HEADS UP: Copenhagen stalls decision on catastrophic climate change for six years

From The Times

December 14, 2009
Copenhagen stalls decision on catastrophic climate change for six years

[link to www.timesonline.co.uk]

The key decision on preventing catastrophic climate change will be delayed for up to six years if the Copenhagen summit delivers a compromise deal which ignores advice from the UN’s science body.

World leaders will not agree on the emissions cuts recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and are likely instead to commit to reviewing them in 2015 or 2016.

The delay will anger developing countries who, scientists say, will face the worst effects of climate change despite having contributed relatively little of the man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

A draft text published by the UN says that there should be a review in 2016, which could result in an “update of the long-term global goal for emissions reductions as well as of the adequacy of commitments and actions”.

The Times has learnt that negotiators from developed countries are planning to use the idea of a review to justify failing to agree the 25-40 per cent cut in the 1990 level of emissions by 2020, recommended by the IPCC.

Even the most ambitious provisional offers made by all the countries amount to a reduction of only 18 per cent.

Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, said leaders would be unable to deliver a deal in line with what the IPCC had recommended.

In an interview yesterday with The Times in Copenhagen, he said: “It would be a big mistake if we failed to get an agreement because we didn’t meet the highest expectations people have.

“Get the agreement, get it under way, and then understand you will inevitably have to change and adjust as you proceed.

“If you actually manage to cut emissions by 18 per cent by 2020, you would have made a very, very big change in the way economies work,” he said, before adding: “Don’t let the best be the enemy of the good.”

A joint report by Mr Blair’s office and the Climate Group, an environmental body backed by some of the world’s biggest companies, including BP, HSBC and Google, said that, even if all the provisional offers were delivered, emissions of CO2 in 2020 would still be 5 billion tonnes higher than the atmosphere could safely accommodate.

This would mean that global temperature would rise more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, with the result that large parts of the world would become uninhabitable.

The joint report, published yesterday, proposed a review of targets in 2015 to allow “scaling up of ambition”.

Countries are unlikely to improve on their provisional offers over the next five days, because the US has made clear it will not be raising its own relatively weak provisional target for cutting emissions.

President Obama has offered to cut US emissions by 4 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020, subject to approval by the US Congress. The EU has committed to a 20 per cent cut over the same time scale, but said it would raise this to 30 per cent if other countries made comparable efforts.

Mr Blair discussed Mr Obama’s offer last week with Todd Stern, the US chief climate negotiator, and agreed that the focus should be on accelerating US emissions cuts in the decade after 2020 rather than before.

Mr Blair said that, while the scientific evidence of man-made global warming was very strong, it was much less clear how quickly temperatures would rise.

“When you come to very precise dates, percentages and so on [. . .] then the figures are somewhat more fudgeable.

“The important thing is to give a clear direction out of this conference. Don’t fixate on the precise percentage,” he said.

A source close to Britain’s negotiating team said Britain would continue to press publicly for a deal in line with the IPCC’s recommendation, but acknowledged that the targets emerging from the summit would need to be reconsidered at a later date.

Bernarditas Muller, lead negotiator for the G77 and China group of developing countries, said putting off the most difficult decisions on emissions cuts would be a betrayal of commitments made by rich countries under the UN Climate Convention.

“Developing countries have the most to lose if we do not agree a just and ambitious outcome in Copenhagen. We are simply asking developed countries, ‘Don’t shirk your responsibilities. Just do what you have already agreed to do under the Climate Convention’.”

Smaller developing countries were excluded yesterday from a meeting in Copenhagen of environment ministers from about 40 countries.

Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said after the meeting: “We’re now getting close to midnight in this negotiation and we need to act like it.

“That means more urgency to solve problems, not just identify them, more willingness to shift from entrenched positions and more ambitious commitments.”

The Prince of Wales will address the summit tomorrow and Gordon Brown will meet other leaders in Copenhagen on Wednesday.

About 120 Prime Ministers and Presidents will attend the final day of the summit on Friday.