What You Need to Know Following the International Climate Change Summit
President Barack Obama leaves the podium after addressing the High Level Plenary meeting on Climate Change in Copenhagen on Friday, December 18, 2009. This post is by CAP’s Rebecca Lefton, Andrew Light, and Daniel J. Weiss.
The international negotiations on climate change wrapped up December 19 in Copenhagen. The conference achieved an interim agreement, known as the Copenhagen Accord, which could put the major polluting nations on a pathway to reducing global warming pollution, and it continues to set the expectation for U.S. domestic action on climate change.
Much work remains, but there were also numerous notable achievements and meaningful insights into how the United States can gain from leading the world toward a new international clean-energy agreement.
A “meaningful” deal on climate mitigation
President Barack Obama left Copenhagen Friday night after personally working to secure agreement from China, South Africa, Brazil, and India on a “meaningful and unprecedented” climate change agreement. The president played a major role in crafting the Copenhagen Accord that was hammered out by 28 countries and accepted by 188 by the end of the meeting. Only five countries””Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Sudan””refused the accord.
The accord will go forward with committed parties now required to submit national action plans for emission reductions by the end of January 2010 that are consistent with the agreement’s stated goal of limiting global temperature increases from carbon pollution from rising to more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Farenheit) over pre-industrial levels.
The accord stipulates that countries should consider further strengthening this goal by limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Further specific targets are not iterated in the accord and need to be added as soon as possible, but most parties are committed to strengthening it and taking the next step to turn it into a binding agreement by the 2010 U.N. climate summit in Mexico City.
The existing and proposed policies by the nations that produce large amounts of greenhouse gas pollution provide a good start toward the pollution cuts that we need. The accord allows nations to undertake a full range of policies that reduce pollution, rather than limiting qualifying policies to economy-wide pollution caps. Preliminary results from a Center for American Progress report on carbon cap equivalents using recent data from Project Catalyst finds that current and pending policies among the world’s 17 major carbon polluters will yield 65 percent of reductions needed by 2020 if all parties succeed in doing what they have promised to do as of today.
Responsibility from developing countries
The Kyoto Protocol called on developed countries to reduce emissions but did not demand reductions from developing countries. Major polluting developing countries, including China, India, South Africa, and Brazil, are now poised to make transparent emissions reductions or reductions in pollution rates. This is the first time that developing countries have agreed to binding emission reductions in an international agreement. This represents a major shift from the schism between developed and developing countries that blocked progress in the past.
First-ever compromise to measure, report, and verify pollution reductions
The accord includes a compromise between the United States and China to verify pollution reductions according to rigorous and transparent guidelines depending on the source of financing for the reductions. All reductions are subject to “international consultation and analysis.” As a New York Times editorial observed, “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.”
Serious emissions reductions targets for developing countries
The ramp up to Copenhagen and the United States’ decision to put midterm emission reductions targets and immediate financing numbers on the table prior to the start of the summit stimulated unprecedented national commitments from key countries. China announced on November 26 a target of reducing carbon pollution per unit of gross domestic product by 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Soon after the U.S.-India summit in Washington, India announced on December 2 that it intends to decrease its carbon intensity 24 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. More importantly, other clean-energy and climate policies in both countries will result in reductions in China of 13 percent below business-as-usual emissions by 2020 and 19 percent below business as usual emissions in India by 2020.
Major financial commitments
Developed countries committed significantly more financial resources than ever before to developing countries for mitigation, adaptation, and forest conservation. This was despite disappointments in negotiations over an international forestry deal and an international technology transfer regime. Developments include:
- The accord establishes a “fast start” fund to provide $30 billion from 2010-2012 for assistance to developing countries, including funds for forestry and a commitment to mobilizing $100 billion a year to address the needs of developing countries by 2020. Japan said that it will provide $15 billion through 2012 toward the fast start fund, contingent on achieving an international agreement. And E.U. leaders will provide $10.5 billion over the next three years as part of the fund. The United States promised a fair share of meeting this goal. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the United States’ funding is contingent on a commitment by developing nations to make emission reductions transparent.
- The United States will finance $1 billion for avoided deforestation that will be matched by other countries for a total of $3.5 billion to prevent the destruction of tropical forests. The global goal is to cut deforestation by half by 2020, which would be equal to eliminating emissions from the entire global transportation sector.
- Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the launch of the Renewables and Efficiency Deployment Initiative, or Climate REDI, which will contribute $85 million to a global fund of $350 million over five years to assist developing nations with adoption of clean-energy technology. Secretary Chu also announced 10 new clean-energy technology road maps under the Global Partnership, which was launched during the Major Economies Forum in July in L’Aquila, Italy.
A boost to passage of U.S. climate change legislation
As the Washington Post editorial board observed, the Copenhagen accord “should prod the U.S. Senate to take up climate-change legislation.” President Obama said that we should meet our commitment to reduce pollution, not only because the science demands it, but because it offers enormous economic opportunity to build new clean-energy companies. This first step in Copenhagen commits the United States to passing legislation to make way for an international binding agreement. It is time for the U.S. Senate to continue its international leadership role by acting in 2010, which would create millions of jobs, secure energy independence, and boost the economy.
The primary international opponents of the Copenhagen Accord are oil states
The leading voices of opposition to the sccord came from Venezuela, Sudan, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba. The first three nations are oil-producing states that would lose major revenue if countries reduce their global warming pollution by using less oil. The latter two nations are clients of Venezuela that must curry favor with their patron. The ability of a handful of petro-states to block the accord from being endorsed by the entire U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change at Copenhagen suggests the flawed nature of the United Nations process that requires unanimity among 193 nations. Their opposition will not stop those signing onto the accord from moving forward and carrying out its mandate, but many observers believe that the outcome of this meeting suggests that alternative venues, such as the Major Economies Forum, which includes the world’s largest developed and developing nations polluters, can and should play a larger role in the design and implementation of future agreements.
Rebecca Lefton is a Researcher for Progressive Media, Andrew Light is a Senior Fellow, and Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress.
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No one in Copenhagen was saying much about the colossal threat that is posed to humanity by the skyrocketing growth of human population numbers on Earth.
Despite the unfortunate, inhumane ways a “ONE CHILD PER FAMILY” policy was implemented in China, the policy could be vital for the future of humankind and life as we know it in our planetary home. The immediate, free, universal and compassionate implementation of a voluntary “one child per family” policy could decisively limit adverse, human-driven impacts on Earth’s body and its environs, and do so more powerfully than any other conceivable human intervention.
Given the already visible, converging global threats to human wellbeing and environmental health that are presented to the family of humanity in our time, the humane implementation of one child per family could be an indispensible centerpiece of a set of adequately designed, actionable programs that serve to actually rescue a good enough future for the children and coming generations.
If a root cause of the global threats on humanity’s horizon now is the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers, our willful denial of this primary cause could make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the children to reasonably address and sensibly overcome these threats. Then the children are likely being directed down a “primrose path” to confront some unimaginable kind of ecological wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias has seen. The children will not understand why the catastrophe is occurring. Because their elders refused to acknowledge the best available scientific evidence of human population dynamics and, therewith, adequately “diagnose” the distinctly human-induced global predicament all of us face now, the children will not know what hit them, why it is happening, and what is required of them so as not to commit the same mistakes made by the elders.
This is only a guess but please note the likelihood that history will not be kind to the woefully inadequate leaders in my not-so-great generation of arrogant, extremely foolish and avaricious elders.
Population growth is a serious issue that affects many environmental boundaries besides climate. However, regarding climate, it seems clear that a much larger threat is unbridled growth of absolute consumption by those wealthy enough to afford it – overconsumption patterns of a small minority of the world population produces an incredibly disproportional amount of global CO2 pollution. See Fred Pearce’s excellent summary of the problem: Consumption Dwarfs Population as Main Environmental Threat
http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2140
Dear lgcarey,
Can you see that the global predicament before humanity does not appear to provide us with the luxury of picking the global threat that suits us? Conspicuous per-capita overconsumption and the gigantic scale of the global human population are both problems that must be acknowledged, addressed and overcome. We are not presented with an “either/or” situation.
Sincerely,
Steve
I agree with both of you, it is both population and increased standard of living – both dictate more energy consumption. However, in the US our standard of living should not go up while in some of Africa, it should. I wonder how some people can see Copenhagen as a success.
I especially wonder how was it possible that Chancellor Angela Markel, of Germany, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of England, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France could offer at Copenhagen to reduce their greenhouse gases by 30% by 2020 while President Barak Obama can offer only 5% reduction?
It is because the European leaders have the support of their people and president Obama does not have it.
Why? Because the Europeans are more global citizens; they have suffered through many wars, they are not naïve, and they are also more interested and more aware of the rest of the world. However, the majority of our American people are nice, simple, caring people, but they are also quite naïve. We have had it quite easy. We did not suffer any destruction from the time of our civil war, and even during WWII our losses were the least by far of any major participant in the war. And our economy benefited from the war effort. We think we are special and invincible.
The problem is not primarily lack of knowledge and understanding of facts by many of our leaders. It is also, or may be mostly, an emotional and psychological dilemma. It is very hard to acknowledge within your own soul that humanity is on a verge of irreparable damage. It took me several years before this reality broke my own emotional resistance; and I have been educated as an environmental scientist. I also have been aware of global warming for decades and spent years developed alternative energies against it.
From the ending of the last ice age we had it relatively easy. We never experienced any global danger of this magnitude before. It is not only Republicans that deny GW, many Democrats in Congress and across the country are more interested in their reelection than the survival of humanity. They are unable to grasp reality. It is not that they are bad people, they are too limited, too self absorbed, and do not have enough courage to brake with their ”business as usual” mode. In the same time we have some outstanding industry leaders that are willing to be pioneers and stake their position and income to push for a more aggressive fight against global warming, such as the presidents of Duke Power and PG&E utilities.
I believe our president is not able to grasp the full reality of global warming despite the advice of some good people around him. He may understand it intellectually but when it is critical to act and go beyond his political comfort zone, he is not willing to risk his political future to fully alert the American people to the danger we are facing. His political advisers are not grasping the global reality yet.
It is not sufficient to be better than president Bush. President Obama did not show yet the characteristics of a leader of substance, and of a leader suitable to these critical times.
We are not willing to accept that global warming is posing real danger to all the people of the world. Even those who are against global warming have been doing little to change the political status-quo. They have not gone beyond their comfort zone to protest, to create massive political pressure or any thing else that would make a difference. They feel good that they are against global warming. But beyond a small minority of activists do you see any great movement doing anything of substance? I do not.
America is such a vast country it is hard to see beyond it.. We are so focused on our own community, state and country as if the rest of the world does not exist. Most of the American public is unsophisticated, and unaware of what is going on in the rest of the world. At the same time poles find that we are now have the most isolationists’ attitude from the time of WWII. We do not grasp within our guts that global warming has no boundaries and we are all in the same boat.
We have been accustomed to think that the American strength will get us everything, from the latest
I Phone to an easy conquest of Iraq. After all we have the strongest military power in the world, and we have the largest economy. But we also are the most lied to, mislead people on earth both by business and our own government and politicians. No wonder we regress to be so self-centered, so self-involved we can not see nor accept reality.
And the power of money (essentially legal bribes) in our politics is so powerful, Congress can not pass any meaningful bill that benefits the majority of the people.
I just watched again a two hour documentary on the US Advertisement Industry. Amazing how they have developed the most appealing, powerful mind-bending approaches to force us to buy almost anything they want to sell us. We are so much lied to in business, so many in the banking and real estate business justify their lies by: “every body does it” that it was natural for many of us to participate in the mass lies that produce the financial collapse of the last few years. The financial industry used the same tools if bending facts to mislead people to buy and commit and speculated to such an extent that the economy tanked. But the people on the top remain very wealthy.
And the problem with global warming is that our politicians and leaders across much of the country are using the same proven techniques to mislead us to believe whatever they want to.
As long as we will continue to be so self absorbed, so uninterested in the reality around us, so unaware of the world beyond the US, then our destiny would be to be the most disliked country on earth, and with a good reason, we are not willing to reduce our standard of living one iota to allow some of the poorest people on earth to have just one decent meal daily.
WE are not so strong any longer and our unwillingness to participate in the fight against global warming will backfire on us from all sides.
The physical world will survive with much higher temperatures but the people will suffer endlessly unless we cut our greenhouse gases drastically and soon. And we are the country that emitted the maximum amount to date and that continue to emit some twenty tones of CO2 per person per year. If China did that it would emit four times what it emits today. And four and a half times more than we do now.
What is the answer?
The US must cut its emissions of all GHG by at least 30% by 2020 as the Europeans are willing to do. We have so much energy waste that it is not too difficult to do it if our political system pass the right laws without catering to the interests of the coal and power industry, but the interest of humanity.
We can not escape from our responsibility and let the global climate deteriorate even more rapidly than it does now. Our leaders must rise to the occasion, and I do not know how to force them unless we get involved in political pressure on a wide scale. No environmental organization has done anything of substance in this area yet. Only their leadership is involved as if mass grassroots pressure is ineffective or not possible to create.
It would be impracticable to wait until the general public sees and grasps the damage and then panic into action. It would be too late to reverse the escalating climate deterioration.
Wow! Dr. Ginosar has said the obvious about our U.S. reality concerning the Copenhagen Accord! I believe Obama and his advisors think that Obama needs to strengthen his political position here at home before taking on the global warming fight. When the Health Care bill is signed, we will quickly find out if Obama can lead us to a significant role in CO2 reductions. If not, then the planet is in severe trouble. It is not sufficient for Europe alone to try so hard with clean energy and excellent CO2 reductions goals. If the U.S. and India and China fail to make significant reductions soon then the world fails.
I have commented several times in these columns over the months that we must march on Washington; we must demonstrate in the streets. Nobel prize winning scientists signing petitions have not worked. Endless Internet blogs have not worked. Excellent U.N. documents have not worked. The amazing movie and books by Al Gore have not worked. The public must be stirred to action just like it was to elect Obama. It will take grass-roots political action – we need a Green Party coup!
I thought the Copenhagen Accords were considered a failure. Didn’t UN Chair Ban Kee Moon (sp?) as much as admit that?
[JR: Many disagree with that assessment.]
Apparently, the “per-capita CO2 emissions” are not taken in consideration. 7 billion people consuming like Africa is one thing, 1 billion consuming like an average US citizen or a upper middle class Brazilian is another issue.