Climate costs set to rise, technology can help: UN

* Costs of slowing global warming to rise if no quick cap
* New technologies can help curb costs - Pachauri
Alister Doyle Reuters AlertNet 22 Nov 10;

GARDERMOEN, Norway, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Costs of combating global warming will rise inexorably if the world fails to cap greenhouse gases by 2015, but new technologies can curb the price, the head of the U.N. climate panel said on Monday.

Rajendra Pachauri also told Reuters he felt "reasonably optimistic" that a U.N. climate meeting in Mexico from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 would make at least modest progress towards curbing climate change.

A scenario by his panel in 2007 said world emissions would have to peak by 2015 to get on track to limit temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times, widely seen as a threshold for "dangerous" climate change.

"If you deviate from that (2015 goal) and delay the peaking of global emissions you are moving onto a more expensive trajectory," he said on the sidelines of a conference in Norway about Zero Emissions.

"You are not giving up the possibility but you are going to have to pay a higher price," said Pachauri.

Earlier on Monday, a study showed emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide are on track to hit a record in 2010, driven largely by booming economies in China and India and their reliance on coal. [ID:nSGE6AK014]

But Pachauri also said technological breakthroughs could mute the costs of a strong assault on global warming, projected by the panel to cost about 0.12 percent of world gross domestic product a year until 2030.

"It is entirely possible ... that the benefits might outweigh the costs," he said of efforts to avert more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels. "And the decline in costs might be far more rapid than expected."

PHONE BREAKTHROUGHS

Telephone bills, for instance, had plunged in recent years because of unexpectedly cheap new technologies. A shift from fossil fuels means less air pollution and smaller health bills.

He said there were big uncertainties in any cost forecasts. "I don't think one can make predictions that one treats as the words of The Bible in looking at the future," he said.

Pachauri said he had no plans to quit despite errors in the 2007 report including an exaggeration of the rate of melt of Himalayan glaciers. No governments called for his resignation at a recent meeting in South Korea, he said.

About 140 governments agreed at the U.N.'s Copenhagen summit in 2009 to limit temperature rises to below 2C. Temperatures have already risen by about 0.7C from pre-industrial times.

U.N. talks in Cancun, Mexico, next week will seek agreement on steps such as setting up a "green fund" to channel aid to developing nations, protect tropical forests and share clean technologies. A full treaty is out of reach.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg expressed hopes for modest progress in Cancun despite a standoff in 2010 between China and the United States, the top two emitters.

"I am less optimistic than I have been for a long time," he said in a speech. "There will be no overall binding agreement."

Irish rock star and anti-poverty campaigner Bob Geldof told the conference the world could easily reach a target of raising $100 billion a year in aid to developing nations to combat global warming, despite austerity in many nations.

Rich nations could save $25 billion a year, for instance, just by halving consumption of sweets, he said. "I don't want to hear from politicians that we can't find $100 billion for the gravest political challenge of our time. It can be done." (Editing by Janet Lawrence)

China feels heat of climate change rifts
* China's rising emissions make it focus for talks
* China says it must protect right to develop
* Contention likely over shape of climate treaty
Chris Buckley Reuters AlertNet 22 Nov 10;

BEIJING, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Coaxing China into a global grand bargain to fight climate change that also satisfies the United States and other rich nations threatens to be even more daunting and elusive than fixing the economic rifts dividing them.

China is the world's biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases from human activity stoking global warming, having outstripped the United States. Those two powers will play a big part in determining whether climate pact talks in Cancun, Mexico, from Nov. 29 can make progress towards a comprehensive deal.

Their often rival stances have long strained climate negotiations. Beijing and Washington have also recently sparred over China's exchange rate controls and huge trade surplus.

"We talk about looking for big points of agreement and keeping small disputes in check, but Cancun will be about looking for small agreements to keep the big disputes in check," said Zhang Haibin, an expert on international climate change politics at Peking University.

Cancun is meant to take modest yet reassuring steps on the way to a binding agreement. But with Beijing at odds with Washington and other Western powers over the scale and transparency of emissions aims, and the principles underpinning any new deal, even limited success is not a sure thing.

"Ultimately what is at stake for each side is its strategic interests, and that's why even small issues can be so troublesome," said Zhang, the Beijing professor.

"A climate change agreement is about allocating emissions rights, and that involves basic interests in economic growth and the costs of mitigation (of greenhouse gases)," said Zhang.

"With the remaining emissions space so limited, China has a basic interest in preserving its space and expecting more from the developed countries so it can ensure its right to develop."

Intense negotiations last year failed to agree on a binding treaty and culminated in a rancorous meeting in Copenhagen.

CLOSELY WATCHED

Failure at Cancun could deepen discord between advanced and developing economies, especially between the U.S. and China, which between them emit 43 percent of the world's carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning coal, oil and natural gas.

Global emissions are already approaching levels that many scientists believe make dangerous climate change hard to avoid, auguring more extreme weather, crop failures and rising seas.

"It is scientifically impossible to address climate change without meaningful greenhouse gas reductions from both countries, therefore the positions that these countries take in the negotiations are closely watched by countries around the world," said Joanna Lewis, an expert on U.S.-China climate and clean energy ties at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.

Negotiators hope to agree in Cancun on funds to help poor nations to cope with climate change, steps to protect forests that absorb carbon dioxide, and other building blocks of a binding agreement that negotiators hope to reach late next year.

China is now probably the world's second biggest economy, having passed Japan. Yet China's average emissions per person are still below the industrialised countries', and Beijing says it is unjust to focus on total emissions to determine climate obligations.

"The cost estimates for coping with climate change are growing, and China still needs funds and technology to address the opportunities foregone from paying for that," said Zou Ji, the China Country Director of the World Resources Institute, a Washington D.C.-based group that advocates climate change action.

Beijing's main goal in Cancun, however, will be defensive: warding off demands for it to put its emissions under stricter treaty obligations.

China's emissions have more than doubled since 2000 and they grew about 9 percent last year. That growth is set to continue for many years, and is stirring demands for Beijing to spell out in a treaty how it will control and ultimately cut them.

Beijing has made a domestic vow to reduce "carbon intensity", the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each dollar of economic growth, by 40-45 percent by 2020 compared to 2005. But it says that goal will not be turned into a binding international target that it fears could hinder development and autonomy.

TOPPLE THE KYOTO TOWER?

Beijing instead wants to keep as the pillar climate treaty the Kyoto Protocol, under which nearly all rich countries agreed to legally binding emissions goals, with the big exception of the United States, which refused to become a party.

Under Kyoto, poorer nations, including China, take voluntary, non-binding steps to curb the growth of emissions while they focus on development and lifting citizens out of poverty.

The United States and other rich nations want a new global deal to discard that either-or division.

That could make for tense talks in Cancun.

"The issues about the Kyoto Protocol are now the most contentious issues in climate change negotiations and the biggest obstacles blocking scheduled progress," Huang Huikang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's special representative for climate change talks, told a news conference last week.

"There's absolutely no need to topple that tower and start building over again," he said. (Editing by David Fogarty)