The Age of Global Warming: A History (50 page)

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Never Again

If by the end of next week we have not got an ambitious agreement, it will be an indictment of our generation.

Gordon Brown, 7
th
December 2009
[1]

How are we going to look on Friday or Saturday if there are more than a hundred heads of state and government from all over the world and that what we say to the world is it was not possible to come to an agreement?

José Manuel Barroso, 14
th
December 2009
[2]

Battle was joined on the second day. The
Guardian
leaked what quickly became known as the ‘Danish text’, a negotiating draft circulated by the Danes as COP president. 

Sudan’s Lumumba Di-Aping claimed the draft destroyed the Kyoto Protocol and the UN. ‘It sets new obligations for developing countries,’ Di-Aping charged. ‘It does away with two years of negotiations.’
[3]
Oxfam’s Antonio Hill said the draft was a backward step. ‘It tries to put constraints on [emissions in] developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks.’ Andy Atkins for Friends of the Earth called the text profoundly destructive: ‘It violates the principles of UN negotiations.’
[4]

In part, the vehemence was synthetic. ‘Some changes, but nothing earth-shattering,’ a veteran developing country negotiator told the
Earth News Bulletin
.
[5]
For India and China, the thirteen-page document contained two highly objectionable features.

The first was substantive. The parties were to agree that global emissions should peak ‘as soon as possible,’ with 2020 in square brackets as the backstop year and that
global
emissions should be cut by fifty per cent by 2050 (compared to 1990) and by an unspecified X per cent by 2020.
[6]
It set out a vision of long-term cooperative action, under which all parties, except the least developed nations, would have been obliged to take some form of mitigation action, i.e., be subject to limit or reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions.

Developing countries would undertake to reduce their collective emissions compared to business as usual (here the text provided a Y) to peak at a specified date and decline thereafter. On Attachment B, each developing country was to list its proposed actions together with the quantified emissions outcome expected from each action. Attachment B would morph into Appendix II of the Copenhagen Accord, in the process losing its essential feature – quantification.

Their second objection was procedural. The Danish text attempted to bring together in one agreement the two post-Bali streams, the first under the convention and the second under the Kyoto Protocol. The latter enshrined the Berlin Mandate and provided the best defence against the threat of quantified mitigation targets. 

It also had the benefit of keeping the eyes of the world on the performance of Annex I parties in meeting their Kyoto obligations. ‘You will find a huge gap if you make a comparison between their pledges and the actions they have taken so far,’ China’s envoy Yu Qintai observed on the conference’s third day. ‘We have no lack of legal documents, but a lack of sincerity for taking action.’
[7]

It was in the interests of India and China to frustrate post-Bali discussions. Even the EU, wedded as it was to Kyoto, recognised its insufficiency. On the conference’s first day, Sweden, speaking for the bloc, stated that Kyoto alone could not achieve the goal of having emissions peak by 2020 and halve them by 2050 to meet the 2
o
C limit.
[8]
When discussed two days later, India, China and Saudi Arabia opposed a new protocol, with China urging focus on countries implementing their existing Kyoto commitments. 

In an attempt to close down this avenue, the formal discussions on future cooperation under the convention produced an unworkable outcome. ‘The negotiating text evolved into the most complex document in the history of the UNFCCC, with nearly two hundred pages reflecting various proposals by all UNFCCC parties and thousands of brackets indicating areas of disagreement,’ the authoritative
Earth News Bulletin
reported.
[9]
  

Seemingly arcane arguments over whether Copenhagen should produce a unified document or two separate ones in reality were a fight to determine the future of the climate change regime. A unified approach, reflected in the Danish text, would have demolished the Berlin Wall. Two documents meant primacy for the Kyoto Protocol. Because the US was not a party to the Protocol, the first agreement would probably be the last as it would most likely be dead-on-arrival in the United States Senate.

So the G77 plus China lined up foursquare behind Kyoto. ‘The death of the Kyoto Protocol would be the death of Africa,’ declared Ethiopia’s PM Meles Zenawi, speaking for the fifty-three-nation African Union. ‘I have been assured of China’s support and India will probably take the same position.’
[10]
Surprisingly, Ban Ki-moon lent the neutrality of his office to the two documents camp.
*
Until there was a legally binding treaty, ‘The Kyoto Protocol remains the only legally-binding instrument that captures reduction commitments,’ Ban told the conference. ‘As such it must be maintained.’
[11]
    

On the conference’s fourth day, a second front opened, with a skirmish between the US and China over money. China argued that countries like the US had a duty to pay out billions of dollars in compensation to poorer, developing countries. US negotiator Jonathan Pershing rejected China’s demand. ‘If you think about what will be prioritised in terms of the needs of the … poorest countries, the countries that are hardest hit, I wouldn’t start with China.’
[12]

The spat got personal. Responding to a comment by Todd Stern that China was too prosperous to be a recipient of US climate funding, He Yafei expressed shock. ‘I don’t want to say the gentleman [Stern] is ignorant … but I think he lacked common sense … or he’s extremely irresponsible,’ He told a press conference. (Stern later described his comment as ‘a bit unfortunate’, but the position remained the same).
[13]

At stake was one of the key principles of the climate change negotiations. ‘Common but differentiated responsibilities’ runs through the texts as frequently as ‘sustainable development’. Indeed, ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ is mentioned on the first page of the text of the convention and ‘sustainable social and economic development’ on the third. Yet the West and the developing world had a profoundly different understanding as to what it implied. 

  Western negotiators emphasised the ‘common’ part of the formulation and interpreted responsibilities to mean forward-looking obligations, an interpretation supported in the convention which goes on immediately to speak of countries’ ‘respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions.’ As the West is richer, it is more capable of taking action. As developing countries become wealthier, they too can assume greater responsibilities. 

Developing nations emphasised ‘differentiated’. For them, responsibility is historic – the nations who had been responsible for increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are the ones obliged to take action. Developing nations could also point to the convention. Its third paragraph states:

the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries, that per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low and that the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs.
[14]

At a meeting with journalists in Copenhagen, China’s He Yafei argued that history was the basis on which the negotiations could move forward:

For developed countries, they have to face the history squarely. The obligations for developed countries to live up to their commitments in emission reduction and the provision of funds and technology transfer, is an obligation they have undertaken … The key, the prerequisite, for a successful Copenhagen conference, is that developed countries need to live up to their responsibilities.
[15]

On America’s denial of China’s eligibility for climate change funding, it was as if

all of us are sitting for dinner, we finish the main course, and then comes the dessert. The poor man walks in and sits down and has dessert. And we say right, you have to pay for the meal.
[16]

Was China like the poor guy being slapped with the bill?

We still have over one hundred and fifty million people under the poverty line, according to UN standards. If you care to go into the interior parts of China, the south-western parts of China, you will see lots of poverty.  So poverty reduction – to provide a better life for Chinese people – is and will be the priority for the Chinese government.
[17]

Whatever the outcome of Copenhagen, He warned, it should not be done at the expense of the rights to development by developing countries.

Yet the US and the EU and other Western nations were adamant that in some way or another, developing countries would have to limit and then reverse the growth of their greenhouse gas emissions. Was there any way of bridging the divide, perhaps with ‘green growth’? Takers for that proposition were hard to come by.

As each day passed, expectations were downgraded. Before the start of the COP, the possibility of Copenhagen producing a treaty text was replaced with the aim of a strong political declaration with a firm timetable to a treaty before 2010 was out. 

On 15
th
December, Pope Benedict XVI sent a World Peace Day plea. ‘It is indeed important to recognise, among the causes of the current ecological crisis, the historic responsibility of the industrialised countries.’
[18]

The next day, Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s environment minister, resigned as COP president. Her handling of the conference had not been a success. In 2010, she was appointed the EU’s first climate change commissioner, where she endeavoured to start a trade war with China by extending the EU Emissions Trading Scheme to international airlines. 

Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen took over.  His debut as COP president was peppered with hostile interventions challenging the status of the texts proposed by the Danish presidency. It was an issue of ‘trust between the host country and parties’, China said, noting that the process had not been transparent.
[19]

That afternoon, the working group on long-term cooperative action under the convention held its closing plenary. It was chaired by the convention’s first and longest serving executive secretary, Michael Zammit Cutajar. So many changes had been suggested that it would not be possible to prepare texts in time for the COP plenary two days later, Zammit Cutajar said. His proposal that the entire package be adopted as ‘unfinished business’ was accepted.
[20]
  

If this group wasn’t going to produce a text, who was?

A day later, with world leaders gathering in Copenhagen, Angela Merkel voiced her fears. ‘The news reaching us is not good.’
[21]
A sense of foreboding spread through the delegations. ‘There are more than one hundred and thirty leaders here. If they cannot seal a deal, who can?’ asked Ban Ki-moon.
[22]
‘I believe in God. I believe in miracles,’ Brazil’s President Lula declared the next day.
[23]

The outside world had little inkling how badly things were going. The Danes ensured that the country delegations were hermetically sealed from the NGOs and the media. According to ITN’s Jon Snow, covering the conference for Channel 4 News, tight security made it very difficult to doorstop conference participants. So the media relied on NGOs, who didn’t know either, and Yvo de Boer, whose press briefings seemed perpetually upbeat.
[24]

The West had one more card to play. ‘It was unforgettable political theatre,’ reported the
Independent
’s Michael McCarthy. ‘Like a poker player with a sudden new bet, the power-dressed Mrs Clinton changed the game instantly as she pulled her gigantic sum out of the US back pocket.’
[25]
The United States, announced Clinton, was willing to work with other countries towards a goal of mobilising $100 billion a year by 2020 – conditional on all major economies standing behind ‘meaningful mitigation actions’.
[26]

The message was clear – and it wasn’t subtle: an extra $100 billion a year for Africa if China capitulated; not a cent if it didn’t. In any case, it was made up of funny money – ‘public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance’, Clinton said in her speech.
[27]
  As an administration official explained, ‘The private sector is going to be the engine that drives all this.’ In other words, flows which in all likelihood would be happening anyway, so much of it wouldn’t be additional money. ‘A lot of this is not aid in the traditional sense of aid,’ the official said.
[28]
  How could it be otherwise, given that the West’s public finances had been shot to pieces? Republican congressional leaders said they would introduce a ‘disapproval resolution’. Republican House leader John Boehner commented, ‘The administration wants to give billions in US taxpayer dollars we don’t have to other countries.’
[29]

On the last Thursday of the COP, there was a high-level segment for speeches by world leaders. Gordon Brown, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was biblical. ‘Hurricanes, floods, typhoons and droughts that were once all regarded as the acts of an invisible god are now revealed to be also the visible acts of man,’ Brown said.
[30]
His talks during the week had convinced him that while reaching agreement was difficult, there was, ‘no insurmountable [sic] wall of division’ that prevented agreement.

Where Brown was declamatory, Angela Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, was earnest, more of a ‘let’s all hold hands’ homily than a sermon. ‘We need to help each other. But we also need to stand ready to change our way of living, our lifestyle.’
[31]
Renewable energy was ‘so important’. Germany and the European Union were ready and willing to ‘open their arms’ to take the negotiations forward and reach agreement so that world leaders could face the world on Friday and be able to say they had got the message: ‘Life cannot go on as it was. The world needs to change.’

Jabbing the air, French President Nicolas Sarkozy harangued delegates. ‘A failure in Copenhagen would be a catastrophe for each and every one of us,’ he said.
[32]
Much of it was directed against China. ‘Who could dare to say they should be against giving money to the poorest countries?’ He was crude. If there wasn’t an agreement, ‘Let me say to my African friends, you’ll be the first to suffer from it.’ Without naming them, he dared the Chinese to come to the podium. ‘Who would dare say that the poor countries of Asia should be treated the same way as Brazil and China, the giants of tomorrow?’ He railed: ‘
Mes chers amis
, time is short. Let’s stop posturing.’ It was pretty desperate.

Even as the Europeans spoke of the perils and dangers of climate change, a rumble from Europe’s periphery betokened a real crisis. During the conference’s first week, credit rating agency Fitch had cut Greece’s rating to BBB+ with negative outlook the day after Standard & Poor’s said it was considering downgrading Greece.
[33]