Filed under: Barack Obama, Environment, Health Care, Deep BackgroundFor the past two weeks, as I covered the Copenhagen climate summit, I was able to observe closely the political calculus of Barack Obama. The conference peaked (or crashed) with a master stroke for Obama -- but perhaps not for the planet and billions of its inhabitants whose lives depend upon stabilizing the atmosphere.
If you've followed my previous dispatches or have glanced at a newspaper in the past few days, you've probably gotten the gist. As the conference was coming to what looked like a disastrous close, Obama, in a closed-door meeting, cut a deal with China (and India, Brazil, and South Africa). The goal of this U.N.-organized conference was to draft a binding treaty that would compel all the major emitters of global warming pollution to curb their emissions at rates scientists say are necessary to avert the more dangerous consequences of climate change. But the arrangement reached in that room produced merely a non-binding accord, under which nations will declare their own voluntary reductions. The pact established no firm targets for reductions or concrete schedule for decreasing emissions. Though Obama pushed hard for verification measures that would allow the world to determine if any particular country (meaning China) is meeting its self-proclaimed goals, the final wording of this provision was weak and vague. The accord does state that developed nations will devote $30 billion in the next three years to international program to help poorer nations contend with climate change and mobilize a $100 billion annual fund starting in 2020. But it left key details about these programs unstated. And the accord established no path for further negotiations.
All this was quite far from the goal that Obama has endorsed: a comprehensive and binding treaty in line with the science. So why did he engineer such a pact? He and his top aides clearly had concluded that the complicated and tortuous talks at the conference were leading nowhere--perhaps to no agreement at all. There were too many conflicts to resolve. China and other emerging developing nations didn't want to be covered by a treaty. Poor nations sided with them on this, but some disagreed with China and the others over whether an agreement should aim to limit a global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees Celsius. (The higher number, backed by China, India, the United States, and other big emitters, could cause water crises for 1.8 billion people in Africa.) The European Union yearned for deeper cuts from the United States and the major developing countries and offered to increase its own proposed reductions by 50 percent, if these other countries did more. (The other countries did not meet the EU's standards; so it did not adopt the deeper cuts.) The United States and Europe proposed a $100 billion fund; developing nations demanded a bigger amount. Meanwhile, several bad actors -- Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Bolivia -- were trying to blow up the proceedings. Under the UN rules for the climate change negotiations, any final agreement would have to be accepted by all of the 193 countries present. That's certainly one way to kill one-world government! Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
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