Obamas Unprecedented Climate Accord Delays Solutions to 2010
The accord, which pushes off signing a treaty for at least a year, is “a first step,” Obama said yesterday before leaving Copenhagen, where he spent 14 hours cobbling together the agreement in meetings with world leaders, and addressing 8,000 envoys from 193 nations.
Delegates from those countries failed to reach consensus on the accord today after discussing it through the night, agreeing instead to “take note” of the document, or recognize that it exists. The agreement seeks cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions that scientists blame for global warming without binding countries to take action.
“The meeting was a disaster,” Lars-Erik Liljelund, the director general of Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldts office, said in an interview today. “The process needs to be changed because if we continue like this, we wont be any further a year from now.”
Negotiators met in the Danish capital for two weeks of United Nations talks on curbing global warming. Debate stumbled on aid to developing countries facing damage from climate change, pollution-reduction goals and how to verify individual countrys pledges to cut harmful emissions.
Environmentalists said the agreement that includes the U.S. and China — the worlds two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases — falls well short of whats needed to deal with global warming. Bolivia, Sudan and Venezuela were among countries that spoke out against the accord, which will serve as a framework for continuing talks in 2010.
Backroom Deal
“This is the United Nations and the nations here are not united on this secret backroom declaration,” Kate Horner, policy analyst for the London-based environmental group Friends of the Earth, said in statement. “Copenhagen has been an abject failure.”
The proposal calls for voluntary steps to reduce emissions blamed for heating the atmosphere, melting icecaps and causing destructive weather patterns. For two years, nations from China to members of the 27-country European Union repeatedly called for a binding treaty to be signed in Copenhagen.
“It will not be legally binding, but what it will do is allow for each country to show to the world what they are doing,” Obama told reporters in Copenhagen. “There will be a sense on the part of each country that were in this together and well know who is meeting and whos not meeting the mutual obligations that have been set forth.”
Pledges?
Rich countries offered to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations reduce carbon emissions, which is conditional on developing countries cutting gas discharges, according to the text. They may also pay out $30 billion in aid from next year through 2012.
The agreement was reached after President Barack Obama had last-minute talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and South African President, Jacob Zuma in Copenhagen today. It was then taken to all nations and most backed it.
“There emerged over time a real sense in the room that most countries wanted to move forward with some kind of decision,” said Ruben Kraiem, co-chair of the climate practice for attorneys Covington & Burling LLP in New York.
Well Short
Nations should try to keep the global temperature increase before industrialization “below 2 degrees” Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the agreement. Envoys from the U.S., Europe and China have supported the 2 degrees target. Poorer nations and environmental groups wanted 1 or 1.5 degrees, fearing a higher increase will raise sea levels and make coastal cities and some island states uninhabitable.
“As President Obama said, its well short of whats ultimately needed,” Elliot Diringer, vice president for international strategies at Arlington, Virginia-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said in a statement. “But it would provide a reasonable basis for negotiating a fair and effective climate treaty.”
Without emissions curbs, temperatures would rise by 6 degrees Celsius, an increase that “would lead almost certainly to massive climatic change,” the International Energy Agency, an advisor to 28 oil-consuming nations, said in a report. A more-than-2-degree warming will bring more intense flooding and drought and a faster sea-level increase, according to the UN.
Hard to Define