James Thornhill, Reuters 8 Sep 09;
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The chances of a global agreement to fight climate change at U.N. talks in Copenhagen in December are only 50:50, said Australia's leading environmentalist, who warned of "full climactic destabilization" without a pact.
Tim Flannery, chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council which fosters collaboration between international business and science to fight climate change, said without action in Copenhagen the world faced "runaway" climate change.
"The changes in the climate system are occurring at a very fast rate indeed and our attempts to catch up in terms of our social and economic policy are just not fast enough," Flannery told Reuters Television in an interview on Tuesday.
"I'm deeply concerned that in the near future we're facing a runaway situation," said Flannery, as part of Reuters Climate Change and Alternative Energy Summit.
The U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen aim to reach agreement on a post-Kyoto pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming.
Cooperation between the United States and China, the world's two biggest polluters, is considered essential for the world to reduce heat-trapping gas emissions.
China's rapid growth has pushed it into first place as the world's leading source of carbon dioxide emissions. But the United States, the number two emitter, still has spewed the most heat-trapping gases into the air over time.
Their greenhouse gas emissions are driven by a huge appetite for fossil fuels.
But both Washington and Beijing have in recent months vowed to reduce emissions, prompting environmentalists like Flannery to become more hopeful of a global climate pact being reached.
HOPE
"I'm more optimistic than I have been for a number of years, for a number of reasons," Flannery explained.
"The first is that (U.S.) President Obama has taken an interest in this issue, and also the Chinese have shown real leadership, so that gives us hope," he said.
The House of Representatives has approved legislation that would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. It is unclear whether the U.S. Senate will pass similar legislation before Copenhagen.
In China's current five-year plan, the government aims to cut energy consumption per unit of GDP by about 20 percent by 2010 compared to 2005 levels, saving more than 1.5 billion tons of CO2 from being emitted.
The effort has fallen behind schedule, although cuts are speeding up.
Beijing is also demanding that developed countries cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 and for rich nations to commit between 0.5 and 1.0 percent of their GDP to help developing countries address climate change.
"The obstacles in our path are still absolutely immense and I must admit our chances are still somewhere around 50:50 of us reaching an agreement," said Flannery.
The worst-case scenario would be if the Copenhagen climate talks collapsed due to national self-interest, he said.
"If we have a catastrophic failure to reach an agreement, in other words we have people walking away from the table, we will face the most dire consequences," said Flannery.
"Some of those will be almost immediate because the level of disillusionment among people will be great, but then over the coming decade we will have to wait and watch as the situation deteriorates without resort to a solution," he said.
"That will be hugely corrosive and at the end of that process there will be full climactic destabilization."
(Editing by Michael Perry)
Climate deal is 'in the balance'
Richard Black, BBC News 8 Sep 09;
Prospects for reaching a new global deal on climate change are "in the balance", according to UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
There is a "real chance" that December's UN summit in Copenhagen will not reach agreement, he said.
Mr Miliband was briefing reporters prior to a whirlwind tour of European capitals aimed at stepping up EU diplomacy on the Copenhagen process.
The EU could be a "force multiplier" on the issue, he said.
In the same news conference, Mr Miliband's younger brother Ed - the UK Energy and Climate Secretary - said the Copenhagen process was too important to be a matter for politicians only.
On a recent visit to Bangladesh, he related, he had seen how "two million people living on sandbanks are already living with the effect of climate change, with more flooding than usual".
Whether Copenhagen produced money to help countries such as Bangladesh adapt to climate impacts would, he said, be "a big determinant of their survival".
Atonement
Preparations for a new UN climate treaty to supplant the Kyoto Protocol began nearly two years ago, but in recent months it has become clear that wide divisions remain between various blocs.
Developing countries say that as the industrialised west grew rich through intensive fossil fuel use, emitting carbon dioxide in the process, western countries bear historical responsibility for climate change and must take the lead in cutting emissions.
So far, the scale of cuts pledged by western leaders has not met the expectations of the developing world.
Neither have the sums of money coming forward to help poorest nations protect their societies and economies against climate impacts.
This means in turn that developing countries have been unwilling to pledge measures to restrain the growth in their own emissions.
"The deal that the world needs in Copenhagen is in the balance," observed David Miliband.
The foreign secretary described the news that Japan's incoming government would triple the size of its emission cut pledge as "very significant".
The UK government sees itself as a leading player in international climate diplomacy. In June, Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed setting up a fund to raise and disburse $100bn (£60bn) annually for climate protection and adaptation.
David Miliband's tour of EU capitals is aimed at increasing and co-ordinating diplomatic efforts towards securing a Copenhagen deal, including promoting the adaptation fund.
Much of the negotiating, he said, would have to be done in the months leading up to the UN summit; and the EU, because of the influence it had in various countries, could be an effective leader in that.
Acceleration lane
An agreement with Mr Miliband's French and Swedish counterparts, Bernard Kouchner and Carl Bildt, means that diplomatic missions of the three countries will step up lobbying across the world in the coming weeks - a period that also sees a special climate change event for heads of government at the UN in New York, and a key meeting of the G20 in Pittsburgh that may come up with new initiatives on funding.
If none of this worked well enough, the foreign secretary conceded: "There is a real danger that the talks scheduled for December will not reach an agreement".
This is the strongest admission yet from a senior UK minister that a deal is not necessarily in the bag; and with only three months left until the summit, environmental organisations agreed that the pace and intensity of diplomacy needed to be stepped up.
"[David] Miliband's acknowledgement that the EU must harness political will right now, in order to make a sustainable future a possibility, is very welcome," said David Norman, head of campaigns at WWF UK.
"Copenhagen is fast approaching, and high level discussions over the next few weeks will determine whether we can achieve a decent global deal in December or if we will shackle ourselves to a future of runaway climate change."
