit itself to cuts of at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst of climate change.
But in the US, which is the secondbiggest producer of emissions, the focus on healthcare reform has reduced the chances of a commitment on anything like that scale. The US Senate has not agreed a goal for 2020.
Although China and India are not expected to agree to achieve cuts in their emissions before 2020, persuading them to agree to longer-term reductions without US leadership will be tough.
Five to watch at Copenhagen
Lord Stern Bookish British academic from LSE, formerly chief economist at the World Bank, earned his place in global climate debate after his 2006 review on the economics of climate change
Rajendra Pachauri Indian chairman of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among most outspoken figures in climate debate
Al Gore Nobel Peace prize-winning former presidential candidate and without doubt the biggest star on global climate concern circuit thanks to his film An Inconvenient Truth
Yvo de Boer Dutch executive secretary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, who will be expected to pull deal together
Connie Hedegaard Danish Minister for Climate Change and Energy - will have the unenviable role of chairing the meeting.