A two-edged sword lurks under President Barack Obama’s sudden decision to attend the Copenhagen talks on climate change. Just a few hours ago the United Nations Climate Change Conference seemed headed to muddle and failure. Obama’s presence on December 9 gives a welcome boost but it could also bring ignominy upon the President if he cannot knock heads together.
The Copenhagen meet is the main stepping stone to renewal of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in 2012. This is a hot button issue in the running battles between believers and skeptics of climate change impacts and how the economic burden of remedies should be shared between the US, Europe and emerging nations like China, Brazil and India.
The Kyoto Protocol, which has been signed and ratified by 187 countries, commits 37 industrialized countries and the European community to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012. It is an addition to the earlier UN Framework Convention on Climate Change concluded at the 1992 Earth Summit.
Many countries have severely criticized the US for years because it stands outside the Protocol although it causes over 36% of 1990 emission levels. Obama’s decision now offers the audacity to hope. But the mountains are not easy to climb in just a few days after more than a decade of foot dragging.
Experts say Copenhagen will fail unless some essentials are agreed. The most important is by how much the US and Europe will reduce greenhouse emissions. What they do depends in large part on whether China and India will limit emissions.
How the developing countries act will be determined partly by the financial and technical help they get from the West. Even if the several hundred billion dollars necessary were to be appear, knotty questions remain about who will manage the money.
Obama’s decision to attend Copenhagen may indicate a backroom deal with India during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit but complex international conferences have a way of slipping out of control. Historically, the West caused about 80% of the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. Since 1950, the U.S. has emitted about 51 billion tons of carbon, compared to about 16 and 4 billion tons by China and India respectively. Of course, those numbers will increase as the years advance.
Rich countries house 20% of the world’s population but cause over 60 percent of carbon emissions. Poor countries say they should not be asked to make sacrifices before people in the West work seriously to end their profligacy. For example, each American causes carbon emissions over 20 times higher than a person in India, 12 times higher than Brazil and seven times higher than China.
Obama’s decision to attend Copenhagen may be a political gambit born of his team’s desire to build him up the person trying to save the world from climate disaster. If so, he might end with pie on his face because negotiating positions are so far apart that even the organizers, who are paid to sound optimistic, are voicing trepidation.
The US team includes five Secretaries and several other top officials but what they bring to the table is a 17% reduction target below 2005 levels in 2020 expanding to 42% in 2030 and 83% in 2050. These targets are already contained in legislation before Congress making it look as if the White House is trying to use Copenhagen as part of its domestic agenda to put pressure for quicker passage.
If Obama fails to enchant Copenhagen, Congress may see that as an international community refusal to play ball. Accusations that he talks better than he delivers will become louder and passage of the domestic energy and climate bills may become harder.