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Climate change: Racing beyond Kyoto

By William Marsden

Montreal Gazette , June 16, 2009

The main goal of the two-week session starting in Bonn on Monday is to keep the Earth’s mean temperature from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius. The fear is that an increase above that would mean widespread destruction of ecosystems and an irreversible melting of the polar ice caps that over the next few centuries would substantially increase sea levels. A total meltdown would essentially wipe out most coastal cities and low-lying regions, not to mention contaminate water tables with sea water. That scenario could be avoided by drastic cuts in emissions.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Forum Convention on Climate Change, notes that in the six weeks left, negotiators will try “to reach an agreement on what might well be one of the most complicated international treaties ever negotiated.”

This session in Bonn marks the first time a draft text will be on the table, serving as the basis for final negotiations this December in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Participants hope that by year-end we will have a negotiated agreement that will essentially begin the process of revolutionizing our energy systems and inevitably the way we live.

Meanwhile, our carbon emissions are rising faster than even the most dire predictions as both industrialized and developing countries – namely China and India – have failed to stem the growth of their emissions.

Unfettered economic expansion and prosperity remain the priority in both industrialized and developing countries. For developed countries, it’s a question of maintaining a consumer-based lifestyle. For emerging economies, it’s a question of raising millions of people out poverty and establishing a middle class. Unfortunately, nobody has come up with a saleable economic model for conspicuous consumption without growth.

China continues to build coal-fired power plants by the hundreds while India’s burgeoning automobile industry is trying to sell a million cheap, fuel-efficient cars every year to its growing middle class. And who can blame them for wanting the same lifestyle as the West?

“You cannot say that people in developing countries should not have aspirations for higher standards of living,” Shyam Saran, India’s chief climate change envoy, said in an interview. “So you cannot say, ‘You stay where you are because you are a latecomer and we stay where we are because we have had a higher standard of living for the last so many years,’ … I cannot tell them that ‘you will not aspire to something better because there is climate change happening.’ That is simply not politically saleable.”

New scientific data suggesting an accelerating pace of climate change drive the negotiations. They show that if we fail to act quickly to reduce greatly our GHG emissions, the impacts of climate change will be devastating.

To this end, negotiations are shaped around four essentials:

Mitigation: Developed countries have to agree on new emission reduction targets for after 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol expires. The range now being discussed is 25 to 40 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020. (By contrast, the global reduction required by the Kyoto Protocol is only 5.2 per cent of 1990 levels). The 25-40 range was established by the International Panel on Climate Change in its 2007 report. However, new data suggests that ice caps are melting much faster than previously believed. Many scientists and environmentalists believe the reduction target should be at least 40 per cent.

In addition, a new agreement must specify that India and China and other developing countries have to begin slowing the growth in their emissions in a manner that is measurable, reportable and verifiable.

Adaptation: Industrialized countries have to agree on measures to help poor countries adapt to changes in climate already under way, which lead to such problems as desertification, intensifying storm systems and rising sea levels.

Technology: Agreement has to be reached on technology transfers for renewable energy solutions and adaptation measures from developed to developing nations.

Finances: A mechanism has to be put in place to finance adaptation and emission reduction projects in developing and poor countries.

These four essentials are based on the principle of shared but not equal responsibility and capability.

This means that while all countries have contributed to climate change, industrialized countries must shoulder most of the blame because they are responsible for 95 per cent of the GHGs that are in the atmosphere and causing the problem.

It’s what is generally referred to as a “climate debt.” All industrialized countries have to pay their share of this liability for contaminating the atmosphere.

“Industrialized countries must take the lead given their historic responsibility (for emissions),” de Boer said.

He added that while the rich are overwhelmingly responsible for the climate change predicament, it is the poor who are suffering and who will suffer the most.

The IPCC concluded, for example, that by as early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa could be suffering more water shortages as a result of climate change. The IPCC says some regions will experience a 50-per-cent reduction in yields from rain-fed cultivation, which accounts for 90 per cent of sub-Saharan agriculture.

The entire African continent is responsible for only about five per cent of global emissions compared with, for example, the U.S., which is responsible for 22.2 per cent. In general, countries around the equator are harder hit by the effects of climate change. The highest temperature increase and therefore the highest impact is close to the equator. And that is Africa’s belt – the equatorial countries that produce its wealth and hold it together.

Canada, Europe and the United States will have to come up with most of the money to finance projects that will help populations adjust. The convention has established an Adaptation Fund, which is run by an independent board. Its money comes from a two per cent levy charged on carbon credit transactions. But de Boer said this will not be enough.

“It’s very clear by anybody’s figures that we need to generate significantly more financial support beyond the Adaptation Fund in order to address the adaptation challenge,” he said. “It runs in the tens of billions to hundreds of billions (of dollars) per year increasingly over time.”

The Pembina Institute in Calgary has estimated that Canada’s contribution would be $2.2 to $5.7 billion per year once the adaptation program is in place.

Who controls the funds and how they are to be dispersed and administered remain key unanswered questions.

Developed countries, which will supply most of the money, want institutions they control and trust. Developing countries want to make their own decisions about spending priorities, since they feel they are in the best position to decide what is best for their people.

Since it became one of the first countries to sign the Kyoto Protocol on April 29, 1998, Canada has totally ignored its treaty commitments to reduce emissions by six per cent of 1990 levels. Instead, it has ratcheted them up 27 per cent. This is among the largest increases of any industrialized nation. To meet its treaty commitments by 2012, Canada would have to reduce its emissions by at least 33 per cent, which is just not possible unless were were to shut down the tar sands as well as most of our refineries and coal-fired plants.

Canada’s performance has not gone unnoticed by Kyoto Protocol members. Once one of the driving forces behind Kyoto, Canada is now being viewed with considerable scorn and its promises appear empty.

In Bonn, at the first round of talks in April, Malta’s Michael Cutajar, chair of the working group negotiating post-Kyoto emission targets, at one point in the conference publicly scolded the Canadian delegation by noting that “international treaties are not made to be broken.”

Canada is actively lobbying the UNFCCC for a post-Kyoto emission target for industrialized nations of 20 per cent by 2020. It also wants to change the benchmark level to 2006, from 1990. This would reduce much of its Kyoto commitments. But even without the benchmark change, a 20-per-cent reduction would be nowhere near what IPCC scientists say is needed to forestall unmanageable climate change.

Canada also is pushing for a global 50-per-cent decrease in GHG emissions by 2050. But it has not stipulated a benchmark date.

As well, Canada is trying to claim that its forests constitute a massive carbon sink and that any emission reduction targets should take that into account. The argument is questionable. Canada has destroyed so much of its forest – and insect infestations, which are blamed on climate change, are destroying so much more – that our forests are being turned into huge carbon emitters.

Hope of quick action by Canada was dashed this week when federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice announced that Canada will take no action to reduce emissions until the U.S. approves its own action program.

One problem with Kyoto is that there are no real penalties for breaking the treaty. The only punishment for Canada is that it has to make up for the shortfall during the next commitment period. It would also be penalized with 30-per-cent heavier emission reductions requirements than what would normally be required during the next commitment period. But the likelihood that a new treaty will replace Kyoto means that Canada may never be punished.

Because the current Kyoto commitment expires at the end of 2012, Canada is not yet officially non-compliant. It could purchase carbon credits. At today’s prices, it would cost Canada about $25 billion to make up for its emission increases. Ottawa has stated it will never buy credits.

The biggest question mark is still the United States, which is second only to China in total GHG emissions. In April, the U.S. negotiating team stated that the country intends to be a willing participant throughout the negotiations. Yet it has not put forth any recommendations on its targets.

The U.S. Congress is studying a bill that will call for 17 to 24 per cent reductions of 1990 levels by 2020. This still would not meet IPCC recommendations.

In any case, the possibility that the U.S. will pass an international treaty committing its economy to GHG reductions is slim. International treaties require a two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate. This will be difficult to achieve. Even if all 57 Democrats plus the two independents voted in favour, supporters would still be nine votes short of ratification.

Without commitment to clear individual emission reductions targets for industrialized countries, Copenhagen will be a failure, de Boer said. He might have added that without U.S. support, a successful treaty also will not be possible.

The countdown to Copenhagen, as of this writing, is 191 days, 15 hours, 57 minutes and 06 seconds, 05 seconds, 03 seconds …

But in reality it is only six weeks of negotiations. Six weeks to begin, in the words of the negotiating text, an “economic transition … that shifts global economic growth patterns towards a low-emission economy based on more sustainable production and consumption, promoting sustainable lifestyles and climate-resilient development while ensuring a just transition of the workforce.”

That’s nothing short of a revolution in how we live.

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