Sometimes the most important news is what is not happening.

This summer has given us one such example: the climate change bill, for which the US President Barack Obama had pushed so hard, will not even be presented to the US Senate because it stands no chance of passage.

This means the US is about to repeat its “Kyoto experience”. Twenty years ago, the US participated (at least initially) in the first talks aimed at achieving a global accord to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

At the time, the EU and the US were by far the greatest emitters so it seemed appropriate to exempt the world’s emerging economies from any commitment.

Over time, it became apparent that the US would not live up to its commitment owing, as now, to opposition in the Senate. The EU then went ahead on its own, introducing its path-breaking EU Emission Trading System in the hope that Europe could lead by example.

Without the American climate change package, the promises made by the US administration only seven months ago at the Copenhagen summit have become worthless. The European strategy is in tatters – and not only on the transatlantic front.

China’s commitment to increase the carbon dioxide efficiency of its economy by about 3 per cent a year is of no help because annual GDP growth rates of close to 10 per cent mean the country’s emissions will soar this decade.

By 2020, Chinese emissions could be more than triple those of Europe and even surpass those of the US and Europe combined. Exempting emerging markets from any commitments, as the Kyoto Protocol sought to do, no longer makes sense.

Why has every attempt to set prices for global carbon emissions failed? The answer is cheap and abundant coal.

Burning hydrocarbons (natural gas and petrol) yields water and carbon dioxide. By contrast, burning coal yields only carbon dioxide. Moreover, compared with natural gas and crude oil, coal is much cheaper for each tonne of carbon dioxide released.

This implies that any tax on carbon has a much higher impact on coal than on crude oil (or gas). Owners of coal mines and their clients are thus strongly opposed to any tax on carbon.

They constitute a small but well organised group that wields immense lobbying power to block efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions by putting a price on them, as the planned US cap-and-trade system would have done.

In Europe, indigenous coal production no longer plays an important economic role. Therefore, it is not surprising that Europe could enact a cap-and-trade system that imposes a carbon price on a large part of its industry.

The tax seems to fall mostly on foreign suppliers of coal and to a lesser extend on foreign suppliers of hydrocarbons in the Middle East and Russia.

By contrast, opposition by US states with economies that rely significantly on coal production proved decisive for the fate of Mr Obama’s climate change bill.

The US experience has wider implications. If it proved impossible to introduce a moderate carbon tax in a rich economy, it is certain no commitment will be coming for the next generation from China, which remains much poorer and depends even more on indigenous coal than the US. And, after China, India looms as the next emerging coal-based industrial superpower.

Without any significant commitment from the US, the Copenhagen Accord, so laboriously achieved last year, has become meaningless.

Business will now continue as usual in terms of climate change diplomacy, with its wandering circus of big international meetings, and of rapidly increasing emissions.

The meetings are aimed at creating the impression that the world’s leaders are still working on a solution to the problem. But rising carbon dioxide emissions constitute what is really happening on the ground: a rapidly growing industrial base in emerging markets is being hard-wired to intensive use of coal. This will make it exceedingly difficult to reverse the trend in the future.

A planet composed of nation-states that in turn are dominated by special interest groups does not seem capable of solving this problem.

Unfortunately, there is enough cheap coal around to power ever-higher emissions for at least another century. So the world will become warmer. The only uncertainty is how much warmer.

Determined action at the global level will become possible only when climate change is no longer some scientific prediction but a reality that people feel.

But at that point, it will be too late to reverse the impact of decades of excessive emissions. A world incapable of preventing climate change will have to live with it.

* Project Syndicate

Daniel Gros is the director of the Centre for European Policy Studies.

Speaking in an unusually candid manner during a European Parliament hearing on Wednesday (14 April), De Boer said the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen last year had been dominated by a sense of “suspicion”.

The December UN conference ended with a loose agreement, the Copenhagen Accord, which left Europeans “disappointed” because it contained no firm commitment from world nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“A lot of the reason why this process has been moving so slowly is because of suspicion, especially on the part of developing counties,” said De Boer, who will step down from the UNFCCC in July to take an advising role at consulting firm KPMG.

“Trust just isn’t there.”

European leaders routinely refer to the EU’s 2020 target to reduce emissions by 20% on 1990 levels as the most ambitious in the world.

But the UN climate chief suggested that the target will in fact be easy to achieve, raising suspicion from developing countries that it is only a smokescreen.

“Many of the discussions that you have in Europe are not terribly private,” he said. “And the rest of the world knows that the European Commission said to EU countries that achieving the minus 20% was a piece of cake and that achieving minus 30% isn’t going to ruin the European economy.”

“So countries in the rest of the world are asking themselves: ‘If that’s true, then why is this minus 30 now being taken off the table?’”

EU divided over move to 30%

The WWF’s Stefan Singer says the EU will easily reach its 20% objective for 2020, thanks mainly to the de-industrialisation that has taken place in ex-Soviet states since the fall of communism and offset projects in developing countries (EurActiv 14/04/09).

Moreover, emissions dropped steeply last year – by 11% – due to the economic recession, making the 2020 objective that much easier to attain (EurActiv 2/04/10).

But the EU’s possible move to a 30% reduction target for 2020 is causing internal divisions among the 27 member states, with Eastern European countries saying the EU must first analyse how other countries’ pledges compare before making a decision.

By contrast, the European Commission and most Western EU member states including the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, argue that the move to 30% will stimulate green economic growth and innovation, creating new jobs along the way.

“If Europe is a strong believer in the green economic growth story, then those targets are imperative to achieve that sense of change of direction,” De Boer stressed.

‘Climate-wash’

De Boer said another major point of contention relates to the 100 billion dollars in annual climate aid that industrialised countries pledged for poor nations in Copenhagen.

“Is that going to be climate-wash or real and additional finance?” he asked. “Quite frankly, the track record is not quite there [to prove it],” he said.

Under existing arrangements, developing countries were asked to produce technology need assessments in their effort to fight climate change, De Boer explained. But these were rarely followed up and the promised funding was kept under wraps for the most part.

“Many among developing nations feel, with some justification, that these financial resources are not being provided. And that if financial resources are provided, they are often ‘climate-wash’,” he said, meaning development assistance re-labelled as climate aid. “So the money that was originally intended for poverty eradication now magically becomes climate change money.”

To break the deadlock, De Boer suggests giving developing countries responsibility for managing the aid. “What they would really like to see is that these huge sums of money are going to be distributed according to the priorities of the countries rather than according to the priorities of the donators.”

His proposal is to create a financial governance mechanism at the next UN summit in Cancún “that will really give developing countries the feeling that they are in control or in co-control of the money that is intended to help them green their economic growth”.

According to the Dutchman, developing countries are ready to accept that the money will be channelled through existing institutions like the World Bank, regional development banks or cooperation agencies.

Kyoto pledges not met

Speaking in the European Parliament, De Boer said the sense of suspicion had been heightened by the fact that industrialised nations had shown little willingness to meet their emission reduction pledges under the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

“The first suspicion relates to the fact that, yes, although Europe as a whole is on track to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, there are individual countries within the European Union which are having a little more difficulty – at least for the time being – achieving their targets under Kyoto.”

Although the EU as a whole is set to overshoot its collective emission reduction target under the Kyoto Protocol, a recent report by the European Environment Agency (EEA) showed the ‘older’ EU-15 member states will fall short of their targets without new policies or offset credits (EurActiv 13/11/09).

Moreover, under the UNFCCC, rich countries were supposed to return their emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000, De Boer said. “But in fact, only four individual countries met that goal,” he pointed out.

De Boer singled out Canada, which announced it will not meet its Kyoto target but nevertheless refuses to withdraw from the treaty. Developing countries have not heard any reaction to that statement, De Boer said, adding to their suspicion. 

“So there is not that much confidence that industrialised countries will meet their targets under the Kyoto Protocol,” he explained.

Source Euractiv

His decision is not expected to further derail U.N.-led climate talks to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, divided over sharing the cost of cutting carbon emissions.

De Boer will leave on July 1 to join KPMG, the Secretariat for the U.N. framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) said in a statement. He had led the agency since 2006 and his contract was expected to be extended in September.

“It was a difficult decision to make, but I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia,” de Boer said in the statement.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will make the final decision on a replacement, a U.N. spokesman said.

“Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming. This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen,” de Boer said.

In advance of the December summit in Denmark, de Boer had said anything less than agreement on emissions caps for individual developed nations would count as failure.

De Boer, born in 1954, was a senior Dutch environmental official who has been far more outspoken than previous heads of the Bonn-based Secretariat. He had often criticised developed nations for what he called a lack of ambition in setting out cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

But he also told developing nations not to get their hopes up too high. In the run-up to Copenhagen, he told African nations and small island states that their calls for deep cuts by the developed world represented “too heavy a lift”.

At a marathon U.N. meeting in Bali in 2007, de Boer left the room in tears after a Chinese delegate criticised the Secretariat for starting a key meeting before all delegates were present.

“It wasn’t that surprising … I would like to see someone from a developing country who can negotiate with those countries,” said Seb Walhain, head of environmental markets at Fortis Netherlands, of de Boer’s departure.

Carbon markets depend on the U.N. talks and a Kyoto successor after 2012 to continue global trade in carbon offsets. “It won’t have any effect on the carbon market,” said Walhain.

Source WBCSD

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The Government’s formal submission to the Copenhagen Accord – the widely criticised agreement hatched between the US and major developing countries at the conference last month – pledges to cut emissions between 5 and 25 per cent below 2000 levels. It is the same range taken to the December meeting, bucking some expectations the Government would commit to a specific target.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the Government would stick to its minimalist position unless there was substantial and verifiable action internationally.

If the impasse in global climate negotiations is not resolved in 2011, the Government will set a 5 per cent target under its proposed emissions trading scheme, giving business certainty for the planned start of full trading in July 2012.

Green groups criticised the Government for putting the onus on developing countries to prove they are serious about tackling climate change before Australia moves beyond 5 per cent.

Several analyses have estimated that commitments made in the lead-up to last year’s Copenhagen summit would trigger Australia signing up to about a 15 per cent cut.

But Senator Wong said Australia’s position ”was consistent with our commitments to do no more and no less than the rest of the world”.

The target would not be increased above 5 per cent until:

? Global climate policies become ”sufficiently clear”, including specific targets from major rich nations and verifiable climate policies from China and India.

? The credibility of other countries’ commitments is established through either a ”robust” agreement at the next major climate conference in Mexico in November or verifiable commitments to action by the US, India and China and other major emitters.

? The assumptions underpinning global emissions accounting and carbon markets are clear.

It is the first time Australia has placed demands on specific countries in setting out its conditions for an emissions cut of greater than 5 per cent. It suggests Australia will not increase its target unless climate legislation passes the US Senate.

Interpretation of the conditions will also depend on the definition of ”verifiable” emissions cuts. China and India have fiercely resisted demands they allow external scrutiny of their emissions, agreeing only to pass on their own measurements to be followed by ”international consultations and analysis”.

Former government climate adviser Ross Garnaut last night said it was appropriate that the Government kept to its 5-25 per cent range until it had seen that other countries had confirmed their promises in formal submissions, due by January 31.

The announcement of the accord targets comes as the Government is set to introduce its revamped emissions trading legislation next Tuesday.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard refused to be drawn on whether the Government would bring back the legislation if it was defeated so it could be put to a joint sitting if there was a successful double dissolution.

Source Sydney Morning Herald

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As we exit the last year of the first decade of the 21^st century, we can see the unveiling of the new world order. The sleeping giant has been awakened and the rest of the world has fallen into a complacent slumber. One of the most ancient civilizations on the planet has bided its time until the bloodless takeover of the world could come into being. China now rules the world.

How have they succeeded with global domination? We asked them to!

While other nations throughout history went to war they have used our greed and complacency against us to secure our wallets and our final dependency on their ownership of us. We now surrender the remaining ownership of our lives to them.

They came during the night of our complacency to invade every home, business and government on the planet. We even gave them a cloak with which to cover themselves as they carried out their invasion. It was called an ‘economic developing nation’.

Their global domination is now complete and the 21^st century is theirs and theirs alone. The past superpowers now kneel at the feet of our new rulers and beg for the right to serve. The developed world’s addiction to consumption has become a weapon of mass destruction for their dominance of all global nations and its people. Their financial might has reached into the pockets of the world and they now are the owners of all economies. We can no longer live without their agreement. With the stroke of a pen they can call in their debt and countries would fall. Our leaders beg them for table scraps while masking to their own people, the crisis they are now in.

As was seen recently at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit where the Chinese Premier, Wen Jinbao, dictated the terms of collapse of any binding emissions reductions targets and effectively killed off the Kyoto agreement already agreed to by most nations on the planet, they are now headed for world domination. As Mark Lynas observed in the Guardian UK:

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.

While the nations of the world slip further and further into deficit as evidenced by the US Debt Clock, China continues on its path of economic growth.

A recent article reported:

Some $1 trillion out of China’s $1.8 trillion foreign exchange reserves has been used to purchase U.S. government bonds and agency bonds. Among them, about $480 billion to $500 billion were invested into U.S. Agency Debt Securities

If China wants to strike the U.S. down, it can just sell all the U.S. national bonds to the market which will make the U.S. economy collapse. A CNN reporter asked Chinese leader Hu Jintao on September 23, “China is the largest owner of U.S. short term national bonds. It is estimated that the value of the bonds is close to $1 trillion. This makes some Americans panic. Can you calm them down and ensure that China won’t take this its status as some form of weapon?” “The weapon with some form” in the question includes the possibility of selling the U.S. national bonds to the market. Premier Wen Jiabao said, “We also hope the U.S. can continue to develop, as it will benefit China. Of course, we are worried about the security of U.S. assets possessed by China. However, we believe the U.S. is a trustworthy country… I believe cooperation right now is the first and foremost.”

So what of our future? Ask our 21^st Century masters!

Written by Bob Williamson, Chair, Greenhouse Neutral Foundation

The last time global negotiations collapsed like this was in Doha, in 2001. After the trade talks fell apart, the World Trade Organisation assured delegates that there was nothing to fear: they would move to Mexico, where a deal would be done. The negotiations ran into the sand of the Mexican resort of Cancún, never to re-emerge. After eight years of dithering, nothing has been agreed.

When the climate talks in Copenhagen ended in failure last week, Yvo de Boer, the man in charge of the process, urged us not to worry: everything will be sorted out “in Mexico one year from now”. Is Mexico the diplomatic equivalent of the Pacific garbage patch: the place where failed negotiations go to die?

De Boer might pretend that this is just a temporary hitch, but he knows what happens when talks lose momentum. A year ago I asked him what he feared most. This is what he said. “The worst-case scenario for me is that climate becomes a second WTO … Copenhagen, for me, is a very clear deadline that I think we need to meet, and I am afraid that if we don’t then the process will begin to slip, and like in the trade negotiations, one deadline after the other will not be met, and we sort of become the little orchestra on the Titanic.”

We can live without a new trade agreement; we can’t live without a new climate agreement. One of the failings of the people who have tried to mobilise support for a climate treaty is that we have made the issue too complicated. So here is the simplest summary I can produce of why this matters.

Human beings can live in a wider range of conditions than almost any other species. But the climate of the past few thousand years has been amazingly kind to us. It has enabled us to spread into almost all regions of the world and to grow into the favourable ecological circumstances it has created. We enjoy the optimum conditions for supporting seven billion people.

A shift in global temperature reduces the range of places which can sustain human life. During the last ice age, humans were confined to low latitudes. The difference in the average global temperature between now and then was 4C. Global warming will have the opposite effect, driving people into higher latitudes, principally as water supplies diminish.

Food production at high latitudes must rise as quickly as it falls elsewhere, but this is unlikely to happen. According to the body that summarises the findings of climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the potential for global food production “is very likely to decrease above about 3C”. The panel uses the phrase “very likely” to mean a probability of above 90%. Unless a strong climate deal is struck very soon, the probable outcome is a rise of 3C or more by the end of the century.

Even in higher latitudes the habitable land area will decrease as the sea level rises. The likely rise this century – probably less than a metre – is threatening only to some populations, but the process does not stop in 2100. During the previous interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago, the average global temperature was about 1.3C higher than it is today, as a result of changes in the earth’s orbit around the sun.

A new paper in the scientific journal Nature shows that sea levels during that period were between 6.6 and 9.4 metres higher than today’s. Once the temperature had risen, the expansion of sea water and the melting of ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica was unstoppable. I wonder whether the government of Denmark, whose atrocious management of the conference contributed to its failure, would have tried harder if its people knew that in a few hundred years they won’t have a country any more.

As people are displaced from their homes by drought and rising sea levels, and as food production declines, the planet will be unable to support the current population. The collapse in human numbers is unlikely to be either smooth or painless: while the average global temperature will rise gradually, the events associated with it will come in fits and starts – in the form of sudden droughts and storm surges.

This is why the least developed countries, which will be hit hardest, made the strongest demands in Copenhagen. One hundred and two poor nations called for the maximum global temperature rise to be limited not to 2C but to 1.5C. The chief negotiator for the G77 bloc complained that Africa was being asked “to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries”.

The immediate reason for the failure of the talks can be summarised in two words: Barack Obama.

The man elected to put aside childish things proved to be as susceptible to immediate self-interest as any other politician. Just as George Bush did in the approach to the Iraq war, Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal that outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation: either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown.

The British and US governments have blamed the Chinese government for the failure of the talks. It’s true that the Chinese worked hard to mess them up, but Obama also put Beijing in an impossible position. He demanded concessions while offering nothing. He must have known the importance of not losing face in Chinese politics: his unilateral diplomacy amounted to a demand for self-abasement. My guess is that this was a calculated manoeuvre guaranteed to produce instransigence, whereupon China could be blamed for the outcome the US wanted.

Why would he do this? You have only to see the relief in Democratic circles to get your answer. Pushing a strong climate programme through the Senate, many of whose members are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the energy industry, would have been the political battle of his life. Yet again, the absence of effective campaign finance reform in the US makes global progress almost impossible.

So what happens now? That depends on the other non-player at Copenhagen: you. For the past few years good, liberal, compassionate people – the kind who read the Guardian – have shaken their heads and tutted and wondered why someone doesn’t do something. Yet the number taking action has been pathetic. Demonstrations which should have brought millions on to the streets have struggled to mobilise a few thousand. As a result the political cost of the failure at Copenhagen is zero. Where are you.

Is this music not to your taste, sir, or madam? Perhaps you would like our little orchestra to play something louder, to drown out that horrible grinding noise.

Source Guardian – Monbiot

The final stages of this process kicked off in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Monday. Delegates now have until 18 December to deliver. We know that the summit won’t provide a legally binding “Copenhagen protocol”. That will have to wait until 2010. But it must deliver everything else. Key among the expected elements are promises from rich nations to slash their emissions, and from poor nations to slow their emissions growth. Delegates are also expected to agree to channel cash and low-carbon technologies to poorer nations to help them cope with the effects of climate change. It will go to the wire: don’t expect a conclusion until the early hours of 19 December.

The fate of the planet is not solely in the hands of 192 teams of sleep-deprived politicians, however. Whatever is decided at Copenhagen, environmental awareness has increased, as has funding for low-carbon energy. Pilot projects have sprung up to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground, and alliances have formed to protect ancient forests. A new green revolution has begun, and science has its work cut out over the next decade if it is to deliver a low-carbon society. Here, New Scientist outlines the stepping stones.

Including: Low-hanging fruit – Location, location, location – Electric highway – Spot the tipping point – Hello, solar – Catch that carbon – Clouded judgements – Biofuels, the sequel – Change the Earth instead

Source New Scientist

Activists think that even if the best possible deal is achieved at the end of the two-week talks, aimed at drafting a new agreement on how to limit global warming, the outcome will not bring climate justice.

The Copenhagen talks may result in an amended Kyoto Treaty, setting up more drastic emission reduction targets for developing countries and additional targets for non-signatories to Kyoto – most notably the United States.

There could be also action plans for major developing nations as well as concrete measures to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

But activists worry that no matter how ambitious the final deal is some of the mechanisms promoted during the Copenhagen talks would remain faulty.

One of the problematic areas is represented by the financing mechanisms envisaged to assist developing countries green their economies and deal with the negative impacts of climate change.

According to the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs, developing countries would need 500-600 billion US dollars annually for measures of mitigation and adaptation. And that money should come from developed countries, which have a historical responsibility to the rest of the world for being the major contributors to climate change.

However, Friends of the Earth (FoE) argue that, rather than face up to this responsibility, “developed countries are attempting to count private financial flows – through offsetting – as meeting their own emissions reduction commitments, despite emissions cuts and additional public funding (for aid to the developing countries) being distinct obligations.”

According to the Clean Development Mechanism established in the Kyoto Treaty, industrialised countries committed to reduce their greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions can invest in projects that reduce emissions in developing countries as a means to compensate for cuts not made at home.

The environmental group emphasises that most of the money for developing countries will not come in the form of public funds but from the monetising carbon credits accumulated through offsetting.

Offsets are achieved by a government or corporation when investing in renewable energy or other type of projects which will reduce carbon emissions. These can be then sold in the carbon market, a practice encouraged by the Kyoto Protocol as one of the principal means to stimulate emission cuts.

At present, 100 million US dollars in carbon credits exist in the global fund for adaptation in the developing countries – a small fraction of the total amount needed.

According to Kevin Smith from Climate Justice Action, in some cases the offsets actually help companies perpetuate their polluting practices. “In Britain, new polluting infrastructure has been built with money obtained through the European Union Emission Trading Scheme,” the activist told IPS.

For instance, a petrochemical company in India could reduce emissions in one of its plants by simply responding to normal business imperatives. Then, it sells the offsets to a Western company and, with the income, build another polluting plant. “This scheme can, in some cases, lead to more pollution,’’ says Smith. ‘’It is a way to ensure the flows of money go to corporate entities”.

“There is really no proof that those cuts would not have happened anyway and the offsets are not a reward for business as usual,” Francesca Gater from FoE Europe told IPS. The Kyoto Protocol envisages the verification of whether the cuts are indeed stimulated by the carbon credits system, but activists argue this is nearly impossible to check.

“The carbon markets cannot really be trusted to reduce emissions,” Smith says. “They will lead to financial corruption of the type that has caused the recent global economic crisis and they are just a means to create new markets for capital.”

A need to regulate carbon markets has already been acknowledged by most countries. However, according to FoE, “most developed countries are positioning the World Bank to assume a controlling role for climate finance. This is despite the World Bank’s poor environmental and social track.” A more transparent and accountable body should be given this task, argues the group.

Gater says FoE wants to see all developed states (including the U.S.) committing to emissions cuts of 40 percent by 2020 against 1990 levels as well as a new financial mechanism under the authority of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to adequately finance adaptation and mitigation in developing countries from the public funds of developed states.

“If all the political energy dedicated to the creation of complicated carbon trade mechanisms were used to address real issues, such as ending the reliance on fossil fuels and achieving equity between the global North and South, we would have hope,” said Smith.

Source IPS