Copenhagen Climate Treaty & Climategate
President Obama has been reluctant to signal on the international stage just how big a cut he is willing to accept in U.S. emissions. "A number from the President of the United States would have huge weight," said de Boer — but no number is forthcoming... With the U.S. unwilling to stake out a position, developing nations say talks are pointless... The last round of U.N. negotiations before Copenhagen concludes this week in Barcelona, where little progress was made. - Bryan Walsh, Is There any Hope for Agreement at Copenhagen?, Time, November 8, 2009The Real Story at the G20 Summit: Copenhagen Summit
November 8, 2009Telegraph - The press coverage of the G20 summit over the weekend was, understandably, dominated by the row over a so-called Tobin tax on financial transactions... But in reality the Tobin tax suggestion wasn’t discussed all that much behind the scenes...
The real subject of deep and heated discussion – upon which I hear the “sherpas” (political behind-the-scenes negotiators) in all camps were still debating at six in the morning on Saturday – was climate financing.
Now, before you start to nod off (as I am inclined to whenever anyone uses combinations of words as unpromising as that) this is important, and interesting. The forthcoming Copenhagen Summit partly revolves around trying to work out who should be paying for forthcoming efforts to cut carbon emissions. This G20 debate was supposed to iron out some kinks ahead of Copenhagen. As it happens there was a nasty disagreement which could end up making Copenhagen a serious embarrassment.
In short, the rich nations went into the meeting expecting the emerging powerhouses such as Brazil, India and China to agree to pay at least something towards these future costs (which include everything from investing in more efficient plants and power stations to creating carbon trading platforms to paying for research to find new green technologies). The emerging nations flatly refused...
The G20 Wants to Stop Climate Change – But Who on Earth Will Pay for It?
November 7, 2009The Independent - As if they hadn't got quite enough on their plates already, the finance ministers of the G20, meeting in St Andrews, have also set themselves the task of saving the planet. Strange, but true. Even the clever people at HM Treasury may be feeling the strain.
The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, was honest enough yesterday to admit that "heavy lifting" is needed to make progress on the climate change issue:
"My message to my fellow finance ministers is there's a job of work to be done here. I don't think anyone seriously denies there's a problem here. Let's get on with it."What they need to get on with is an agreement on "climate finance" – how much the developed world needs to give to the developing world to help them to deliver economic expansion without the same sort of pollution we inflicted on the earth during our industrial revolution. There is also a demand for funds to help nations where climate change has probably already gone too far to correct, and where it is threatening environments or their very existence. The case of the Maldives, threatened with being submerged completely by rising sea levels, is the most striking; the 150 million population of Bangladesh at risk from incessant flooding is the most important, and perplexing.
These talks come against a background of rising criticisms of the central mechanism chosen to transfer funds from the rich to the poor worlds: carbon trading. Last week a Friends of the Earth report warned that carbon trading could be developing into a speculative bubble, and that complex derivative instruments were being bundled and sold as mortgage-backed securities were in the housing bubble. The author, Sarah-Jayne Clifton, wrote:
"Similarly complex instruments are already being used in the carbon markets. For example, offset aggregators are bundling small offset projects for buyers, increasingly the likelihood of similar challenges to accurate valuation of assets as the carbon markets grow."A case for the Bank of England, perhaps.
The idea this weekend is that the finance ministers, representing as they do some 90 per cent of global GDP, will make a powerful contribution to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next month, helping those troubled discussions to come to something like an accord, and not ending up deadlocked like the Doha round of world trade talks, which have been dragging on since 2001.
Writing in The Independent yesterday, Mr Darling reflected the difficult atmosphere inside the conference rooms:
"The barriers to agreement on climate finance remain substantial. Even if countries agree the levels of finance, few will want to hand over money if they lack confidence in the means of delivering it."The immediate task facing Mr Darling and his colleagues is to agree how much money will be transferred from developed to developing nations. The sums are substantial, though not quite on the scale of the banking bailouts. British officials say that poorer countries will need at least £100bn a year by 2020 to cut emissions and adapt to climate change, of which about half would be public money, while the UN estimates go as high as £400bn.
There are at least three obstacles to agreement on this...
The US is now seeking to build its own parallel system of carbon trading, though with the aim that the carbon credits it creates can be used on other exchanges around the world – "fungibility." meaning that one currency is easily converted into another. Ironically it was the US that insisted on carbon trading as a condition for their signing up to Kyoto: otherwise a simpler international carbon tax or just strict quotas would have been the preferred mechanism, though both of those might have provoked much political resistance. Carbon trading does have the advantage of being remote from voters.
Whatever happens at St Andrews, there will be far-reaching consequences, for the economy and the environment. The experience of Doha and Kyoto suggests that the heavy lifting won't be finished off at St Andrews.
G20 Ministers to Firm Up Global Recovery, Climate Funding
November 6, 2009AFP – Hosts Britain told the G20 it had "no reason to give up" on a new climate change deal Friday, as finance ministers met for talks on bolstering the world economy and green finance.
Ministers from the world's 20 biggest and top emerging economies are holding the third in a series of ministerial meetings this year that have helped launch a one-trillion-dollar fiscal stimulus package to tackle the slump.
Over two days in the picturesque Scottish coastal town of St Andrews, they are seeking to flesh out agreements made at a leaders' summit in Pittsburgh in September.
Now that the United States, Japan, Germany and France have emerged from recession after last year's credit crunch, the G20's focus has switched from disaster management to building a secure economic future.
They are also grappling with reaching agreement on how to finance any deal to help poorer countries tackle climate change, ahead of December's UN talks on the issue in Copenhagen that observers say could end without a firm accord.
In a bid to give fresh momentum ahead of this weekend's meeting, British finance minister Alistair Darling told the G20 it "must push for a deal on climate financing and governance."
"The road ahead will be difficult, there are arguments still to be won. But that's no reason to give up -- rather, it's a reason to redouble our efforts," he added in a speech in Edinburgh.Talks in Barcelona designed to lay the groundwork for the December 7-18 sessions ended Friday, leaving a host of bitterly divisive issues still to be hammered out.
On the broader world economic situation, Darling also warned there was "no room for complacency," despite the fact that the United States, the world's biggest economy, emerged from recession last week.
"We must see through measures to support demand and repair the financial system because we cannot yet be sure the global recovery has sufficient momentum to be sustained and durable," said Darling, whose country is still in its longest recession on record.The St Andrews meeting will also work out details of a global framework for growth agreed in Pittsburgh, designed to prevent fresh meltdown through coordinated international action...
"The biggest risk to recovery would be to exit before the recovery is real."
As a handful of protestors gathered in St Andrews to target the meeting, anti-poverty campaigners called for ministers to take action to help people in developing countries, notably by acting on climate change.
"Getting a global climate deal is literally a matter of life and death for millions of people in Africa," said Jamie Drummond, executive director of advocacy group ONE.
"We're now faced with a ticking time bomb: this G20 finance ministers? meeting is a crucial stepping stone towards an agreement that could help the poorest countries adapt to the impacts they are already experiencing."
Darling Pushes for G20 Climate Deal
November 6, 2009Press Association - Leading finance ministers and bank governors will get down to business at the G20 summit as they try to nurse the global economy back to health.
Chancellor Alistair Darling, who is hosting the talks in Scotland, will stress the need for a deal to tackle climate change and call on leaders to follow through with measures to repair the financial system.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown will join the Chancellor for the summit in St Andrews, where protesters are planning demonstrations.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was among delegates from the 20 biggest and fastest developing national economies, including the European Union, to arrive at the historic university town on Friday.
Mr Darling set out his ambitions for the weekend summit during a formal dinner in Edinburgh.
He said a deal on climate change is "essential" as leaders look forward to a UN summit on the issue in Copenhagen and stressed the need for "global co-operation on a scale never seen before"...
Delegates Discuss Way Forward in UN Climate Talks
November 6, 2009AP - U.N. climate negotiators in Spain are discussing a formula for securing agreement among 192 nations on tackling global warming during a last day of talks before next month's major climate conference in Denmark.
European nations are downplaying expectations for a legal treaty to come out of next month's summit in Copenhagen.
Instead, negotiators are working to hammer out a political agreement that would allow rich nations to make commitments that are not legally binding. The shift follows acknowledgement that several countries, including the United States, may not be politically ready to sign a legal pact by next month.
The head of the U.N. climate secretariate, Ivo de Boer, says any decision accepted at Copenhagen would be "morally binding."
Negotiators Scale Back UN Climate Pact Ambition
November 5, 2009AP (Barcelona, Spain) – With the U.S. Congress still struggling to agree on sharp cuts in greenhouse gases or how to fund them, European officials said Thursday they were now striving for a political agreement instead of a new treaty to allow the U.S. and other rich nations to make commitments that are not legally binding.
The revised thinking was an implicit admission of defeat: the two-year timetable for crafting a landmark treaty will miss its deadline, and that failure threatens to deepen the distrust between rich countries and poor nations reeling from drought and failing crops caused by persistently warmer weather.
The treaty had been due to be completed in December at a 192-nation conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
European and U.N. officials are now suggesting a political deal, rather than a legal accord, that would rely on commitments from both wealthy and developing countries. Industrial countries would commit to firm targets for reducing emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and allocating funds for poor countries, while developing countries would specify their plans for low-carbon growth.
Such a deal would not be legally binding, but would carry the authority of world leaders who would come to Copenhagen to sign off on it. Nations would agree to stick to their promises while they continue negotiating the details of a treaty, taking as long as another year...
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