48 hours to go and no progress at Copenhagen summit

Ben Webster, Environment Editor in Copenhagen

With a little over 48-hours left of the two-week Copenhagen climate change conference, there has been no significant progress on any of the major issues.
There are no numbers from individual countries on how much each would be willing to contribute to a global climate protection fund. Nor has any country improved on its opening offer for cutting emissions.
Most developing countries, led by China, are still refusing to commit to legally binding actions to reduce the rate of growth of their emissions. They are clinging to the ten-year-old Kyoto Protocol, which allows them to carry on increasing their emissions indefinitely.
There is no certainty that any of the pledges made to date will be fulfilled because the 193 countries cannot agree on a consistent, independent monitoring system.

Even assuming all the commitments to emissions reductions were implemented, global emissions of CO2 equivalent would still be five billion tonnes, or 11 per cent, higher than they need to be in 2020 to have a 50/50 chance of the average temperature increase remaining below 2C.
It is still possible that the arrival of 115 heads of state today and tomorrow will force a breakthrough. Many, like Gordon Brown, are counting on returning to their countries on Friday night or Saturday morning with a piece of paper to wave at voters to convince them they have secured a planet-saving deal.
Everyone is waiting to see if President Obama will improve the offer from the US when he joins the conference on Friday. There is a widespread reluctance among other countries to make significant concessions until the country which has caused most of the problem takes more of its fair share of the burden of solving it.
Yet the British Government is publicly defending Mr Obama’s weak offer because it has decided it is the best the world is likely to get, given the degree of opposition in the US Congress to making any sacrifices or spending any significant sums to tackle emissions.
The only concrete agreement to emerge on Friday may be a deal on halting the destruction of the world’s rainforests by 2030. Everyone here seems to agree that the rainforests are worth saving and that people in rich countries must pay to protect them by making the trees more valuable alive than dead for their owners. The negotiators seem to find it easier agreeing on something tangible like trees rather than something invisible like CO2.
The communiqué signed by the leaders on Friday will confirm the intention of capping the temperature increase at 2C but the details of how to achieve that will be left to future negotiations.
Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Secretary, says he wants the intentions expressed on Friday to be turned into a legally binding treaty within six months.
That timescale is likely to prove wildly optimistic.