The three stooges of climate change

Reading the international climate change news recently has reminded me more than a little of The Three Stooges, those kings of physical comedy that permanently warped at least one generation of Americans. Sadly, our modern day climate stooges are toying with something far more important than our sense of humor as they jostle for position and generally play politics leading into December’s Copenhagen conference.

The stooges are, of course (in alphabetical order): China, India, and the US.

For example:

The Guardian: Copenhagen begins in Beijing. The world waits (emphasis added):

For some months now, the mood music from China has been distinctly upbeat: a massive renewable energy drive that could see it surpass Europe’s challenging targets for clean power by 2020, a climate change resolution passed for the first time by the country’s top legislative body, the beginnings of a public debate about when Chinese emissions should peak and begin to fall. Beijing even retained London PR firm Freuds to try to polish its image on the issue.

But at a conference on reporting climate change last week, senior Chinese scientists and negotiators were in an altogether less emollient mood. The official Chinese position is snappily summarised as “shared burden, differentiated responsibilities”, which roughly translates as: We’re all in the same boat but it’s your fault that it’s taking on water, so you’d better do most of the baling.

And both publicly and privately, Chinese officials seemed at pains to emphasise just how differentiated those responsibilities should be. “The developed countries have the money, they have the technology and they think it’s an important issue,” one told me. “So why don’t they do something about it?”

As the Guardian reports today, a leading government adviser has sounded another disconcerting note. China will not sacrifice its economic growth, he warned, to prevent the world from warming by more than 2C, the threshold beyond which scientists warn we could face disastrous effects.

…

“They are caught between a fairly recent understanding that climate change is real, and going to do them real damage, and the competing idea that they don’t fully believe that it’s possible for industrial economies to grow without producing lots of carbon.”

…

One western expert who advises the Chinese on climate policy says the messages from Beijing may not be as contradictory as they seem. China’s talk of decarbonising is genuine, he says. “They are bloody serious about this. Their planning is more advanced than anywhere in the world.” But at the same time, Beijing is determined to make the rich countries cut deeper and hand over more technology and cash to developing nations.

Some of this may have more to do with strategic powerbroking than climate change. According to the senior diplomat, China’s aim is to emerge from Copenhagen as the protective uncle that brings home the bacon for the developing nations – which just happen to have a lot of the resources that China needs to fuel its continued economic growth.

Change on climate: India ready to quantify cuts (emphasis added):

In a significant shift in its stand ahead of the Copenhagen meeting, India has, for the first time, said reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions is as much a part of its climate change strategy as adaptation efforts, and that it is even ready to quantify the emission cuts it is prepared to take over a period of time.

The quantification — a big no-no until now— would, however, be only indicative, not absolute. The Indian Express has learnt that the government is even ready with a draft legislation to suggest “broadly indicative” pathways that it would like to take on carbon emissions.

New Delhi is, however, reiterating that the emissions reduction would not take the form of legally-binding targets, nor would it be imposed by any outside power. And it would, of course, not be at the cost of India’s development priorities.

See also: India challenges US by agreeing to impose limits on carbon emissions

Scientific American: Lack of U.S. Climate Change Legislation Will Delay Global Treaty Talks:

President Obama’s top climate diplomat acknowledged today that Capitol Hill delays over global warming legislation will likely push international negotiations to work beyond a December summit in Copenhagen on a new treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

“I think that we’ll shape the thing to get as much done as can be done, and there are some pieces that need to get completed,” Todd Stern, the State Department’s climate envoy, told reporters. “But I think the mission is to get the most ambitious, most far-reaching accord that we can in Copenhagen, and to the extent there’s some things that need to be completed after that, then that will happen.”

Stern did not go into specifics about what items will be left for diplomats beyond December. But the diplomat said he agreed with U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer, who earlier this summer made a similar assessment that the Copenhagen negotiations won’t be the end-all on a global warming treaty that applies to more than 190 nations.

According to the U.N. Web site, additional climate talks are scheduled for May and November 2010 — though more negotiations are likely to be scheduled should diplomats fail to make enough headway at the end of this year in Copenhagen.

US struggles for credibility on climate change (emphasis added):

In less than three months, 120 countries convene in Copenhagen for action on a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

But with the US Senate bogged down in the fight over reforming the health care system, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid said this week that the senators might not move on climate legislation until next year.

That was too much for John Bruton, head of the European Union delegation in Washington. He issued a statement that pointed out that by the time the Senate acted, the climate change conference would have been ended, the delegates gone home.

“The United States is just one of the 190 countries coming to this conference,” Bruton said, “but the United States emits 25 percent of all the greenhouse gases that the conference is trying to reduce.

“I submit that asking an international conference to sit around looking out the window for months, while one chamber of the legislature of one country deals with its other business, is simply not a realistic political position.”

Unable to point to a start on climate change legislation in the Senate, the US delegation in Copenhagen would be hard-pressed to explain to the world how it plans to meet any targets that are agreed to.

Anyone who sees reasons in all of this for optimism should feel free to speak up, because the evidence eludes me.

In general, I think everyone has to accept that the odds of getting the huge, all encompassing, environmental victory in Copenhagen are very slim and getting slimmer by the day. (Whether those odds were ever good is another debate for another time, I suppose.) Right now, I think the best we can hope for is a non-binding agreement on general principles and a “commitment” to continue negotiations in new meetings.

As long as the US is dragging its feet and China and India are putting their own development plans ahead of what should be our shared, worldwide goals, we’ll never get the kind of pact we need to deal with CO2 emissions. Any one of those three countries can act selfishly (or less vigorously than the situation demands) and individually blow our CO2 emissions budget. We need all three of these countries to stop acting like stooges and start showing some enlightened self-interest and, dare I say it, some leadership.