[Debate] (Fwd) Durban's Conf of Polluters pleased Washington for inequity

[Patrick Bond]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[climate justice now!] Stern's former advisor on Durban's 
'successes'
Date: 	Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:07:47 -0500
From: 	Brian Tokar <briant at pshift.com>

	

	


 From today's NY Times report from Davos. I think it's quite revealing re: how policy circles in the US view their specific accomplishments in Durban.  It also confirms our suspicions:

>  Trevor Houser, a climate and energy analyst at the Rhodium Group and a former adviser to the chief American climate negotiator, Todd D. Stern,  said that the Durban platform was promising because of what it did not say.
>
>  “There is no mention of historic responsibility or per capita emissions,” he wrote in an analysis of the Durban meeting. “There is no mention of economic development as the priority for developing countries. There is no mention of a difference between developed and developing country action. Rather it calls for urgent action by everyone and the widest possible collaboration.”

We no longer need to read between the lines to surmise the intentions behind the omission of equity language from the Durban "platform."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/business/global/signs-of-new-life-as-un-searches-for-a-climate-accord.html.





            Davos 2012


  Signs of New Life as U.N. Searches for a Climate Accord


            By JOHN M. BRODER
            <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/john_m_broder/index.html?inline=nyt-per>


            Published: January 24, 2012

WASHINGTON — Critics and supporters alike agree that the U.N. forum for 
negotiating international climate change 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> 
policies is an ungainly mess, its annual gatherings marked by discord, 
disarray and brinkmanship.


Each year, exhausted delegates and observers return home thinking that 
there has to be a better way to address what they believe to be one of 
the defining challenges of our time: the relentless warming of the 
planet and its impact on the world’s inhabitants.

But the recently concluded meeting in Durban, South Africa, which 
established a new mandate for concluding a binding agreement of some 
sort by 2015, has given the process new life and hushed many of its 
critics. For now.

“Apart from the fact that we took 36 hours longer than we expected, I 
actually think Durban will be proven by history to be the most 
encompassing and farthest reaching agreements that any climate 
conference has ever reached,” said Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican 
diplomat who leads the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 
body that oversees the negotiations.

She said that the crowning achievement of the meeting was the so-called 
Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, which requires the participating 
194 nations to develop over the next four years “a protocol, another 
legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force” to reduce global 
greenhouse gas emissions, limit temperature rise and help developing 
countries make the transition to a cleaner energy economy.

The platform explicitly states that the resulting agreement will be 
“applicable to all parties,” erasing a 20-year-old distinction between 
rich and poor countries that has undermined the process.

Trevor Houser, a climate and energy analyst at the Rhodium Group and a 
former adviser to the chief American climate negotiator, Todd D. Stern, 
said that the Durban platform was promising because of what it did not say.

“There is no mention of historic responsibility or per capita 
emissions,” he wrote in an analysis of the Durban meeting. “There is no 
mention of economic development as the priority for developing 
countries. There is no mention of a difference between developed and 
developing country action. Rather it calls for urgent action by everyone 
and the widest possible collaboration.”

Though relatively sanguine about the U.N. process for now, Ms. Figueres, 
Mr. Hauser and others acknowledge that it represents only a fraction of 
the effort that will be needed to effectively address climate change.

Real progress will require individual countries to fulfill their 
voluntary pledges under previous U.N. agreements. Other international 
bodies, including the Group of 20 major economies, the Major Economies 
Forum and regional organizations like the Asia-Pacific Economic 
Cooperation group must step up their efforts on climate change and clean 
energy development. Governments and the private sector will have to 
dramatically expand investment in renewable energy technology.

And all this must happen as virtually every part of the world is 
experiencing economic malaise and political uncertainty. A number of key 
countries — including France, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea and 
United States — are holding elections this year. The outcomes will 
affect, for example, the United States’ willingness to meet its 
emissions reduction targets and engage sincerely in international talks. 
Elections could also modify Japan’s and France’s continuing commitment 
to nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster.

“This is so large, so complex and so important that it cannot be 
entrusted to one single process,” Ms. Figueres said. “It must be 
attacked from multiple points. Everyone must be engaged. We are looking 
at nothing less than an energy and industrial revolution the likes of 
which we have never seen.”

She would not comment in detail on the stakes for the international 
negotiations of the American presidential and congressional elections. 
Climate change should be nonpartisan, she said.

Nick Robins, an energy and climate change analyst at HSBC, the global 
bank based in London, said that private finance and technology firms 
would play an increasing role in reducing carbon emissions, with or 
without the U.N. convention or even radical policy changes in the 
countries that generate the largest emissions.

Investment in low-carbon technology, from solar and nuclear to energy 
efficiency in buildings and lighting, is now $720 billion a year. “By 
2020,” he said, “we estimate it to be $2.2 trillion, without any new 
global deal or major change in policy in the leading economies.”

Mr. Robins noted in a recent analysis that the progress at Durban will 
do little in the short or medium term to reverse the current growth in 
consumption of dirty-burning fuels such as oil and coal 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/coal/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>. 
Last year greenhouse gas emissions from all sources set a new record and 
he anticipates that 2012 will top that.

Unless that trend is reversed quickly, he and others contend, the world 
will never meet the U.N. goal of keeping an increase in average global 
temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) above 
pre-industrial levels.

“We believe,” Mr. Robins wrote, “that the ‘ambition gap’ in climate 
policy means that hitting this target looks increasingly unlikely, 
resulting in further climate disruption.”

Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at 
Harvard University, said that Durban had helped resuscitate an 
international effort that appeared close to collapse. He said that the 
tasks before it were still difficult — producing meaningful emissions 
reductions quickly and at acceptable cost — but, unlike previous 
promises, there was at least now a structure that binds all the major 
players.

“Only time will tell whether the Durban Platform delivers on its 
promise,” Mr. Stavins said, “or turns out to be another ‘Bali Roadmap,’ 
leading nowhere.”

The vast majority of the nations that participate in the U.N. talks are 
victims, not perpetrators, of the rising seas, spreading deserts and 
other climate impacts that scientists say are brought on by increasing 
concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the 
atmosphere. The bulk of these emissions were produced by a handful of 
advanced industrial nations over the past century. Now, a relatively 
small number of fast-growing emerging economies, notably China, India, 
Brazil and South Africa, are adding to the concentrations.

Those deeply engaged in the diplomatic process, while acknowledging its 
flaws, say the world cannot entrust its fate to bankers, entrepreneurs 
or even the self-interest of nation-states. It was these actors, after 
all, who brought the world an energy system that puts no price on the 
global harm caused by ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions.

“I really do believe that a common international framework around all 
these things must be the aim to bring us the scale and the urgency we 
need,” said Connie Hedegaard, the E.U. commissioner for climate action. 
“Not that I don’t believe in the market, but it matters whether you have 
common rules or not.”

As for the weaknesses of the U.N. framework convention, “You don’t have 
to tell me about its shortcomings, how irritating and slow and 
frustrating it is,” she said. “I know it. But the very simple answer is, 
it’s the only forum we have.”

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.fahamu.org/pipermail/debate-list/attachments/20120127/29866331/attachment-0001.htm