For over 15 years delegates and politicians from around the world have discussed, debated and negotiated the questions of dealing with manmade climate change in various COP (Conference of the Parties) summits. So why haven’t they made any real progress yet?
That is a big question that covers a whole range of topics and issues that I won’t go into. Instead I will try to focus on the actual politics and tactics used at the COP summits. I will try to see if uneven development and inequality plays any part in how the actual negotiations plays out, how the delegates attending perceive climate justice and fairness, and if all this combined somehow sabotages the efforts to secure a climate deal.
Naomi Klein speaking at the Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen.
Tomorrow morning another large and important demonstration will be held in Copenhagen. This time the Climate Justice Action network is organizing a huge non-violent demonstration where the demonstrators are planning to march into the Bella Center, where the climate talks are being held. At the same time concerned NGO representatives and delegates are going to walk out and successfully shut down the talks and establish a people’s assembly. Why? Because the deal we really need is not on the table.
“On the 16th of December, at the start of the high-level “ministerial” phase of the two-week summit, we, the movements for global justice, will take over the conference for one day and transform it into a Peoples Assembly.
Our goal is to disrupt the sessions and open a space inside the UN area to hold the Assembly. The assembly will give a voice to those who are not being heard, it will be an opportunity to change the agenda, to discuss the real solutions, to send a clear message to the world calling for climate justice.”
Maybe he liked the city? Either way, President Barack Obama announced today that he will attend the climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December. The climate summit is held between 7-18 December and is the last chance we have to take action against “the greatest threat the world has ever faced”.
“U.S. President Barack Obama will go to Copenhagen for a U.N. climate change meeting on December 9, hoping to add momentum to an international process despite slow progress on a domestic bill to cut carbon emissions”, Reuters reports.
“Obama planned to make a visit at the beginning of the climate negotiations in Denmark, an administration official told Reuters on Wednesday, before picking up the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in neighboring Oslo.”
With him to the climate summit Obama has a pledge to cut emissions in the USA with 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, 30% by 2025, 42% by 2030 and 83% by 2050. But these numbers are much lower than those proposed by the EU and other industrialised countries such as Norway.
Much sheer speculation has been written about the upcoming Copenhagen climate negotiations, and we will see much more over the next few weeks. What is this conference about, and what are the real issues at stake for the future of the world?
The conference in Copenhagen was set to negotiate a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Accords, set to expire in 2012, a treaty that the Senate and the Bush administration refused to ratify or cooperate with. While China has recently passed the US as the largest emitter of global warming gases, the US is still far, far ahead of all other countries in per capita emissions, making US efforts a crucial aspect of whatever efforts the world makes.
The Kyoto Accords set aspirational guidelines for countries to shoot for as they worked to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. A large majority of the world’s countries ratified the Accords, and some made serious efforts to meet them, but few countries managed to do so. The European Union set up a carbon trading scheme, and several European countries have made large-scale investments in alternative renewable energy. Other countries only approached their targets due to decreased economic activity, primarily Russia.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is now warning that the upcoming climate talks this December in Copenhagen, Denmark, are in “grave danger” of failing. The UN climate change conference, also known as Cop15, in Copenhagen this year is the last chance we have to take action against “the greatest threat the world has ever faced”.
“”It is a historic moment: the ultimate test of global cooperation. Yet the negotiations are proceeding so slowly that a deal is in grave danger,” Brown wrote.
Brown has, after a rather successful global climate wake-up campaign around the world (see video below), pledged he will attend the Copenhagen talks. He says the UN climate change conference is such an important subject that it cannot be left to environment ministers.
“Securing an agreement in Copenhagen will require world leaders to bridge our remaining differences and seize these opportunities,” Brown wrote. “If we miss this opportunity, there will be no second chance sometime in the future, no later way to undo the catastrophic damage to the environment we will cause.”
“There’s a real danger the talks scheduled for December will not reach a positive outcome, and an equal danger in the run-up to Copenhagen that people don’t wake up to the danger of failure until it’s too late.”
Foreign Secretary in the UK, David Miliband, doesn’t seem to have much hope on the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (Cop15) this December in Copenhagen, Denmark. Miliband even warns that the climate talks are in “real danger” of failing, the Independent reports:
“The deal the world needs in Copenhagen is now in the balance,” he said.
“There’s a real danger the talks scheduled for December will not reach a positive outcome, and an equal danger in the run-up to Copenhagen that people don’t wake up to the danger of failure until it’s too late.”
Miliband put the blame on “the complexity of the issue”, the economic recession as well as “suspicion” between the North and the South. In light of a diplomatic pr tour around Europe “to raise the issue of climate change” Miliband warned that if the world failed to come up with an agreement to cut emissions global temperatures will increase with 4C.
“This would lead to large scale migration as parts of the world disappeared under rising seas, threaten infrastructure as extreme weather events became more common, and put pressure on natural resources such as water – all of which could have serious impacts on peace and security across the world.”
What do you think about the upcoming Climate Change Conference this December – the last chance we have to take action against “the greatest threat the world has ever faced”? Will it be a success or a failure? What are your hopes and expectations? Please share your thoughts and ideas by voting in the poll below and/or making a comment.
During the embarrassing UN Climate Change Conference in Poznań, Poland, Al Gore held a speech where he said that the old and now “inadequate” climate change targets of 450 ppm (parts per million of CO2) had been made obsolete by new science (That’s what we and others have been saying for a while now). Gore said that the world should instead aim for a 350 ppm target.
George Monbiot writes today on the Guardian that the new EU emissions agreement is a disaster and calls it carbon colonialism.
So much for the Europeans leading the way on climate change. Even as our governments claim they want to drag the world into an effective climate agreement in Poznan, they have just pulled Europe out of one in Brussels.
The agreement they have just reached is a disaster. The 20% carbon cut they promise by 2020 falls miles short of what’s needed, and they’ll be able to buy most of it from abroad anyway. All this means, in a world which has to eliminate most of its carbon pollution, is that other countries, which have sold their easiest reductions to us, will then find it harder to make emissions cuts of their own. It’s carbon colonialism, in which Europe picks the low-hanging fruit in developing countries, leaving them with much tougher choices later on.
Leaders from the European Union (EU) have just agreed on a new watered-down climate deal to tackle global warming. The actual emissions cuts could amount to as little as 4% by 2020.
Yesterday UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in Poznan that “the world is watching us. The next generation is counting on us. We must not fail.” He also called for the EU to show the way and leadership on the climate crisis for other countries. Unfortunately it seems the short-sighted “leaders” of Europe ignored him. Instead of 30% emission cuts by 2020 the EU leaders only agreed on cuts by 20% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.
But the actual emission cuts could end up being as little as 4% by 2020, environmental groups warned. That is because of special exemptions for dirty industries in Europe as well as allowing cheap emission cuts overseas to be counted to the EU total. The latter has been heavily pushed by the new Swedish right-wing government who has called for as much as 88% of the EU emission cuts to be allowed to do overseas in development countries.
George Monbiot talks with Yvo de Boer, the current Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in the first of a series of interviews from the Guardian. In the video you can, for example, see Yvo de Boer defend George Bush and expensive Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects.
In the first of a remarkable series of video interviews, Britain’s leading green commentator, George Monbiot, charges the UN’s leading climate change official with lacking ambition for a global emissions deal, and takes him to task over expensive carbon offset schemes and his support for the US president, George Bush. In the coming weeks, Monbiot takes on the bosses of Shell and the International Energy Agency and more.
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