What is the Copenhagen climate change summit?
The UN meeting is the deadline for thrashing out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, with the aim of preventing dangerous global warming. It will run for two weeks from Dec. 7 and is the latest in a series that trace their origins to the 1992 Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro.
What’s the bottom line?
Climate scientists are convinced the world must stop the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and start making them fall very soon. To have a chance of keeping warming under the dangerous 2ºC mark, cuts of 25 percent to 40 percent relative to 1990 levels are needed, rising to 80 percent to 95 percent by 2050. So far, the offers on the table are way below these targets.
Who should make the cuts?
That is a crunch issue. The industrialized nations such as the US, the UK, Japan and others have emitted by far the most carbon and still emit vast amounts per person, so have a responsibility to make the deep cuts scientists demand. But emissions from emerging economies such as China and India are surging, and any global limit on emissions needs curbs on those nations, too. Yet, per person, those nations have small carbon footprints and millions of people in deep poverty. So China, India and others can argue they need to be allowed to continue to pollute for a while as they improve their citizens’ lives. Balancing the responsibilities for cuts is a key part of the negotiations.
Who is going to pay?
The other crunch issue. There is an argument that, in the long term, a low-carbon economy will be cheaper than a fossil-fueled one. But time is short and there will be costs in the near term. All agree that the poorest nations need urgent help. Citizens in places from Haiti to Sudan to Bangladesh have done virtually nothing to pollute the atmosphere, but are bearing the worst impacts of floods and droughts. Richer nations will need to pay billions. It will also cost a lot to build the global clean energy infrastructure essential to staunch the carbon from coal and gas power stations. For the fast emerging economies, such as India, the ideal is to go straight to renewables and perhaps nuclear power. Again, rich nations will be expected to pick up the tab. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the EU have suggested US$100 billion a year from 2020 would cover the global climate change bill. But estimates from development groups reach up to four times that amount. Finding a figure that all nations accept is the second key part of the negotiations.
What about carbon trading?
In theory, buying permits to pollute from those who can cut their emissions most cheaply is attractive. From one perspective, however, this kind of offsetting simply looks like paying poorer people to clear up the mess left by the rich, who can then continue to pollute. Also, if carbon trading is to cut real emissions, the cap set on the market has to be tight and, to date, political imperatives have overridden those of the planet. Nonetheless, carbon trading will remain at the heart of any treaty.
Is stopping deforestation an easier way to cut emissions?
Stopping deforestation is, in principle, cheap and simple: do not cut them down. But paying people — via carbon credits — not to fell trees soon becomes complex. Who really owns the trees? Were they going to be chopped down anyway? And how do you verify what actually happens?
RSS