The path to an international climate deal is no clearer than it was before this week’s United Nation’s climate summit.
The summit was viewed as a momentum builder and, in some respects, it accomplished that. High-flying rhetoric abounded. China hinted that, at long last, it was “ready” to be a real partner at the negotiating table. Despite some notable holdouts, the event drew more than 120 heads of state to discuss an issue that, to many observers, is rising in profile.
But the pledges to act were meek. And harsh realities set in soon after. Developing countries could derail the process by insisting on an amount of aid that richer ones are unlikely to donate. Brazil, home of the Amazon rainforest, refused to sign a pledge to stop deforestation by 2030. India’s environment minister said his nation’s emissions would rise.
“Clearly there was enthusiasm. It kind of brought Manhattan to its knees,” Deborah Gordon, director of the climate and energy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But not everyone showed up in terms of Canada, Australia. Those who showed up weren’t able to make commitments at the national level.”
Hammering out a climate deal next year in Paris was always going to be difficult. The U.N.’s goal is to secure enough greenhouse gas-cutting commitments by 2020 to avert a 2 degree Celsius temperature rise by 2100. Most scientists blame greenhouse gases for exacerbating climate change.
That, too, was the goal of failed 2009 talks in Copenhagen. The sting of that collapse hung over this week’s summit as nations pleaded for action and asked for accountability of peers.
Developing nations spoke of an “erosion of trust” that richer countries would do enough to slash emissions. They’re chiefly concerned that a fund set up to help them deal with the effects of climate change won’t reach the $100 billion rich nations promised it would have by 2020. After a $1.3 billion contribution at the summit, the fund’s total stands at $2.3 billion.
President Obama also took a shot at big emitters and fossil fuel-driven economies that have held up previous talks, such as India, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, saying “nobody gets a pass.”
But how everybody can get on the same page between now and November 2015 in Paris — let alone an earlier meeting in December in Lima, Peru, where negotiators hope to iron out a draft treaty — remains a huge question.
“It’s going to take an incredible amount of effort by all the major emitting nations to reach commitments that can help us make inroads to really address long-term emissions. We’re not even close yet,” Paul Bledsoe, senior energy fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told the Washington Examiner.
Some experts say negotiators aren’t viewing Paris as the final deadline on climate change, owing to nations “absorb[ing] the hard lessons of Copenhagen,” said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
“No one moment or no one agreement is going to get the job done,” Diringer told the Examiner. “Just like [the summit] wasn’t the moment, Paris won’t be the moment. But we need to reap what we can from each moment and build on it.”
But most scientists say that even the measures taken now that appear politically ambitious — such as Obama’s proposal to slash electricity emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 — aren’t enough.
Political will is expected to be crucial, especially if leaders have to corral lawmakers as their economies flag.
Obama has been criticized by the European Union’s climate chief for reportedly seeking an accord that would be “politically binding,” rather than a stronger, legally binding one. The strategy owes to the fact Obama would likely never get 67 votes in the Senate to ratify a legally binding treaty, but it also underscores the complexities each country faces.
Economic worries pushed Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol agreement in 2011, the 1997 greenhouse gas-cutting agreement that the U.S. never ratified. Prime Minister Stephen Harper pulled out of the treaty because he said it threatened development of Canada’s oil sands — a thick, carbon-rich form of crude — that his government is counting on to drive economic growth.
India’s view that it is still a developing country also could dog negotiations.
That stance is what kept the third-biggest greenhouse gas emitter out of the Kyoto Protocol, as it argued emissions restraints would keep millions in poverty and contributed to the Copenhagen blowup. On Wednesday, India’s environment minister said his nation’s emissions would rise, and that India wouldn’t submit a plan to cut them ahead of the Paris talks. Senior Obama administration officials, however, told reporters Friday that “deliverables” on climate and clean energy will come from new Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to Washington next week.
Obama will be expected to offer more emissions cuts to gin up ambition from other nations. He must balance that with environmental policies that already make him deeply unpopular in parts of the country, even though those measures excite his base.
“I would say now the hard work really begins,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of energy and climate programs with the World Resources Institute. “His team now needs to match the U.S. commitment proposal with his ambition.”
