Bill McKibben on Copenhagen

Copenhagen: Too Hot to Handle

— Illustration: Anita Kunz
Best-case scenario for a Copenhagen deal? Twice the warming the planet can take.

— By Bill McKibben

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Close this Share Box9 Comments | Post Comment.November/December 2009 Issue
Two decades ago, when I was writing what would be one of the first books on global warming, I interviewed a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, one of the few academics already thinking about the emerging problem. He hemmed and hawed for a little while, and then he said, "This is the public policy problem from hell. There are just too many conflicting interests. It won't be solved."

This December may be the last real chance to prove him wrong as the nations of the world meet in Copenhagen for a climate conference billed as make or break, do or die, perhaps quite literally sink or swim. In fact, you could make a fair argument that this will be the most important diplomatic gathering in the world's history. Versailles, sure. Yalta, yes—but their failures were measured in decades of pain and millions of lives. Failure to rein in climate change will reverberate for tens of thousands of years, across generations not even yet imagined.
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Which is not to say the 12 days of final negotiations will be august or easy to follow or even coherent. I remember the last big talks of this sort, in Kyoto in 1997. The sessions took place, as they will in Copenhagen, in a conference center miles from town. It became its own insulated world, with reporters and delegates and oil company lobbyists and NGO representatives endlessly querying each other about what was going on. (There was even a daily paper, and sometimes a parody version.) The answer to the queries was always the same: We're waiting for the US and the Europeans to strike a deal. The official palaver was taking place in a big hall, with delegates making amendments and offering motions, but all the real action was behind closed doors.

The whole conference looked close to failure until Al Gore jetted in and instructed the US negotiators to "show flexibility." That was just enough to allow the talks to limp to a conclusion— the midnight deadline passed, and by the next morning we were all being shooed out the door to make room for a molecular biology convention. No one had enough energy to give more than a feeble cheer for the final document, which in the end the US Senate never even considered ratifying.

This time around, America will be represented by a career political operative, Todd Stern, as chief climate negotiator. And probably Hillary Clinton. And quite possibly Barack Obama. They'll be trying to satisfy the Europeans, who are again pushing for tougher cuts in emissions than the administration thinks are realistic. But this time the US/European divide isn't the main challenge—far from it. This time the developing world has its own demands—and that will make a Copenhagen treaty far, far more complicated to arrive at than Kyoto was. For the developing world would like to...develop. And the most obvious way to do it is to burn coal. And they have an unimpeachable moral case, which goes like this: You got rich by burning coal, so why shouldn't we?

You can imagine the game of multilevel chess that ensues: Everyone is under pressure from everyone else, and it all comes down to the final days, and most likely drags on into 2010 as the negotiators lurch toward some kind of middle ground. Which could mean, in the end, a treaty that at least moves us in the direction of the target that most people have been talking about for the last five years: holding temperature increases under two degrees Celsius and an atmospheric concentration of 450 parts per million (ppm) CO2. It won't be easy by any stretch, and it won't be any prettier than the Waxman-Markey bill now staggering through Congress. But a failure would be so embarrassing that there's real pressure to agree to something.



SO THAT ABOUT COVERS all the factors. Except for two. Physics and chemistry, they're called—and they're throwing a serious monkey wrench into the proceedings. It started in the summer of 2007 when the Arctic melted with sudden and unexpected haste, 30 years ahead of what even the more pessimistic scientists were forecasting. And that's after increasing the planet's temperature about eight-tenths of a degree Celsius or slightly less than half of the two degrees that look like a best-case Copenhagen scenario. When the post-Kyoto negotiations began five or six years ago, we didn't think one degree was enough to do real damage, but now we know different.

A few months after all that ice melted in 2007, our foremost climatologists gave us a new number to aim for: 350 ppm. NASA's James Hansen and his team issued a series of papers showing that any atmospheric carbon content greater than that appears not to be compatible with "a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted." In other words: Climate change is not a future problem for wise statesmen to patiently work to avert. It's a right now, present tense, capital-E Emergency.

Hansen and his team warn that a world of 450 ppm CO2 is a world that will eventually be largely ice free. That will take some time—those Antarctic ice sheets are miles thick. But there's plenty of change coming at us already. Dengue fever, carried by mosquitoes rapidly expanding their range in our newly warming world, has increased thirtyfold in the past 50 years. (A recent report indicated it could easily spread to more than half the states in the union.) Glaciers are melting before our eyes. (Glacier National Park will need a new name as early as 2020—the source of the Ganges could be a dusty hillside 15 years later.) Drought is becoming endemic across the American Southwest and in parts of Australia—some 200 people died this year around Melbourne when wildfires whipped through after a heat wave. A recent study predicted a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam, will have dried up by 2021. Meanwhile, since all the water that's evaporating out of dry areas must eventually come back down, deluges (like the record rains in India that put a million people out of their homes in 2006) are getting worse. This is the kind of trouble you get at 387 ppm. You really want to go for 450?

If you had to pick a country to serve as a proxy for physics and chemistry at the Copenhagen talks, the Maldives would be a good place to start. This archipelago of 1,190 islands, most of them only a few feet above sea level, has a population of barely 400,000, so it won't carry enormous clout in Copenhagen. It does have a certain moral authority, since under the deal that the EU and Obama are pushing for it probably won't exist much longer. (See also "To the Lifeboats.") To make matters worse, the islands depend on the fringing reefs that surround them for protection from waves and storms. But that coral is dying because the carbon in the atmosphere is turning the ocean more acidic. The pH of the sea—the whole damned Earth-girdling sea—has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 and is apparently on its way to 7.8 in the lifetime of babies born today. In July marine scientists in London released a statement saying that long-term CO2 concentrations above 360 ppm will mean the death of all coral on the planet. Which explains why Mohamed Nasheed, the dynamic new president of the Maldives, says failure to reach agreement would amount to a "suicide pact." And then there's Bangladesh. There are the African countries already dying from drought. The UN raised a lot of new flags in the last century. Get ready to watch them start coming down.

It's not that a treaty that would get us to 350 is impossible. Hansen and his team have shown that we could actually burn most of the oil in our wells (but sorry Canada, not the tar sands); if we were to stop burning coal by 2030, and sooner in the developed world, forests and oceans would eventually scrub enough CO2 to get us back to a safe level. Not without severe damage—we lack a method for refreezing the Arctic—but maybe on this side of catastrophe. But that's heavier lifting than Obama and the Chinese have in mind, heavier lifting than even the EU is going to push for. It would require focusing the entire planet for a generation on the task of transitioning off fossil fuel. It would mean sticking whole industries with trillions of dollars in unrecoverable sunk costs (all those coal-fired power plants whose financing depends on a 40-year run). It would mean paying a huge political price. It would mean aiming for a solution, not an agreement.

To make it happen would require a movement, a movement big enough to push our leaders into truly uncomfortable decisions. Some of us have thrown ourselves into building 350.org, which is set to climax on October 24 with thousands of rallies across the planet. There will be teams of 350 bicyclists, and church bells pealing 350 times; in the Maldives, President Nasheed will lead 350 divers in the world's largest underwater political demonstration. It may turn out to be the most widely dispersed political protest of all time, with actions happening almost everywhere. [Eds: You can show support by making your own personalized MoJo climate cover.]

But whether it will be enough to shift Copenhagen—that remains to be seen. The Maldives has promised to become the world's first carbon-neutral nation by 2020. But it's also started setting aside a portion of its budget every year to buy a new homeland. For the moment, global warming remains the problem from hell, and the planet is on a course to a remarkably similar temperature.

Bill McKibben, a contributing writer to Mother Jones and a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, is the co-founder of 350.org. His newest book is called Eaarth: Making a Life in a Tough New World. For more of his stories, click here. You can follow him on Twitter here. Get Bill McKibben's RSS feed.

source: http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/11/copenhagen-too-hot-handle

"Non-binding treaty is better": are you sure sir?

US: Who Needs a Binding Climate Treaty?

— Photo used under a Creative Commons license by flickr user boliston
At an off-the-record briefing in Copenhagen, a US climate negotiator claims second prize can be better than first.

— By David Corn

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Close this Share Box13 Comments | Post Comment.Tue Dec. 8, 2009 12:12 PM PST
Who needs a binding global climate treaty?

That was essentially the message delivered by Jonathan Pershing, the Obama administration's deputy special climate change envoy, when he held an off-the-record briefing for US nongovernmental outfits at the Copenhagen climate summit on Tuesday. Speaking to about 200 people from various environmental groups, Pershing made the case that a non-binding political agreement—in which the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases would pledge to take various actions to reduce their own emissions—would be more effective than a treaty establishing firm and legally enforceable commitments, according to several people who attended the session. Pershing's comments mark a significant effort on the part of the United States to reshape the climate negotiations underway in Copenhagen. Though the Copenhagen session was initially conceived as the gathering where a hard-and-fast treaty would be crafted, there is now no chance of that happening. Pershing was trying to turn the absence of such an accord into a plus.
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Pershing, a well-known scientist who has worked on climate change for decades, maintained that a binding treaty—which would mandate emission reductions and contain penalties for noncompliance—could easily stall. It would have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate (which would require 67 votes) and winning Senate approval would be no easy feat for the Obama administration. (The Senate does not yet have the 60 votes need to block a filibuster of pending climate change legislation.) Other nations also would have to approve it. He pointed out that the 1997 Kyoto global warming accord, which the US Senate never approved, took five years to be ratified around the world. If Copenhagen did produce a binding treaty, Pershing said, it would be years before it could go into effect. In the meantime, emissions would continue to flow. A political deal, he contended, could kick in immediately, with countries taking individual steps to meet self-established goals for reductions and working collectively to fund clean-energy programs in less-developed nations—and could lead to a binding treaty. World leaders have said they expect a non-treaty agreement would include immediate steps and set longer-term goals.

"This is front-page news," said one American environmentalist who attended the briefing. "The administration is going for a major reframing." In what seemed to be an attempt to position the United States to be able to declare success, Pershing was saying that the consolation prize could actually be better than the top prize.

At the briefing, Pershing cited all the unilateral climate-change action that the Obama administration is bringing to the Copenhagen table, including the announcement made this week by the EPA that it would regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. He hailed as a positive sign that over a hundred heads of state will be attending the summit. He noted that the United States would commit to contributing $1.4 billion annually to an international climate change fund, and that it was ready to put that money into play quickly.

But an important part of the US mission in Copenhagen is avoiding blame for the absence of either a binding treaty or a robust political deal. To that end, Pershing repeatedly noted that the major developing nations, such as China, India, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, have to offer more—that is, be willing to commit to significant reductions and compliance measures. Those nations, he asserted, will be responsible for 97 percent of the future growth in emissions. Without concessions from them, he said, the US Congress would balk at whatever deal comes out of Copenhagen. And when he was asked why the United States was not committed to lowering greenhouse gas emissions to 350 parts per million—a level that many scientists contend is necessary to prevent possible climate change catastrophes—Pershing said that such a target would be impossible to reach without China and the other developing nations agreeing to deeper reductions. He noted that the Obama administration has pledged to reduce emissions 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, but he suggested that won't be sufficient if China and the others do not adopt strict reductions. Moreover, he indicated that returning to 350 ppm—current levels are nearly at 390 ppm—may never happen. Consequently, he said, the United States and the rest of the world must proceed with an "adaptation program" and prepare to deal with the severe consequences of climate change. "We're stuck," he remarked, according to one briefing attendee.

Clearly, the Obama administration yearns for a strong agreement of some sort at Copenhagen. But any accord is likely to fall short of what many scientists and environmentalists desire, and the United States does not want to stand accused of being the obstacle to real progress. So at this briefing, Pershing, a man of science and diplomacy, darted back and forth between insisting that Obama administration actions could lead to success at Copenhagen and asserting that Chinese (and Indian and Indonesian and Brazilian) recalcitrance could doom the planet. Negotiating the PR shoals at Copenhagen can be as tough as negotiating the deal.

UPDATE: After this piece was posted, members of the US delegation pointed out that Pershing and the Obama administration still want a legally binding treaty and see a non-binding deal in Copenhagen as a prelude to such an accord. At a press conference the day after Pershing's off the record briefing, Todd Stern, the US chief climate envoy, said, "The last thing we want is for a political binding agreement to substitute for the effort to get a legally binding treaty."

This story was reported for Mother Jones as part of the Copenhagen News Collaborative, a cooperative project of several independent news organizations. Check out the constantly updated feed here. Mother Jones’ comprehensive Copenhagen coverage is here, and our special climate change package is here.

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook. Get David Corn's RSS feed.

source: http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/us-who-needs-binding-climate-treaty

climate deal

Environment
Climate Change, Environment, Foreign Policy, Global Climate Talks, International
Obama's Copenhagen Deal

Fri Dec. 18, 2009 4:46 PM PST
The final deal at the Copenhagen climate summit, which was convened to develop a comprehensive international response to the threat of global warming, came down to a behind-closed-doors conversation among some of the most powerful people in the world about the difference between two terms: "examination and assessment" and "international consultations and analysis."

Then again, there may not have been a final deal. Late on Friday night, President Barack Obama announced that an agreement had been reached, establishing a minimalist accord that would not set a firm schedule with hard-and-fast targets for reducing emissions. But after Obama held a press conference to declare semi-victory—"this is going to be a first step"—and jetted back to Washington, European officials said nothing was in the bag. And Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the G77 bloc of least developed nations, claimed there was no deal. "What has happened today confirms what we have been suspicious of that a deal will be imposed by United States, with the help of the Danish government, on all nations of the world," he said.

This raised the question, was the Obama deal merely a side deal that would be agreed to by some nations but not all? A convenient bypass of international climate negotiations?

In that short press conference, Obama noted that the pact had come together during an evening meeting he held with the leaders of major developing nations—China, Brazil, South Africa, and India. "Each agreed," he said, "to list national actions and commitments with international consultation and analysis under clearly defined guidelines" and aim to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. But it wasn't that simple—or clear—according to a participant in that decisive gathering, Brazil Ambassador Sergio Serra.

The meeting, which lasted more than three hours, was hosted by Premier Wen Jiabao, and first began with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and South African President Jacob Zuma attending. About an hour into it, Obama arrived, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The participants did not deal with numbers or targets for emissions. Instead, the conversation turned to the knotty matter of verification. Throughout the summit, the United States, Europe, and Japan had been pressing China, which has vowed to reduce the pace of its growing emissions, to accept outside monitoring of its performance. China has resisted, claiming it could audit itself. This remained "the most contentious thing," Serra said. "The Chinese were very reluctant to accept any kind of international supervision or international analysis of the performance of their actions."

As the discussion continued, Obama dropped a term on the table: "examination and assessment." This suggested direct monitoring of Chinese emission curbs by outsiders. Chinese officials in the room pronounced it unacceptable."We weren't that happy with it, either," Serra noted. So a new description—"international consultations and analysis"—was worked out. A "consultation" is obviously less intrusive than an "examination." But what does "international consultations and analysis"—soon to be referred to as ICA—mean? Asked this, Serra shrugged and said, "Ehhhh." He added, "The definition will be negotiated by a panel of people. They will decide what it means, like everything else." Obama promised to sell this not-well-defined ICA phrase to the Europeans. He also told Wen and the others that he had been asked by the Europeans to push for the below-2 degrees level.

The resolution of that six-word dispute eased the US-China deadlock that had paralyzed the summit, creating space for an agreement that may not be an agreement—christened the "Copenhagen Accord."

Whether or not that title was presumptive, the draft document released is vague. It contains few specific numbers—beyond "recognizing the scientific view" that a global temperature rise should be "below 2 degrees." It dropped language from an earlier draft calling for cutting global emissions in half by 2050. The agreement urges developed nations to implement reductions they have already pledged—without spelling out those numbers or establish baseline years. Developing nations would establish their own emissions curbs. (All these countries are supposed to declare their reductions targets by February.) The China-friendly verification provision rests on that vague "international consultations and analysis clause." The agreement also incorporates the US-European offer to help mobilize $100 billion a year until 2020 to help poorer nations contend with climate change, and commits $30 billion for short-term funding for related programs, such as deforestation prevention—without providing details about these financial programs. Most important, the draft says nothing about future negotiations and any pathway toward a legally binding treaty incorporating global cuts.

"The result is not what we expected," said Serra. "It may still be a way of salvaging something and paving way to another meeting or series of meetings next year."

Announcing this agreement, Obama himself acknowledged a weakness with the proposal: "With respect to the emissions targets that are going to be set, we know that they will not be by themselves sufficient to get to where we need to get by 2050....There are going to be those who are going to—who are going to look at the national commitments, tally them up and say, you know, the science dictates that even more needs to be done." But he contended that this agreement—by encouraging all the major economies (developed and developing) to commit jointly to emissions curbs—marked a "shift in orientation" and insisted that he remained committed to seeking a binding treaty.

US environmentalists split over whether Obama's move was a triumphant save or an act of self-interest. Environmental Defense Fund head Fred Krupp and League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinski high-fived each other in a Bella Center hallway. "Obama has delivered the clear breakthrough we needed on climate change," exclaimed Jeremy Symons, a senior vice president of National Wildlife Federation. By rounding up China and India, Obama has improved the prospects for the climate change legislation pending in the Senate—where foes of the bill have used these nations' absence from previous accords as a justification for opposition. And until a bill passes, Obama can't make good on his modest proposed reductions.

But not all the American environmentalists were celebrating. "This is not a strong deal or a just one—it isn't even a real one," said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth US. "The actions it suggests for the rich countries that caused the climate crisis are extraordinarily inadequate. This is a disastrous outcome for people around the world who face increasingly dire impacts from a destabilizing climate."

The Obama agreement was a sly maneuver. The United States sidestepped the official proceedings and found a way to separate major developing nations from poorer ones—while skating past European desires for a more comprehensive and binding agreement. Though European negotiators first declared they were not on board, as the final evening of the summit entered the wee hours, Europe conceded. At a 2:00 a.m. press conference, dour-looking European leaders announced their unhappy support. "This accord is better than no accord, but clearly below our ambition," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. "We have to be honest."

Even one of the diplomats who helped broker the deal was not entirely pleased. Asked if this deal made Copenhagen a success, Serra replied, "There is the perspective that with this agreement we may reach a satisfactory and equitable result next year." Then he paused: "The disappointment is still there."

http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/obamas-copenhagen-deal

copenhagen tough talks

→ Assignment 2020, Climate Change, Environment, Global Climate Talks, Must Reads
Stern: Copenhagen Neared Complete Collapse
— By Kate Sheppard
| Thu Jan. 14, 2010 12:06 PM PST.
— Photo courtesy of US Department of State, via Flickr.
The agreement reached at the Copenhagen summit last month might not have been the successful deal on climate that many had hoped for. But it was a victory in the sense that the climate talks "came within a hair's breadth of collapse," climate envoy Todd Stern said on Thursday.

In his first public remarks since the conclusion of the summit, Stern said that late as Wednesday evening, "it looked as though we were headed for failure." It was apparently so bad that the State Department drafted a failure speech for President Obama to use on the final day, as fellow negotiator Jonathan Pershing noted earlier this week. Stern described a meeting starting at 11:30 on Thursday night—literally the 11th hour, as the summit was supposed to conclude on Friday—between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australian Prime Minster Kevin Rudd, Mexican President Felipe Calderone, South African President Jacob Zuma, Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva, and others "sitting around a table and trying to not let this negotiation go down." The leaders adjourned at 2:30 a.m. without reaching any significant breakthrough.

In the conference's final hours, leaders were "personally rolling up their sleeves and taking over the process of negotiation," Stern said. "It was just really a refusal on the part of these leaders to have a non-result." But there was little progress until the final, "fairly dramatic" meeting between Obama, China, India, South Africa, and Brazil late on Friday night, he said. Stern played up Obama's personal participation in those final meetings. "I don’t think there would have been an agreement without his personal intervention," he said. (Stern cited this intervention as evidence of Obama's commitment to the issue domestically as well, promising a "significant effort on the part of all in the administration to press forward.")

Of course, those final meetings at Copenhagen prompted some developing countries to charge that the final deal was shoved on them—which is why the assembled nations merely "noted" the accord rather than formally adopted it. Stern said it will become evident in the next few weeks whether or not Copenhagen really acheived anything meaningful, as countries are expected to sign on to the final document and list their respective commitments by Jan. 31. "The accord is lumbering down the runway," Stern concluded. "We need to get enough speed for it to take off."

source: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/01/stern-copenhagen-neared-complete-collapse

Cancun talks

→ Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Global Climate Talks
Yes We Cancun?
— By Kate Sheppard
| Tue Nov. 30, 2010 3:00 AM PST.The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting began in Cancun on Monday, providing another chance for world leaders to huddle on solutions to the problems posed by rising global greenhouse gas emissions. This year's Conference of the Parties—or COP, as it's known—is certainly kicking off to much less hype than last year's meeting in Copenhagen, when delegates were expecting a major breakthrough on negotiations. Expectations are much lower this year, but there's hope that progress might yet be possible.

You can check out my run down of what to expect over the next two weeks at Mother Jones HQ. I'll be reporting live from Mexico for the next two weeks, which you can catch on Blue Marble and Twitter. In the meantime, here are some headlines from the first day of the event:

EU warns that U.N. climate talks "risk losing relevance"

Time for compromise, troubled UN climate talks told

US sees progress easing climate rifts with China

Frustrations show as climate talks resume

Cancún climate talks: In search of the holy grail of climate change policy



Also, take a look at the massive art project 350.org pulled off on the eve of the Cancun talks. And here's a video of the opening ceremony on Monday.

source: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/11/yes-we-cancun

climate talk

→ Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Global Climate Talks
Where to Start on Climate? How About Subsidies for Dirty Energy
— By Kate Sheppard
| Tue Nov. 30, 2010 2:08 PM PST.The agreement reached in Copenhagen last December left much unsettled. It established a target of keeping global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), but it left the specific goals and actions they would take to meet those goals up to individual countries.

Arguably, one of the most specific points of agreement among nations last year was that they would phase out fossil fuel subsidies, a deal reached by G20 nations ahead of last year's UN climate summit. Countries agreed to "rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption." But now, more than a year later, countries have done very little to make good on that promise.

Oil Change International, a group that encourages policies to cut reliance on oil and other fossil fuels, and Earth Track, a group that focuses on environmentally harmful subsides, recently took stock of the efforts taken so far to meet that commitment. Their conclusion: "No country has initiated a subsidy reform specifically in response to the G20." Half of the G20 countries have reported efforts to cut some subsidies, but everything they've put forward was already in the works before last year's G20 agreement.

There hasn't even been very much progress on identifying and disclosing those subsidies. Most members of the G20 have been reluctant to offer up subsidies they are willing to cut. The report states:

G20 reporting of fossil fuel subsidies remains spotty. Of the 20 member countries, eight stated that they have no fossil-fuel subsidies at all subject to phase out, of which two (United Kingdom and Japan) provided no information at all. Only one of the twelve countries (the United States) reported more than ten subsidies subject to reform. Three countries discussed energy subsidies in a general sense without listing any specific subsidy policies (Indonesia, Russia, and Mexico).
The report notes that countries have been reticent to list subsidies that could be eliminated, as leaders believe the subsidies support job creation or rural development, or don't artificially deflate the prices enough so as to matter. The report also points out that there are a number of problems with the fossil fuel agreement that G20 leaders outlined. For one, there's been no agreement on what they mean by phasing them out in the "medium term." Nor do they define the terms "subsidy," "inefficient subsidy," or "wasteful consumption"–each country has basically been allowed to make its own definition so far.

The subsidies are pertinent to the climate negotiations underway in Cancun right now. If the Copenhagen Accord pledges were fully implemented, the world would be 70 percent of the way to its goal of limiting warming to less than 2 degrees by 2020, according to a report from the International Energy Association released earlier this year. Phasing out those subsides alone could account for almost a 7 percent reduction in emissions by 2020, however.

The IEA report found that 37 countries are responsible for the bulk of these subsides—representing more than 95 percent of subsidized fossil-fuel consumption in the world. In 2008, nations provided $557 billion in subsidies for fossil fuel consumption—up fro $342 billion in 2007. (Iran, which is not one of the G20, leads the world in subsides, at $101 billion.)

Another way to think about it: Phasing out those subsides, the IEA found, could cut global demand for energy by 5.8 percent—equal to the energy used by Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand combined. It would also cut demand for oil by 6.5 million barrels per day by 2020. "Phasing out such subsidies would send a price signal to create incentive for more efficient use," the report concludes.

source: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/11/where-start-climate-how-about-subsidies-dirty-energy

Climate negotiation: sayonara Kyoto protocol?

Japan Says "Sayonara" to Kyoto Protocol
— By Kate Sheppard
| Wed Dec. 1, 2010 3:00 AM PST

A ritual at the COP meetings is the naming of the Fossil of the Day, a dubious recognition that the Climate Action Network International bestows upon the country who did the most to gum up negotiations on any given day of the summit. Tuesday's award went to Japan, which has drawn plenty of attention this week for its statement that the country would not accept a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol.

Why's that matter? Well, short of the irony that Japan is rejecting the continuation of an accord named for one of its own cities, the continuation of the protocol has grown ever more integral to negotiations. The Kyoto Protocol, the world's first climate pact, is set to expire at the end of 2012. The negotiations over the past years have been focused on creating a successor to that accord. But discussions under the Kyoto Protocol have also continued in these meetings, as countries work out how to build upon and continue the pledges they first adopted back in 1997. Now that a new, legally binding agreement is becoming less certain (for now at least), there is increasing attention being paid to whether the parties that signed that accord will start a second commitment period with new promises to cutting planet-warming emissions. That would ensure that there is still a legally binding, global deal in place should world leaders fail to draft a new one.

But Japan is saying no way to an extension of the pact, which omits the biggest historical emitter, the US, because it was never ratified. It also does not include major emerging emitters like China. Doing so would be "meaningless and inappropriate," Japanese vice minister for global environmental affairs Hideki Minamikawa said at a news conference last week. The country has reaffirmed its position this week that it will under no conditions agree to a second commitment period under Kyoto.

Japan's not alone. Russia and Canada have also expressed misgivings about continuing Kyoto, which they supported then but say is outdated at this point. Japan's negotiating team has made it clear in Cancun that they think the focus should be on a new deal that includes everyone, not extending the old one. A new agreement on Kyoto that excludes the US and China "will not lead to a fair and effective global emission reduction," the country's negotiating team has said. And Japan blames the US for stalling the process of forging a new pact, in addition to being the only developed nation not included under Kyoto. "If everyone else relies on US actions, then we cannot go anywhere," Kuni Shimada, a special adviser and the former lead negotiator for the country, told Bloomberg.

Japan's reticence could create a significant impasse here. Forty countries are already committed to reductions under Kyoto; the least-developed countries fear that allowing it to expire would mean that there would be no binding commitment pushing countries to fulfill those pledges once it expires. Yet Kyoto only covers 27 percent of all global emissions—which is, of course, the major reason a new pact is necessary.

Japan's environmental organizations expressed concern about the country's position. "Japanese people are proud of the Kyoto Protocol and the role we played in its creation, and we expect our government to be a climate leader," said Mayuko Yanai of Friends of the Earth Japan. "That my government is now trying to destroy this treaty that bears a Japanese name is a disgrace."

Source: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/11/japan-says-sayonara-kyoto-protocol