Copenhagen Climate Summit: The gulf between rhetoric and reality

UN climate change head Yvo de Boer told the BBC yesterday, as an estimated 18,000 delegates, officials, lobbyists and scientists began to gather, that things were in “excellent shape”. “Never in 17 years of climate negotiations have so many different countries made so many pledges. Almost every day now governments are announcing pledges—it’s unprecedented,” he said.

What de Boer failed to add was that the present pledges, even if fully realised, fall far short of what most climate scientists say is necessary to contain global warming and its potentially disastrous consequences. The deep divisions between the major powers and various blocs that were on display at the previous UN-sponsored summit in Bali in December 2007 have already surfaced in the lead-up to Copenhagen.

Before the Bali conference, the IPCC released a major report which called for a cut in carbon emissions of 25 to 40 percent by the advanced industrial countries by 2020 compared to 1990 levels and a global emissions reduction of 50 to 80 percent by 2050. While the European powers, together with China, India and other emerging industrial countries, pressed for the inclusion of a reference to the IPCC emission targets in the final statement, the US led a bloc of countries, including Japan, Canada and Australia, that blocked the move and demanded that so-called developing countries agree to targets. Under the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries are not bound to cut emissions.

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