“And the United States is very much back in the game too. After eight years of playing the spoiler, it is now a leader with a president who seems to embrace the role.”
The global climate negotiations in Copenhagen produced neither a grand success nor the complete meltdown that seemed almost certain as late as Friday afternoon. Despite two years of advance work, the meeting failed to convert a rare gathering of world leaders into an ambitious, legally binding action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It produced instead a softer interim accord that, at least in principle, would curb greenhouses gases, provide ways to verify countries’ emissions, save rain forests, shield vulnerable nations from the impacts of climate change, and share the costs.
The hard work has only begun, in Washington and elsewhere. But Copenhagen’s achievements are not trivial, given the complexity of the issue and the differences among rich and poor countries. President Obama deserves much of the credit. He arrived as the talks were collapsing, spent 13 hours in nonstop negotiations and played hardball with the Chinese. With time running out “” and with the help of China, India, Brazil and South Africa “” he forged an agreement that all but a handful of the 193 nations on hand accepted.
I must say that I think most of the coverage on the Copenhagen Accord has been dreadful and devoid of context. I’ll post my own analysis shortly, but I plan to run the (small number of) good pieces in their entirety, starting with this excellent NYT editorial:
Mr. Obama aside, there were two keys to the deal. One was a dramatic offer of $100 billion in aid from the industrialized nations to poorer countries to help them move to less-polluting sources of energy and to deal with drought and other consequences of warming. The offer had an instant soothing effect on many poorer nations that had been threatening to walk out all week.
The other was China’s willingness to submit to a verification system under which all countries would agree to report on their actions and “” assuming details could be worked out “” open their books to inspection. Transparency is a huge issue in Congress, and Mr. Obama made clear in his opening remarks on Friday that he would not agree to a deal unless China gave ground.
An enormous amount of work lies ahead, both for the president and for the other signatories to what is now being called the Copenhagen Accord. In order to deliver on his promises to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and provide a chunk of that $100 billion in aid, Mr. Obama must persuade the Senate to approve a cap-and-trade bill “” a huge task.
Meanwhile, there can be no letup by the rest of the world’s negotiators, no matter how tired and beat up they may be. These talks have been so chaotic and contentious that some people believe the United Nations machinery has outlived its usefulness, and real progress will henceforth be made in smaller gatherings of the big players.
There may be some truth to this, but at the moment it is hard to see how many of the arrangements agreed to in principle at Copenhagen “” the verification system, for instance “” can be made to work without detailed agreements. There must also be some mechanism that holds all countries responsible for doing everything they can to tackle climate change. As it is, the pledges now on the table, from both rich and poor countries, are nowhere near enough to keep atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide from rising above dangerous levels.
But for the moment it is worth savoring the steps forward. China is now a player in the effort to combat climate change in a way it has never been, putting measurable emissions reductions targets on the table and accepting verification. And the United States is very much back in the game too. After eight years of playing the spoiler, it is now a leader with a president who seems to embrace the role.
Precisely.
The UNFCCC process had become utterly spoiled, and President Obama has begun the difficult but crucial process of replacing it with something that might actually work.
Related Posts:
- Obama Hits the Reset Button on the Foundations of International Climate Agreements
- NWF’s Jeremy Symons on the Copenhagen Accord
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Pathetic… ANY proposed actions to change the planet’s climate via man (preposterous) should be followed by this: Any and all members, both present and past, of any government will give 100% of their proceeds from personal investments that are in direct ‘conflict of interest’ to their respective countries funds… etc.
That, of course, will never happen because ‘do as we say, and as you are told to do, NOT as we do’ is the policy behind all govs.
Mother Theresa, I don’t believe, charged her patients anything and always lived what she preached.
Humans changing a climate… too funny. Any proponent of AGW that cannot see how real scientists are going to get their say and destroy the myth better wake up to reality.
We better hope for more CO2 and we better hope the temp doesn’t fall any more, as has been the case for most of earth’s history…
Ok, KDK… what will future generations think of people like you? You deny 125 years of science as “preposterous” and “too funny,” insult the tens of thousands of scientists who have dedicated their lives to create this body of knowledge as not being “real” scientists, suggest that market-driven innovation should give way to charitable action, and cling to the idea that global temperatures are declining when the decade ending is the hottest ever measured.
I hope you figure out what’s really motivating your attitude soon, because it’s obviously not knowledge of climate science and its implications for human well-being.
I’m rather skeptical about this very optimistic take on the Copenhagen results — China may now be a major “player”, but I’m not sure that they’re planning on actually permitting anything to be done about the problem that in any way might impinge on their own interests. It does not appear that the Chinese “helped” arrive at the Accord – it sounds more like they comprehensively torpedoed meaningful action.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/china-stands-accused-of-wrecking-global-deal-1845911.html
Looking forward to your analysis, Joe.
Naomi Klein has a different take on what went down in Copenhagen:
“(The “deal” that was ultimately rammed through was nothing more than a grubby pact between the world’s biggest emitters: I’ll pretend that you are doing something about climate change if you pretend that I am too. Deal? Deal.)”
This is from an op ed on Huffington Post titled “For Obama, No Opportunity Too Big to Blow”
Her analysis is insightful and raises some interesting questions.
lgcarey: You beat me to it–I was about to post a link to that very same article.
I think it’s clear from every serious analysis of the promised emissions reductions that we’re nowhere near the schedule we need to be on. Climate Interactive has us on course for 3.9C by 2100 increase (which still ignores the 40% of warming that will happen after that date, remember). For the scary graphic, see:
http://climateinteractive.org/scoreboard
The question now becomes: How do we get from where we are to where we need to be? If the accounts of China’s actions in the article lgcarey linked to are accurate, then that country is now a significant hurdle to make that transition. Whether they will change their mind by themselves or there’s some political way to convince them is WAY above my pay grade. But I hope the diplomats and politicians are already on the job.
[JR: Yes, China is currently as big a hurdle as we are, maybe bigger.]
How could you, Joe? Gee, I know this site is run by the [snip]
[JR: I would not have expected you to be pushing the absurd nonsense like this.]
Hi All-
It’s good to see any progress whatsoever.
Remember George Bush?
Contrast that with what Obama has done.
Copenhagen is at least potentially a turning point, I think, and we need to keep pushing to make sure that it is a turning point, cement the pledges in place, and go back for more funding, and funding specifically directed to solving the problem, not to adapting to it.
All of this stuff is good, but the real heavy artillery in this war against climate change will likely end up being BECCS, I think:
What the meagre results of Copenhagen mean can’t be determined yet. Anybody who takes the science seriously knows it isn’t remotely enough to deal with the issue. But we all knew it wouldn’t be, even if we hoped for more than this.
The question is whether the other four countries were convinced to throw some crumbs to Obama because they personally like him, and they don’t really take it seriously, or whether this very modest step could catch momentum. Might it convince enough fence-sitting Senators so we get something from Congress? Might that then help to convince these countries to do more? We have a chicken and egg problem: China and others want to see the US willing to take major steps, but the Congress doesn’t want the US to be the leader, just a part of the pack.
If we’re going to seriously work to getting back to 350 before the oceans do it for us, we’re going to need a series of growing successes and home runs. It’s a lot to hope for, but that seems to be where we’re at.
Further to the “China as spoiler” issue, Yale Enviroment 360 has a post up giving Ed Miliband’s assessment of China’s role in blocking meaningful agreement.
http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2211
I’m not a China basher, but the accounts sure sound plausible. I’d be interested in Joe’s take on all this.
However disappointed we may be in Copenhagen, China, or Obama, let’s never forget the axis of FUD, the fossil fuel billionaires dragging us backwards: David Koch of Koch Industries, Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobil, and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.