Troy Media – By Dr. Stephen Murgatroyd
It is now clear that reaching a binding agreement on climate change during the upcoming Copenhagen summit of world governments will be difficult, if not impossible. In fact, China, the US, Britain and Canada, working closely with host country Denmark, have agreed that any climate-change deal should be broken into two steps.
Step one, to be completed at the summit, will involve a simple restatement of the key messages which have already come out of the environmental conferences held in Rio, Kyoto, Bali, and the recent G20 meetings. The “restatement,” however, will contain nothing new, although US President Barack Obama is expected to subtly seek to shift the message away from one involving all economic activity to one focused on clean energy.
Step two, much more difficult to fulfil given the fact that governments have failed to reach any type of agreement over the last 24 months, will be an agreement by the world leaders on a timetable to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions, to create a technology and resource transfer fund for developing nations and to commit the world to sustainable development. The UN is even suggesting that a conference be held in the spring of 2010 to seek the basis for such an agreement.
Time, however, is running out for the warmists. The Kyoto Accord is due to expire in 2012 and, when it does, legally binding treaty obligations, including the purchase of offsets, expire. Nations around the world can then cease to spend billions in support of reforestation and other “green” projects.
But despite the fact that the Kyoto Accord has been a total failure – global CO2 emissions are still rising even in countries which are signatories to the accord – many nations want an even more aggressive agreement to replace it. (It is worth noting, however, that the EU, as a group of nations, will likely meet its Kyoto obligations, with several countries (France, Germany, Britain, Greece and Sweden) in fact doing so without the need to purchase offsets.)
But the green lobby’s aggressiveness – an 80 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions based on a 1990 baselines to be achieved by 2050 – coupled with the recommendations for a new global government agency for climate change are simply too much for many nations to take. The developing world especially is simply not prepared to tolerate the economic impact implementing such measures would entail. There is also a growing distaste for global government agencies which flout democracy. Both reactions are conspiring against a binding agreement.
Politicians also have to deal with the growing popular backlash against climate change policies, especially in the US. President Obama has even taken to downplaying cap and trade and is focusing instead on clean energy and energy security.
What steps could be taken to reach a climate change agreement in 2010?
The first is to change the baseline date for calculating how deep to reduce CO2 emissions. Canada has already done so, moving its baseline date from 1990 to 2006. It is seeking a 20 per cent reduction on the 2006 figure by 2020 and 60 to 70 per cent by 2050. The new baseline date significantly reduces the amount of CO2 that has to be taken out of industrial processes, transportation and other economic sectors.
The second step is to focus on energy as the centre of attention – narrowing targets to the energy sector, fixing a portion of a nation’s energy supply to come from renewable sources and demanding clean coal, carbon sequestration and carbon taxes on energy.
The third will entail shifting away from notions of global government to using existing mechanisms, such as the G20, as a basis for coordinating efforts.
Of even more interest is a move away from market mechanisms as a basis for carbon reduction. While the EU still favours a cap and trade mechanism, the US is quietly looking systematically at a simple carbon tax. While the White House is continuing to develop plans for an aggressive global warming bill for early in 2010 that will be loaded with new spending on green technology and jobs paid for with tax increases, Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf has stated that its focus on deficit reduction could easily kill cap-and-trade. “I think this means cap-and-trade has to go to the backburner,” he has said.
And given the growing unpopularity of climate change talk – a call for strong and decisive action last Saturday in Florida by former US Vice President Al Gore was disrupted by chants and protests - and the fact that 2010 is the year of mid-term elections, he expects modest rather than bold proposals from the White House.
The communications industry will go into overdrive to “spin” the Copenhagen political agreement as an important milestone in the work of governments to “stop” climate change. Don’t be fooled. It is really a spin on failure. At three summits this year – the G8, the G20 and the APEC summit – climate change agreements have been weak and nebulous. So will this one. Green lobby groups, funded largely by governments themselves, will rightly see Copenhagen as a failure.
When Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper muses that he may or may not go to Copenhagen, he is right to do so. Since nothing new will emerge, he would be better to spend his time looking at climate change data – he may be very surprised to see the difference between the rhetoric and the facts.
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