Copenhagen negotiators bicker and filibuster while the biosphere burns

George Monbiot despairs at the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous climate summit

• • George Monbiot in Copenhagen

A journalist reads the latest draft of the Copenhagen Accord at the climate summit. Photograph: Anja Niedringhaus/AP

First they put the planet in square brackets, now they have deleted it from the text. At the end it was no longer about saving the biosphere: it was just a matter of saving face. As the talks melted down, everything that might have made a new treaty worthwhile was scratched out. Any deal would do, as long as the negotiators could pretend they have achieved something. A clearer and less destructive treaty than the text that emerged would be a sheaf of blank paper, which every negotiating party solemnly sits down to sign.

This was the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous summit. The event has been attended by historic levels of incompetence. Delegates arriving from the tropics spent 10 hours queueing in sub-zero temperatures without shelter, food or drink, let alone any explanation or announcement, before being turned away. Some people fainted from exposure; it's surprising that no one died. The process of negotiation was just as obtuse: there was no evidence here of the innovative methods of dispute resolution developed recently by mediators and coaches, just the same old pig-headed wrestling.

Watching this stupid summit via webcam (I wasn't allowed in either), it struck me that the treaty-making system has scarcely changed in 130 years. There's a wider range of faces, fewer handlebar moustaches, frock coats or pickelhaubes, but otherwise, when the world's governments try to decide how to carve up the atmosphere, they might have been attending the conference of Berlin in 1884. It's as if democratisation and the flowering of civil society, advocacy and self-determination had never happened. Governments, whether elected or not, without reference to their own citizens let alone those of other nations, assert their right to draw lines across the global commons and decide who gets what. This is a scramble for the atmosphere comparable in style and intent to the scramble for Africa.

At no point has the injustice at the heart of multilateralism been addressed or even acknowledged: the interests of states and the interests of the world's people are not the same. Often they are diametrically opposed. In this case, most rich and rapidly developing states have sought through these talks to seize as great a chunk of the atmosphere for themselves as they can – to grab bigger rights to pollute than their competitors. The process couldn't have been better designed to produce the wrong results.

I spent most of my time at the Klimaforum, the alternative conference set up by just four paid staff, which 50,000 people attended without a hitch. (I know which team I would put in charge of saving the planet.) There the barrister Polly Higgins laid out a different approach. Her declaration of planetary rights invests ecosystems with similar legal safeguards to those won by humans after the second world war. It changes the legal relationship between humans, the atmosphere and the biosphere from ownership to stewardship. It creates a global framework for negotiation which gives nation states less discretion to dispose of ecosystems and the people who depend on them.

Even before the farce in Copenhagen began it was looking like it might be too late to prevent two or more degrees of global warming. The nation states, pursuing their own interests, have each been passing the parcel of responsibility since they decided to take action in 1992. We have now lost 17 precious years, possibly the only years in which climate breakdown could have been prevented. This has not happened by accident: it is the result of a systematic campaign of sabotage by certain states, driven and promoted by the energy industries. This idiocy has been aided and abetted by the nations characterised, until now, as the good guys: those that have made firm commitments, only to invalidate them with loopholes, false accounting and outsourcing. In all cases immediate self-interest has trumped the long-term welfare of humankind. Corporate profits and political expediency have proved more urgent considerations than either the natural world or human civilisation. Our political systems are incapable of discharging the main function of government: to protect us from each other.

Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.

 

 

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Newspapers, ordinarily fierce competitors, don't often voluntarily publish the very same article on the same day. But on December 7, more than 50 newspapers around the world jointly published the editorial below, which calls for a "fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty" from the Copenhagen summit on climate change. Writes Guardian deputy editor Ian Katz, the project's lead organizer, the editorial "carries a simple message to the politicians and negotiators gathered in Copenhagen: if all of us who disagree about so much can agree on what must be done, then surely you can too." The US bears extraordinary responsibility for this crisis, and has so far played a largely obstructionist role in the negotiations. But, shamefully, only one US newspaper ran the article--The Miami Herald. One major US paper even told The Guardian, "This is an outrageous attempt to orchestrate media pressure. Go to hell." What's outrageous is the US media's failure to respond to the climate crisis with the intensity of purpose that it demands. The Nation is proud to publish this call and join this extraordinary international journalistic endeavor.

***

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C--the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction--would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided--and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere - three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialized world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down--with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe," must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance--and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature.

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

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MARIAN WILKINSON

Denmark's Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard delivers a speech at the opening plenary at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, the venue of the COP15 Climate Summit. Photo: Reuters

A POWERFUL defence of the science of climate change is being launched at the Copenhagen conference as the UN and world leaders push back on claims by climate sceptics and call for deeper cuts in greenhouse gases from wealthy nations.

The chief UN climate official, Yvo de Boer, strenuously defended the scientific reports of the UN's peak scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying four successive reports, peer-reviewed by 2500 scientists, had endorsed the finding global warming was almost certainly a result of human activities.

''I do not believe there is any process anywhere out there that is that systematic, that thorough and that transparent,'' he told reporters as the largest climate conference in history began its search for agreement to secure a global treaty that will meet the threat of global warming.

Concerns are being raised in Copenhagen over the impact of climate emails affair which began when sceptics used hacked emails from the University of East Anglia to attempt to discredit climate change science.

In a signal of a push-back from the UN, the head of the panel, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was given a prominent place in the opening ceremony of the Copenhagen conference to defend the science and will host a special discussion on the email affair this week at the conference.

Mr de Boer and Dr Pachauri also promised the investigation into the sceptic claims would be thorough. ''This process has to be based on solid science and if the quality and integrity of the science is being called into question then that needs to be examined,'' said Mr de Boer.

Also addressing the opening ceremony was the Danish Prime Minister, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, and the Mayor of Copenhagen, Ritt Bjerregard.

Despite the scientific controversy, political momentum is growing around the huge climate conference as 34,000 politicians, observers, lobbyists and media descend on the city. Tens of thousands of demonstrators have also begun arriving and the conference venue for the next two weeks, the Bella Centre, is surrounded by security fencing stretching for kilometres.

With security jitters already apparent, there is a strong police presence as 100 world leaders, including the US President, Barack Obama and the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, meet next week to try to reach an agreement on key issues. These include the size of the cuts wealthy nations are prepared to make to their greenhouse emissions by 2020 and the measures the big polluting developing countries such as China and India will make to curb their soaring emissions.

Also in dispute is the amount of money wealthy countries are prepared to pledge to help poorer countries develop clean energy and adapt to climate change.

In an apparent breakthrough on this issue, Japan is reportedly offering a pledge of some $10 billion to this outcome.

Mr Boer warned negotiators a deal had to be struck. ''Time is up. Over the next two weeks governments have to deliver a strong and long-term response to the challenge of climate change.''

The central aim of any agreement will be to keep the world's temperature rising more than 2 degrees to avoid dangerous climate change. According to the scientific advice of the panel this means halving global greenhouse emissions by 2050.

Mr de Boer said this meant wealthy nations needed to cut their 2020 emissions between 25 per cent and 40 per cent from 1990 levels.

''Part of the purpose of Copenhagen is to make sure the industrialised countries do get into that range,'' he said.

GLENDA KWEK

Climate change, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, Copenhagen and the Coalition. It's been a few weeks of Cs in Canberra.

But what is the CPRS about? What is the science that underpins the necessity for such an action? Why does Australia need a carbon trading deal in place before going to the global climate summit in Denmark? Should we care about what happens in some wintry Scandinavian capital far away from sunny Sydney?

Emissions trading aka the CPRS - what's it all about?

The Federal Government has proposed a "cap and trade" system. It means greenhouse gas emissions would be limited to a particular amount: the cap. So if there is a cap of 400 million tonnes to be allowed to be emitted for a certain year, then 400 million emissions units will be issued that year. These units can be traded, with their price determined by the market.

Each year, there will be fewer permits, meaning that greenhouse gas pollution is slowly reduced.

Companies that fall under the scheme because of their level of greenhouse gas emissions can do two things:

1. They can change their business practices so that they become more energy efficient. Once they have reduced their emissions to the lowest amount possible, they can buy and surrender the remaining credits they need to meet the requirements of the scheme in their operations.

2. They can buy and surrender all the permits they need to meet the requirements of the scheme without changing their business practices.

Compensation schemes

Companies from sectors such as mining and electricity generators (those captured under the CPRS) have won billions of dollars in assistance for operating under such a scheme. These include issuing them free permits and/or helping them reduce their emissions.

Won't this make goods and services more expensive?

Yes, those goods and services that require a lot of emissions to produce will most likely rise in price. The Federal Government states that it will provide cash and tax offsets to low- and middle-income households to assist in the impact of such price rises.

Are there other countries already practising such a scheme?

Yes. In January 2005, the European Union introduced the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System (EU ETS). All 27 countries in the EU are participants. It is the world's largest multinational, multi-sector ETS.

So, why do we need an ETS in the first place?

Greenhouse effect

The greenhouse effect is a natural warming system on earth. The cycle goes like this: sunlight enters earth's atmosphere through a layer of greenhouse gases. The light energy is absorbed by plants, land and water and then goes back to the atmosphere.

At this point, the role of the greenhouse gases - such as water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane - kicks in. While some energy (heat) does go back into space, most of it is trapped by the greenhouse gases, and so make the earth warmer.

Without this system, the earth's average temperature would be about -19 degrees Celsius. With it, the average temperature is 14 degrees.

What causes it and why is it increasing?

Scientists say the amount of these gases in the atmosphere has increased over the past two and a half centuries, especially in the past 50 years.

The increases mean earth is heating up - hence the phrase "global warming". The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific body established by the UN to assess climate change, states that Earth's average temperature rose by 0.74 degrees in the 20th century. It may seem like a small change, but as the planet's temperature rises, its nature changes as well. That means what humans need to survive - water, food, health, land and environment - will all be negatively impacted.

Sir Nicolas Stern, author of a British government-commissioned report, states:

"The evidence shows that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth. Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes."

So who/what is most likely to be responsible?

Human activities. The IPCC says that "there is very high confidence that the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming". CSIRO scientist Dr Penny Whetton, one of the lead authors of the 2007 IPCC report, says there is a 90 per cent chance the rise in temperatures are due to our activities. One indicator is the level of concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Before industrialisation, it was 280 parts per million (ppm). Now, it's 385 ppm.

So the ETS ...

is one of a few policy actions that governments can pursue to mitigate the impact of global warming. The more quickly and effectively greenhouse gas emissions are limited and reduced, the less impact their rise will have on the planet. Other government measures besides carbon pricing can include incentives to encourage lifestyle and behaviourial changes, technology developments and investments in climate-friendly energy infrastructures.

Critics and sceptics

The CPRS has been criticised by both the left and right of politics. The Greens says it is too weak and it would point Australia in the wrong direction. "The CPRS is beyond useless - it is worse than useless," Greens MP Christine Milne wrote in a blog post this week.

"The Greens oppose the CPRS as it stands not because it is too weak but because it will actually point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak.

"This is why we say it is not just a failure, but it locks in failure."

Other politicians such as senators Steve Fielding and Barnaby Joyce question the science of climate change. They say that there is too much room for error in the data, that the ETS is just a massive tax and won't make a difference to the rising temperatures anyway.

"It's like saying, 'Ah well, we're only going to burn down a quarter of your house.' I don't want you to burn down any of it," Senator Joyce says.

"Why are we proceeding down this path of a massive new tax when the reason that's put forward, to change the temperature of the earth, is not possible?"

While the consensus in the scientific community is that climate change is linked to increased CO2 and other greenhouse gases through human activities, sceptics look to the uncertainty in the data for solace, says Professor Alex McBratney, Pro-Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources at the University of Sydney.

"[S]cientists are intelligent people with a wide spectrum of views and amongst the scientists there are sceptics. Certain people take solace that there's uncertainty in these predictions and models. Some people say the models are too unsure for us to say ... whether it's [global warming] it's related of human production of greenhouse gases.

"Most governments reactions are to say there may be uncertainty but the best thing for us to do is to so some risk management."

Reports about climate change and its impact:

IPCC report

Stern Review (commissioned by the British Government)

Garnaut Report (commissioned by the Australian Government)

Why do we need an ETS deal before the Copenhagen conference?

To show that Australia is serious about climate change. In the lead-up to the conference, countries are announcing climate change initiatives. US President Barack Obama has committed to a 17 per cent emissions cut from 2005 levels by 2020, a first step towards an 80 per cent reduction outlined in legislation before Congress.

The EU says it will cut emissions by 20 per cent from 1990 levels before 2020 - increasing it to 30 per cent if other countries make major reductions.

Russia and Japan say they'll come up with a 25 per cent cut below 1990 levels over the same period.

Australia's target is a 5 per cent cut from 1990 levels by 2020. It will increase it to a 25 per cent target if there is an agreement in Copenhagen to stabilise greenhouse gas levels to 450ppm and if developed countries cut their emissions by 25 per cent too.

"What the introduction of the trading scheme does is that it demonstrates very clearly that the Government is implementing policy, not that they might do it at some stage in the future. This is the most important thing when it comes to Copenhagen," says Rupert Posner, Australia director of The Climate Group.

What's the purpose of the Copenhagen meeting?

Copenhagen is key as it's where governments hope to agree to a new framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Kyoto Protocol was the first step that developed countries took in addressing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The Copenhagen Conference hopes to go a step further - to deal with the emissions from developed countries as well.

"What we need in Copenhagen is a global agreement that we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and maintain global temperature rises to below 2 degrees," Mr Posner says.

"We need to have a framework that enables developed countries to cut their emissions substantially and developing countries to begin the process of reducing their emissions as well. We also need to develop a framework for transferring finance for reducing emissions in developing countries.

"It's unlikely we will get a ratifiable treaty in Copenhagen but we may well get a strong political agreement that enables a ratifiable treaty to be developed shortly afterwards and agreed and ratified in time before the Kyoto Protocol expires."

The role of developing countries such as China at the conference is pivotal. China is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It has pledged to reduce its energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 per cent between 2005 and 2010, but doesn't want to be saddled with binding emissions targets.

Should we care about the outcome?

Yes, say the scientists. Twenty-six of them from eight countries this week published their latest review of climate data, and the results are startling.

Earth's temperature was rising, the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets were losing mass and global warming could reach as high as 7 degrees by the turn of the century without another emissions reduction.

This would see much of the agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin wiped out, result in many heat-related deaths and sea-level rises affecting the coastal cities of Australia and Asia.

For them, the earth is fast approaching the point of no return.