UN climate talks a test of will
Challenge... executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Yvo de Boer in Poznan for the UN climate change conference.
FOR the next two weeks, environment ministers from 192 nations will
UN climate talks a test of will
Challenge... executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Yvo de Boer in Poznan for the UN climate change conference.
FOR the next two weeks, environment ministers from 192 nations will batten down in the chilly Polish city of Poznan to confront one big question: can politicians bridge the gap that separates them from climate scientists over the action needed to avoid dangerous climate change?
The Poznan talks are the second round of United Nations negotiations aimed at getting a new global agreement on climate change by the end of next year.
Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, describes the dilemma this way: scientists will say radical action is essential. Political leaders will ask, is it possible?
On the eve of the talks, Australia's Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, ducked the question. Senator Wong reneged on a long-standing promise to present Australia's 2020 target for greenhouse gas cuts at Poznan, saying she would not announce the target until she returned from the talks.
The Rudd Government is still wrangling over it. Several ministers and officials want a weaker target than those proposed by the Europeans and climate scientists. Environment groups had threatened to condemn the Government if Senator Wong announced a weak target.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, promised at climate talks in Bali last December that Australia would take a leadership role in climate negotiations. But his Government's failure to agree on a 2020 target before Poznan will undercut its position. "It's a disappointment," said John Connor, chief executive of the Climate Institute. "It definitely limits the role Australia can play."
No country has to sign up for commitments until the last round of talks in Copenhagen next year. But Poznan is being closely watched because it will reveal how ambitious politicians are prepared to be to avoid dangerous climate change.
The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States has raised expectations, even though Bush Administration officials will attend the talks as one of their last acts.
A recent UN report on the negotiations quoted the European Union, Brazil and New Zealand as saying developed countries should aim to cut their emissions by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020. Australia agreed to examine this range of cuts last year in Bali.
European environment ministers insist such targets are needed in developed countries. They say the new climate agreement must aim to prevent the world's temperature rising 2 degrees.
To achieve this, the UN's peak scientific body advises that the growth in world greenhouse gas emissions must stop in the next 10 to 15 years and be cut to half of 1990 levels by 2050.
The radical action proposed by the scientific advice is aimed at keeping greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at or below 450 parts per million.
Unless developed countries take on ambitious 2020 targets, negotiators will find it almost impossible to get the fastest growing emitters, China and India, to commit to slowing their greenhouse gas pollution. Rich nations will also be unlikely to invest heavily in the clean technology China and India will need to slow their emissions.
The scale of the energy revolution being proposed by Europe has some business leaders in Australia deeply concerned.
But the investment needed could be 0.6 per cent of global gross domestic product a year, the head of the International Energy Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, said. The US spent 6 per cent of its GDP a year on the military during the Cold War. In September the Rudd Government's climate adviser, Ross Garnaut, concluded the world was not ready to sign an ambitious global climate agreement that could keep the temperature from rising less than 2 degrees.
This encouraged some inside and outside the Government