[NYTr] Climate Change - A Tiny Step: Measuring Bali by a Scientific Yardstick

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

IPS - Dec 17, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40501

CLIMATE CHANGE:

Measuring Bali by a Scientific Yardstick

by Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Dec 17 (IPS) - A tiny step was taken Saturday in
meeting the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.

But it was nearly a step backward as the crucial climate talks in Bali
almost collapsed when the United States refused to join the global
consensus. However, after Kevin Conrad representing Papua New Guinea
told the U.S. delegation if they weren't going to be leaders, to please
get out of the way, the U.S. reversed its position and accepted what is
called the "Bali roadmap".

But before considering this new political roadmap on climate change,
what route did the scientific roadmap tell us to take?

A month ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
which was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, issued urgent
warnings that global emissions of greenhouse gases must peak and begin
to decline within 10 to 15 years. Many of world's leading climate
scientists have said that failure is not an option because it will
irreversibly destabilise the planet's climate system.

The millions of people already being affected by climate change will
rapidly become hundreds of millions without major reductions. And there
is a high risk that unique ecosystems that sustain life, such as coral
reefs, will collapse.

Climate science says the first important step on our journey to prevent
dangerous climate change is for industrialised countries to reduce
their emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
Representatives from industrialised countries actually agreed with the
scientists at a U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
meeting last August in Vienna.

And throughout the two-week Bali climate change talks, Yvo de Boer,
executive secretary of the UNFCCC, often reiterated this was the route
that climate science had clearly laid out.

So where does the Bali roadmap lead us?

There is no mention of the 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
Canada, the U.S. and Japan had steadfastly opposed any specific
reduction targets for industrialised countries. This was bitterly
opposed by the European Union and many developing nations.

For the sake of reaching an agreement, they eventually compromised and
there are no specific emissions targets in the final agreement. It does
acknowledge that "deep cuts in global emissions will be required to
achieve the ultimate objective" of avoiding dangerous climate change.

The Bali roadmap is essentially an agreement to start a two-year
process of negotiations designed to agree on a new set of emissions
targets to replace those in the Kyoto Protocol. While this may not seem
like much progress, there had been serious debate about a longer
negotiation period which would postpone action well into the future.

And until the last, the U.S. -- which alone which accounts for about a
quarter of the world's global warming emissions -- objected to a
specific declaration that "deep cuts in global emissions" were needed,
saying the science remains uncertain.

"The [George W.] Bush administration has unscrupulously taken a monkey
wrench to the level of action on climate change that the science
demands," said Gerd Leipold, executive director of Greenpeace
International.

"They've relegated the science to a footnote," said Leipold in a
statement.

Without reduction targets, what was achieved in Bali?

"We've created incentives to make it attractive for countries to act on
climate change," said de Boer at the meeting's final press conference.
"We're creating carrots here, and maybe, if need be, later on we'll
make sticks to encourage people."

The biggest carrot is to allow rich countries to buy carbon credits
from countries that preserve their existing tropical forests.
Deforestation is responsible for 20 to 25 percent of global carbon
emissions.

Those carrots left some in the NGO sector fuming.

"It's all about how to make a profit out of the climate crisis," said
Simone Lovera of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO
based in Paraguay.

"Corporate interests are dominating and taking over this conference,"
Lovera told IPS from Nusa Dua, Bali.

Rather than buying credits to pollute, rich countries should be
reducing their emissions at source, she said. The UNFCCC has made a big
mistake by encouraging the business sector to become heavily involved
in the process. The survival of entire countries are at stake and it's
absolutely impossible for them to participate, said Lovera, who has
attended many climate conferences.

While the principles of sustainable development were largely being
ignored in Bali, Lovera said there were still hopeful signs, such as
the Dutch agreement to stop subsidising oil palm for use as biodiesel
and Norway's 2.8-billion-dollar commitment to help developing countries
that preserve their forests. And Germany announced it would cut its
emissions by 40 percent by 2020.

Most NGOs issued statements congratulating delegates on achieving an
agreement but saying the Bali roadmap is vague, and lacking ambition.
And everyone is waiting for the Bush administration to leave office,
setting up enormous expectations for the country's new president.

"Politicians can no longer say they didn't know climate change is a
serious and urgent issue," Hans Verolme, director of WWF's Global
Climate Change Programme, said a month ago at the formal release of the
IPCC Synthesis Report.

"Bali will show the world what they are ready to do," Verolme told IPS.

At the moment, just a small step forward.

(END/2007)