Climate envoys struggle over targets before Paris summit on global plan - The Washington Post

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> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/climate-envoys-struggle-over-targets-before-paris-summit-on-global-plan/2015/10/27/1dfa4168-6e02-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html <http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/climate-envoys-struggle-over-targets-before-paris-summit-on-global-plan/2015/10/27/1dfa4168-6e02-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html>
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> Climate envoys struggle over targets before Paris summit on global plan
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> If there is one thing President Obama and French President Francois Hollande want to avoid at next month’s climate summit in Paris it is the messy, last-minute wrangling that marred the last summit in Copenhagen in 2009.
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> At the end of the Copenhagen conference <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/18/AR2009121800637.html>, some frustrated leaders left early. Obama barged in on a private meeting of the biggest developing countries to insist that they sign on to an agreement. And the final accord failed to set a global target for greenhouse gas reductions.
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> The road to the Paris climate summit began in that confusion but has been a lot smoother — at least so far.
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> For the past year Obama has appealed to the leaders of the biggest developing countries — China, India and Brazil — and pressed them to take aggressive steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or dramatically slow their growth. Obama is passionate about the Paris climate summit, which could become an important part of his legacy and a key diplomatic achievement.
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> Hollande is optimistic enough to have invited Obama and other world leaders to gather on Nov. 30, at the beginning of the two-week conference (known as COP21).
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> But stumbling blocks still remain. Developed countries are not on pace to meet their earlier pledge to “mobilize” $100 billion a year from public and private sources to spur climate action in developing countries by 2020.
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> [Pope Francis and the case for the climate <http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/23/pope-francis-and-the-case-for-optimism-about-climate-change/>]
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> While the cuts in emissions proposed by nations so far would slow down global warming so that temperatures rise 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2050, according to one estimate, that would still fall short of the international target of limiting warming to 2 degrees. That would still mean disaster for much of Africa, the Middle East and island nations, which could be submerged beneath rising seas.
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> Moreover, last week in Bonn, negotiators from leading nations tried to iron out the text of the agreement. The Obama administration hoped to erase language, agreed upon at a summit in Kyoto a quarter century ago, dividing the world into rich and poor countries — and placing little responsibility for climate action on developing nations.
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> “We couldn’t have an agreement that had a sort of backward-looking firewall between developing countries in one bucket and developed countries in another bucket, because substantively that wasn’t going to work when you had the largest major emitters as developing countries,” said a senior administration official.
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> Not everyone is on the same page, however.
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> India has pushed back, insisting that wealthy countries cough up more financial aid and cutting-edge technology for renewable energy. In Bonn, <>India introduced language asking that renewable energy should be “free of cost, in order to enhance their actions to address the adverse effect of climate change.”
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> [U.S. coal finds a new home <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-exports-its-greenhouse-gas-emissions--as-coal-profitable-coal/2015/10/08/05711c92-65fc-11e5-bdb6-6861f4521205_story.html>]
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> Gwynne Taraska, senior climate policy adviser at the Center for American Progress, said that many negotiators arrived in a “mutinous” mood, but she said a compromise might allow India and others to apply to the Green Climate Fund, part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to cover a portion of intellectual property costs.
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> At the end of the week, a 30-page document had “highly divergent” options, she said, including whether poor countries hit by extreme climate events should expect damage payments.
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> Obama administration officials have hailed India’s gigantic goals for building new renewable power plants, but they are frustrated with India’s position on aid and intellectual property, especially given Obama’s efforts to woo Indian leader Narendra Modi, first by hosting him in Washington and later by traveling to New Dehli. India has also demanded that wealthy countries make deeper cuts in emissions by 2020, something one U.S. official called “a complete non-starter.”
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> But some of Obama’s overtures have borne fruit. Standing beside Obama in Beijing last year and in Washington this year, China’s President Xi Jinping vowed emissions would peak at 2030 or earlier and that China would establish a nationwide cap and trade system.
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> And in a visit to Washington, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff vowed to boost renewables and to protect and enlarge rain forests that absorb carbon dioxide. Brazil pledged to restore 12 million hectares, or 46,332 square miles, of its forests — about the size of England — by 2030 while pursuing “policies aimed at eliminating illegal deforestation.” Brazil also became the first major developing country to pledge an absolute reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from a base year.
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> [China will impose the cap and trade approach that Congress didn’t adopt <http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/china-to-adopt-cap-and-trade-system-to-limit-carbon-emmissions/2015/09/24/eece656c-62f9-11e5-9757-e49273f05f65_story.html>]
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> “The way we see it, developed countries, which have more capacity and responsibility, should come first and stronger,” Carlos Klink, national secretary for climate change at Brazil’s Ministry for Environment, said in an interview. But, he added, “we are showing that we are part of the game.”
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> One key difference between the summits in Paris and Copenhagen has been the early deadline for countries to submit their emission reduction proposals, known in climate negotiation jargon as “intended nationally determined contributions.”
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> Before the Copenhagen summit, many countries delayed , hoping for more lenient agreements. This year, countries were supposed to submit plans by Oct. 1 and as of last week, 123 proposals had been submitted <http://climateactiontracker.org/indcs.html>, covering 150 countries (including the European Union members) and accounting for 87 percent of global emissions.
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> Among those missing: Saudi Arabia. The kingdom’s emissions have more than tripled since 1990. The world’s biggest oil exporter’s greenhouse gas emissions are expected to jump 60 percent more by 2030, according to the World Resources Institute <http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/saudiarabia.html> (WRI). In 2013, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy released a white paper calling for renewables and nuclear power, but the trend in emissions would remain sharply up. Moreover, the Saudi plan is non-binding.
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> India, where nearly 400 million people do not have electricity, did file its climate plan on Oct. 1. But its proposed reductions in emissions fell short of what some international negotiators hoped.
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> Analysts note that if India’s economy continues to grow at roughly the same pace for the next 15 years, its greenhouse gas emissions would jump by more than 77 percent and would account for about 11 percent of global emissions by 2030.
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> Like India, South Africa, speaking for many other African nations, also has said that full implementation of its plan would hinge on financial aid from wealthy nations.
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> The South African plan asserts that climate-related investments carry an opportunity cost, detracting from other investments and costing jobs. The proposal says that “any policy-driven transition to a low carbon and climate resilient society must take into account and emphasize its overriding priority to address poverty and inequality.”
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> WRI says that even if South Africa implements its plans, its emissions would balloon anywhere from 20 percent to 82 percent by 2025 as coal generation will keep pace with renewable growth. WRI said “if most other countries followed South Africa’s approach, global warming would exceed 3 to 4 degrees Celsius.”
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> Mark Swilling, a Stellenbosch University professor and director of the Sustainability Institute, testified to a parliamentary committee <http://markswilling.co.za/talks/>that refusing to invest in renewable energy was like refusing to invest in the auto industry at the end of the horse-and-buggy era.
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> “It’s obviously correct to go up there and bargain for as much funding as possible, but we shouldn’t depend on that funding in order to do what needs to be done to transform our economy to create jobs for our people,” Swilling said. “It simply makes no sense to wait for external powers we are going to be competing against to provide funding for us to become competitive. That’s not how the global economy works.”
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> The funding dispute centers on the commitment made by wealthy countries in 2009 to provide $100 billion a year to developing countries for adaptation and mitigation of climate effects or to build renewable energy plants. Brazil’s Klink estimated that so far countries have only pledged $60 billion to $70 billion. The United States has pledged $3 billion for the Green Climate Fund. CAP’s Tanaska said new pledges still leave a “massive shortfall,” but that the gap could be closed.
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> [How nations settled on a $100 billion fund back in 2009 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121700165_2.html?sid=ST2009121800648>.]
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> With the Republican Congress opposed to ambitious climate action, the Obama administration will have trouble budgeting more money. On Oct. 20, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said that Obama’s plan to cut emissions “simply does not add up” and accused the president of “attempting to bind this country to long-term commitments that come with broad-reaching economic burdens.”
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> So the administration has been trying to drum up private sources of investment from corporations in the United States. In June, the White House held a meeting of major corporations to discuss clean energy and on Oct. 19 it held a follow up meeting, saying that a total of 81 companies signed an “American Business Act on Climate Pledge” to slash emissions, water use and landfill waste beyond the Paris commitment. A group of pension, investment and foundation organizations agreed to invest $1.2 billion into clean energy and water projects.
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> Much of what was pledged had already been in progress at the companies. Intel’s global environmental director Todd Brady said that Intel’s pledge was “a mix of actions that are under way” as well as “steps we are willing to take going forward.” He said that the White House support “gives business more certainty, more confidence . . . to move forward with our own activity.”
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> Even a combination of public and private investments and regulations might not keep global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, the level nations agreed to in Kyoto a quarter century ago. So one part of the agreement under negotiation in Bonn would call for a reopening of commitments in five years in the hope that technology advances will bring down the cost of renewables and make countries more wiling to set deeper greenhouse gas emission cuts.
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> WRI said on its Web site <http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/10/paris-bonn-what-needs-happen-prelude-cop21>that “given the rapid changes in technology, science and policy, along with the need to cut emissions further, the world must come back to the table in five years, not 10, to increase ambition and seize the benefits from taking timely action.”