With only 30-or so days before leaders meet to agree on a post-Kyoto climate deal in Copenhagen, there is an urgent need for nations to speed up negotiations and make political choices.
As talks continued last month in Bangkok to thrash out the details of the Kyoto Protocol’s successor, Danish Climate Change and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard said, “It is crucial that the negotiators start to diminish the text of the agreement substantially. It is much too long, much too complicated, there are too many points of disagreement. They must diminish the text and make the political choices much clearer.”
According to Hedegaard, who will play host in Copenhagen for the UN-led global climate conference in December, the summit needs to bring about change, “In the sense that the binding political decisions taken there put the world on the right track to keep temperature hikes below two degrees Celsius. We need to get an ambitious agreement that makes it likely that we can stick to what science tells us.”
Hedegaard believes the short to medium-term carbon dioxide emission reduction targets currently on the negotiating table are insufficient. She said, “The less the world does by 2020, the more we have to do in years to follow. And the longer we postpone action, the more expensive it’s going to be.”
The principal argument is about responsibility and fairness. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can remain for a century or more, and we are still feeling the effects from the last industrial revolution. However, most of the extra carbon dioxide that will go into the atmosphere in the future will be created by the developing nations, who are embarked on a period of unprecedented economic growth, much of it powered by burning coal.
The problem is compounded since agreement has to be reached by 192 countries whose representatives all have different domestic agendas and whose intransigence might render agreement on the colour of an orange difficult. Whilst commentators agree we have the technology to solve global warming, this is not about technology. This is about politics.
