Copenhagen 3: Concentrating the Global Mind

by Kennedy Graham

Monday has opened Week 2 of the Greatest Show on Earth.  Over the weekend the Danish hosts, PM Rassmussen and Environment Minister Hedegaard gave upbeat presentations of where we are at.  Of course they must.  Their presentations were greeted with a touch of cheerful derision from those watching the conference video.

If the cup is half full, you conclude that the preliminary negotiations in Week 1 have been fruitful and that national leaders are bound to thrash out the remaining differences and emerge smiling on 18 December with a politically-binding agreement that will translate into legal obligations during 2010 in time to avert disaster.

If it is half empty, you harbour a profound disbelief that, after a quarter-century of recognition of the climate change threat, 17 years after the Framework Convention, 12 years after the Kyoto Protocol was signed, and 2 years after the Copenhagen negotiating process commenced, we are still bickering over the length of the 2^nd commitment period, and what legal form the next agreement will take – all this with four days before the conference terminates.

Set aside the critical substantive issues – what proportion of global emissions we must agree for 2020 and 2050, when emission should peak, what (higher) cuts the rich North must accept, what degree of curbing from business-as-usual the impoverished South can be asked to accept, whether we bless the inundation of Tuvalu or undertake a last-minute effort to avoid that, how much funding the North must fork out for minimum global equity to lubricate the ‘grand global bargain’, how much we can responsibly rely on technological breakthroughs to trump Armageddon.  Basically, change humanity.  Set all these minor challenges aside.  Just focus on the simple procedure – should the next commitment period be six years or eight?  Can we get agreement?  Nope.  Too much fund grandstanding and hectoring, settling accumulated diplomatic grudges.

Monday morning, the Kyoto Protocol stream of the negotiations fell into disarray when the South sought to block the North from what they feared could be an abuse of the future provisions governing land use and forestry that would give the North a free pass out of having to drastically cut their emissions.  So the North retaliated by ending discussion on ‘mitigation targets’ – the cuts by the North themselves.  The meeting adjourned early –an inauspicious start to the Critical Week of the Greatest Show on Earth. By midday the Chair has indicated that things were back on the rails and would resume in the afternoon.  Half full, by diktat.

The global mind is being concentrated this week.  It is Reckoning Time for humans on Earth – five millennia of human striving, four centuries of European political thought, three centuries of Euro-American economic dominance – not to say exploitation.  The failure of the international community over the past half-century to rectify the obscene inequality among peoples on the planet, and to restore over the past quarter-century the health of the planet itself.  It’s call-in time.  The South have had it, and they are not about to genuflect any further.  They will not sacrifice themselves, even to save the planet, so long as the rich nations of the North remain crimped.  And so it goes.  It is up to the North to genuflect – first time ever.

Today, “the Danish President invites Parties to open-ended informal consultations to address major issues requiring political guidance.”  Parties will be invited to seek solutions on the following issues:

1. Long-term emission reductions goal ;
2. Aspects of developed country mitigation under the Kyoto Protocol, comprising:

(a)     Aggregate and individual levels of emission reductions

(b)     How to ensure consistency in how targets are met;

1. Aspects of developing country mitigation under the Long-term Cooperation Agreement, comprising:

(a)     How to record planned mitigation actions

(b)     How to consider implemented mitigation actions

1. The role of market-based approaches in achieving mitigation
2. Ensuring predictable, long-term public financing for adaptation and mitigation, beyond short-term financial commitments
3. Other Issues:

(a)     Trade issues arising from mitigation policies

(b)     Situation of developed country Parties with special national circumstances

(c)     International aviation and marine bunker fuels.

All this by Friday.

Pray for us.