World leaders miss best chance

World leaders missed the best chance they are ever likely to get to stop global warming escalating out of control as the Copenhagen climate conference fizzled to a close.

deal_cop15_20091218-205101-6_web

They agreed in principle to keep the heating of the planet beneath 2C – the point at which scientists warn the planet has a chance of avoiding “dangerous” climate change – but failed to agree measures to achieve this.

Hopes of a worthwhile deal foundered largely on the inability of the world’s two biggest polluters – China and the United States – to reach agreement after a speech by President Obama angered Chinese premier  Wen Jiabow.

Determined day-long efforts by Gordon Brown, who invested enormous political capital in getting an effective deal, were not enough.

The damp squib comes after a disastrous 10 days of negotiations, which dissipated the high hopes with which the conference in the Danish capital began.

As pressure built up in the run-up to the meeting almost every major country, both developed and developing, offered unexpectedly large cuts in emissions. But the badly organised and ineffectually chaired meeting quickly descended into a blizzard of procedural manoeuvres and points of order over the form of an eventual treaty.

They only started making progress on Thursday after Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, agreed to take part in an eventual $100 billion fund to help the poorest cope with climate change, originally proposed by the Prime Minister in July.

But President Obama set it back by insisting the money depended on being able to monitor and verify, on the ground, measures by developing nations to reduce the growth of their emissions.

Developing countries, particularly China and India, resisted this partly as a point of pride, and partly because they feared it could be used to gather valuable commercial information, but the US administration insisted it needed boots on the ground to satisfy a sceptical Congress.

The leaders also failed to agree on a target to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, another goal resisted by developing countries.

Even though the rich have agreed to cut their own pollution by 80 per cent by then, that would still leave developing countries having to make absolute reductions of their own.

They have agreed to meet again early next year to agree targets for 2020. But no one was denying that making further progress will be hard, as will regenerating the momentum that was lost so recklessly over the last days.

History may show the conditions for an effective agreement were uniquely favourable in these past chilly December days and that the best chance to reach one was squandered.

Popularity: 1% [?]