World leaders 'failing to get' climate message

Fred Pearce, New Scientist 15 Dec 08;

The politicians just don't seem to get the seriousness of the global warming crisis. Scientists attending the recent UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland, complained that the gap between political rhetoric and scientific reality on climate change is growing.

"It doesn't matter what the politicians promise," said French climate scientist Philippe Ciais. "Even if we stop emissions growing today, the world will still warm by 2 °C – a lot more in some places. It is too late to prevent that."

Ciais was at Poznan to present the latest findings of the Global Carbon Project, a network of scientists that monitors how humans are influencing the natural carbon cycle.

While politicians boast of their progress in cutting CO2 emissions, in the real world the gas is actually accumulating at an accelerating rate. Emissions have risen 28% already this decade, compared with 9% for the whole of the 1990s, said Ciais.
'Negotiations needed'

In Poznan, world leaders spent two weeks trying to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto protocol, ahead of a deal intended to be signed this time next year in Copenhagen. But progress was slow.

The meeting did make progress on establishing an adaptation fund to help poor countries hit by inevitable climate change, and on paying tropical countries to protect their rainforests and so lock up the carbon they contain.

But no rich nations made new promises about their own future emissions, though at a separate meeting, the EU agreed a package that could lead to 20% cuts by 2020.

As proceedings closed, the UN's chief climate negotiator Yvo de Boer said that "serious negotiations must begin now." However, he said that after last year's talks in Bali too.
Obama vacuum

The small band of scientists at the event said politicians still didn't get the seriousness of the problem.

Minister after minister claimed that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had said dangerous climate change can be stopped by preventing average global temperatures from rising by 2 °C, and that this can be done by reducing CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050. Neither statement is true, said Ciais.

"We need an 80% cut by 2050, and that would only give a 70% chance of avoiding [a 2 °C rise]," said Martin Parry, co-chair of the last IPCC report on the impacts of climate change.

One man who did seem to get it was UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, whose attendance in Poznan signified how climate change has become his overriding priority. He promised to call one, and perhaps two, meetings with world leaders next year.

In part, the Poznan paralysis arose because, as many leaders admitted, the world is waiting for Barack Obama. All agree that no deal is worth having without the US signing up. A deadline for countries to make firm proposals on emissions cuts was set for April 2009 specifically to meet the president-elect's timetable.
'Tipping point'

Also missing is a way to work out long-term entitlements to emit greenhouse gases. Developing nations are reluctant to accept targets until there is a fair formula. One idea is to base entitlements on population.

The EU has said that reducing global emissions 50% by 2050 would require that "average emissions per capita should be reduced to around 2 tonnes of CO2, and that in the long term, gradual convergence ... of national per capita emissions would be necessary."

Most scientists say average emissions per capita should be reduced to around 1 tonne, but if the EU plan is followed up, a deal to make per capita emissions fair, according to country, could form part of the Copenhagen compromise next year.

Will the planetary crisis wait? Maybe not: Ciais warned that we could soon pass a climate-change "tipping point" – if we haven't already.

"Once it is past, even zero emissions of CO2 won't stop the warming," he says.