Copenhagen Accord: A bad deal waiting to happen (1)

PROMETHEUS BOUND

The climate negotiation in the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen has come to a sour end. The world’s high expectation for a meaningful and binding agreement is doused with icy cold water by a nonbinding deal dubbed as “Copenhagen Accord”—a deal primarily brokered by the most powerful and leading polluter country in the world—the United States.

Having witnessed the drama and “actions” of the climate negotiation for 12 straight days in Copenhagen, I saw that the climate negotiation in the Conference of Parties was not a negotiation among equals—it was an arena where the superpowers imposed their wishes to promote their interest at the expense of the majority in the world.

Instead of raising the legally binding commitment for emissions reduction under the Kyoto Protocol to levels advised by science and dictated by social equity, it proposes “individually or jointly quantified economy wide emissions targets for 2020”—a “business as usual” formula denying historical climate debts of developed countries as well as their primary responsibility to mitigate climate change.

The so-called Copenhagen Accord acknowledges the need to limit global temperature rise to a minimum of 2 degrees Celsius yet it has no specific target and legally binding commitment from rich countries to reduce their emissions by 2020 or earlier.

African countries see the 2 degrees limit of the accord as very dangerous explaining that this agreed limit spells death and devastation to many African nations and people. African nations called for 1.5 degrees Celsius limit during the talks. The Sudanese representative Ambassador Lumumba referred to the “Copenhagen Accord” as an instrument for murder since the 2 degree Celsius limit that was agreed would already mean the extermination of most of Africa. He even likened it to the holocaust and demanded for the withdrawal of the document from the pages of UN history.

Even European Union President and Prime Minister of Sweden Fredrik Reinfeldt warns that the so-called accord was not sufficient to meet its own 2 degrees Celsius target. The European Commission President José Manuel Barroso lamented that “ . . . the level of ambition is honestly not what we were hoping for. I will not hide my disappointment regarding the ambition in terms of the binding nature or non-binding nature of the future agreement.”

The main reason for the failure to reach a legally binding agreement for carbon emission reduction was the continued refusal of rich countries (headed by the United States) to cut their carbon emissions according to what is globally and historically necessary. In a fossil-based and profit-driven global production system, the US and leading capitalist countries fear that cutting their carbon emission will devastate their economy and making them lose their dominance of the world economy. More recent studies state that an 80-percent global carbon reduction is needed from 1990 levels by the year 2020 to avert the catastrophic effects of global warming if we factor in the latest unforeseen rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

The US has constantly opposed a meaningful climate agreement. It is the only industrialized country that has not ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. In the COP 13 in 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, the US was the lone opposition to having a climate agreement to address global warming. When the US was exposed as the antagonist and was left isolated in its position, it was forced to back down to have the Bali Roadmap. The Bali Roadmap established the process to come up in COP 15 in Copenhagen with a legally binding international climate that will replace the Kyoto Protocol.

But again, with its strong global political clout and by dangling billion of dollars, the US successfully prevented to have a worthwhile agreement in Copenhagen. The US accounts for almost 30 percent of the historical global carbon emissions. While it is now next to China in terms of volume of current emissions, the US is still the leading polluter in the world per capita. It remains the number one producer and consumer of fossil fuels. President Barack Obama said that the US can only commit to a 4-percent carbon emission reduction by 2020, the lowest among the rich capitalist countries.

The US is, however, not alone in railroading run-away emission targets. Japan, Australia and the European Union have also pressed for individually set emission targets, with commitments falling around puny 5-percent, 8-percent and 20-percent carbon reduction by 2020, respectively.

The so-called Copenhagen Accord will have the same fate as the Kyoto Protocol—dreaming to curb carbon emissions but in reality leading to runaway global emissions that will cause even more environmental destruction. The poor people of the world is left holding the bag with a bad deal and a bad future.

Clemente Bautista Jr., a founding member of AGHAM and coordinator of the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) participated in the mobilizations and the COP 15 talks in Copenhagen.

Prom.bound@gmail. –CLEMENTE BAUTISTA JR., Manila Times