Climate Agreement Won’t Include Emissions Targets
The best outcome for an international agreement on climate change this year won’t include specific emissions targets for greenhouse gases, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
There’s too little time to narrow the differences between countries before a December deadline to complete a global warming accord in Copenhagen, Barroso said. Even an interim agreement that spells out basic principles of a deal will require stepped-up efforts, he told reporters today in New York.
More than 190 nations are negotiating an accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set emissions limits on industrialized countries that expire in 2012. Binding targets are needed to keep the increase in global temperatures to within 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of pre-industrial times, a target that averts the worst effects of climate change, according to the European Union.
“Unfortunately, it’s now impossible for several reasons to have a complete agreement on all the binding targets,” Barroso said. “That is not realistic anymore.”
The U.S. rejected the Kyoto accord in part because developing nations such as China were exempt. China and the U.S. produce about 40 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.
U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet tomorrow with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao during a one-day United Nations summit on climate change in New York. China, India and other developing countries have refused to agree to emissions caps that they say will slow economic growth.
“World leaders gathering here in New York can make a real difference on this,” Barroso said.
‘Building Blocks’
Nations have yet to agree on how to measure and verify emissions reductions or penalties for missing targets, said Kenneth Lieberthal, a Brookings Institution senior fellow at the Washington-based public policy group. The focus of negotiations should be on “building blocks” for an agreement, he said.
“The reality is that it is going to be nearly impossible to get a complete agreement from Copenhagen including targets country by country,” Lieberthal said in an interview. “The building blocks to making an agreement effective are very important and nowhere near being complete.”
Copenhagen shouldn’t be viewed though as an end point that can be declared a success or failure, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu told reporters today in Washington.
‘Coming Years, Coming Decades’
“In actual fact, success or failure will be determined by what happens in the coming years and the coming decades,” Chu said.
The European Union has proposed slashing emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Legislation being debated in the U.S. Congress would cut emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, a reduction of about 5 percent from 1990 levels, according to EU calculations.
“If the United States doesn’t move enough, others will hide behind that and there will be no global movement,” Barroso said.
Short of binding emissions targets, it’s still possible to reach agreement “on the basic principles of a compromise,” Barroso said. Such an accord must include commitments from developing countries to slow the growth of emissions and a mechanism for developed countries to help finance clean-energy projects in emerging economies.
“A key with China will be can you get them to take the national program that they have developed and turn it into an international commitment?” Lieberthal said.
