Our own Greens Senator Christine Milne reports back on the progress of the Copenhagen climate talks, and where to from here.
Tremendous progress was made at Copenhagen – but it wasn’t by the world leaders who came for a photo opportunity and left with egg all over their faces. It was by those who have for too long been on the sidelines – civil society and the countries on the frontline of the climate crisis – in pointing the way to a safe climate and demonstrating how far mainstream debate is from that path.
Civil society has a big task ahead. Having demonstrated its power and its momentum in the final weeks of 2009 with massive protests across the globe, civil society must mobilise to drive our leaders towards meaningful emissions targets and financing commitments if a substantive deal is to be reached in the next 12 months.
The agreement that world leaders reached in Copenhagen, in essence, was that they lack the will to really do what it takes to prevent climate crisis.
They can all articulate the challenge that we face. They can all stand up and tell a room what they are doing. But almost no leader of a country with a sizable greenhouse footprint, with the exception of Brazil’s Lula da Silva, is willing to stand up and offer to do more than they see as the absolute minimum they think they can get away with.
The superficial last-minute statement with financial sweetener that was “noted” by the conference late in the night gives us no substantive progress on the critical issue of cutting emissions. It takes us no further, really, than the statements out of the G8 and G20 in 2008 and 2009.
What it does do, in the context of the warnings from scientists and the actions of developing countries like Tuvalu at the Conference, is highlight how weak the promises of action from the developed world really are. The targets on the table simply cannot deliver the stated 2C goal, which is now perceived by many as already too weak.
The political statements of leaders from Kevin Rudd to Barack Obama claiming to aim at limiting warming to 2C and carbon concentrations of 450 ppm have no basis in reality. The emission reduction commitments currently on the table have been calculated to add up to global atmospheric carbon concentrations of approximately 750 ppm.
That means 4C average global temperature rise by the end of the century, agricultural wipeout, mass extinctions and almost certain runaway heating of the planet.
This is a point that G77 representative, Lumumba Di-Aping, underscored at Copenhagen, telling ABC’s Radio Australia that:
“The message Kevin Rudd is giving to his people, his citizens, is a fabrication, it’s fiction.”
The near collapse of the talks several times over the fortnight was very largely due to the complete failure of developed world leaders to understand the depth of global commitment to real action on the climate crisis. They completely misread the commitment of the developing world to the Kyoto Protocol structures – which has binding targets for developed countries but not developing countries – and to the serious emissions reduction targets needed to deliver a safe climate. This time, given that their survival was at stake, the option of buying off the developing world with last minute offers of billions of dollars was never going to work.
The rich world demanded compromises from the developing world but offered none itself, giving China the opportunity to use its geopolitical clout in many developing nations to ensure that they held the line on maintaining the Kyoto Protocol.
The developing world was never going to be willing to be taken for a ride at Copenhagen. This has been obvious for at least 12 months. But leaders paid no attention to repeated warnings. I made the point last December, when the Rudd Government released its emissions trading white paper, that the woeful 5-15% cuts would undermine global action and that is exactly what has come to pass.
Kevin Rudd should be held personally responsible, as he said he would be, not only for refusing to do what everyone knows is necessary, but also for trying to bully those who wanted a real deal into accepting his greenwash. His speech to the conference plenary session was, in Shakespeare’s words, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.
I guess that’s what we today might call “all spin and no substance”.
The critical issues at Copenhagen were always going to be the adequacy of targets and financing put on the table by the developed world, and we needed to see both lifted dramatically if any progress was to be made. Instead, Mr Rudd’s negotiators used the conference to undermine their woefully weak commitments on both these issues even further through attempting to create more land use, change loopholes and moving to undermine the Kyoto framework.
I am sure it was not clear to most Australians throughout the debate on Mr Rudd’s emissions trading scheme that the 5-25 % emission reduction target was never going to be achieved through emissions trading. In fact, domestic energy emissions under the scheme were not projected to fall until 2034. The Government’s secret to achieving its weak targets was to be focussed on Copenhagen and a bid to try to change the rules on how emissions from land use change and forestry are accounted for so as to deliver a windfall gain.
The key loophole involves hiding emissions from logging native forests and plantations by developing a controversial new methodology. What Australian negotiators wanted to do was to project forward our business as usual emissions from logging and only account for any emissions above that scenario. As long as we don’t log any more than we say we have planned to log, we can pretend we’re not logging at all. Now there’s a rort.
Tuvalu, the mouse that roared, has put onto the global stage in the strongest possible terms the basic reality that the 450 ppm target and 2C limit that had become orthodoxy is completely inadequate based on current science. For their own survival, the Tuvaluans are demanding a 350 ppm target, consistent with the recommendations of NASA’s James Hansen and other top climate scientists.
Of course, the Tuvaluans and other small island and least developed states who joined them see clearer than the rest of us because they are that much closer to the edge. But the truth behind their position is that the 350 target is critical for all of us on this planet.
The necessary impact of a shift to 350 is to require much deeper cuts from developed nations - 45% below 1990 by 2020 and heading swiftly towards zero carbon - as well as serious commitments from the larger and richer developing nations. Hence the proposal, hailed by some NGOs as the “Tuvalu Protocol”, to extend the Kyoto Protocol to include legally binding obligations on those latter countries such as China, India and Venezuela.
The immediate implication of Tuvalu’s intercession was received in the mainstream as a split in the G77. But it was also received with delight by the huge civil society presence at the conference, with spontaneous chanting of “3-5-0, Tuvalu” erupting across the centre and the city.
What Tuvalu’s intercession demonstrated is that developed and large developing countries alike must put some serious commitments on the table if those countries on the climate front line are to sign up. Mr Rudd’s response was to try to bully them into submission instead.
After this point, a global agreement at Mexico City that still includes numbers such as 450 ppm, 2C and developed world cuts as low as 15 or even 25% - if such an agreement can even be reached - can only be construed as failure.
There is only one way to rescue this process before 2010’s conferences in Bonn and Mexico City. And that is for countries like Australia to recognise that their targets do not even match the 2C goal, let alone the stronger 1.5C agreement proposed by the most vulnerable countries in the world, and to lift their sights to what is necessary. Australia’s actions in this election year are critical going towards the Mexico City conference: if we take on deep cuts, allocate financing and stop cheating in negotiations, we can have a tremendously positive impact. Otherwise, we will continue to hold the world back.
Copenhagen has raised the stakes hugely. It is now up to civil society to hold our leaders to account and ensure that they act at least according to what they say, and preferably lift their sights higher.