The stakes not could be higher, but a deal on climate change may still be beyond the world leaders, says Michael Meacher
Three issues are still holding up a deal at the Copenhagen summit: the level of carbon emission cuts to which each country will commit, the level and source of funding for developing countries to help them cope with the impact of climate change and the passing of a bill through the United States Congress which binds the world’s biggest polluter to a deal.
On the first point, the European Union has taken the lead by committing to a 20 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2020 – and a 30 per cent cut by that date if a deal is done at Copenhagen. The EU has also agreed a £90 billion package for developing countries for mitigation and adaptation against the effects of climate change. Up to half will be provided by taxpayers and the remainder by the private sector. But it is still undecided how the contributions by EU countries will be determined – whether by gross domestic product or emission levels (the “polluter pays” principle) or some other rationale. The developing countries are not impressed and are threatening a walkout at the summit.
More than in any recent period and perhaps ever, the developing countries are in the driving seat at this international conference. This is for three main reasons. First, climate change can only be arrested if virtually all countries reach an enforceable agreement, because any significant exceptions could cause the whole deal to unravel. Second, the rich Western world needs an agreement to try and prevent its own lands and people suffering the worst ravages of climate turmoil. And third, for once, the big, powerful countries cannot enforce their will on the rest.
This leaves the G77 (originally a group of 77 countries, now enlarged to some 120) with a strong negotiating hand. The recent pre-summit formal negotiations broke up in acrimony following G77 demands for far bigger emission cuts by the industrialised countries as well as more extensive funding.
Even so, the US remains crucial. There are clear signs of American opinion shifting in favour of the Climate Change Bill, including among some crucial Republican senators. However, hardcore Republican resistance on the cost of anti-climate change action forced a delay, sufficient to prevent any final US position being reached in time for the Copenhagen conference. This will almost certainly mean a postponement of six months or so to get final figures for an enforceable agreement.
Bowing to the inevitable over a postponement of a legally binding global package for the next stage of tackling climate change is all very well, but the price of failure or deferral could be severe. Nature does not hang about waiting for politicians. And postponement sends out its own message – that this is off the agenda for the time being and urgency takes a back seat.
It could also weaken the resolve of other big and important countries, including China, India, Japan and Brazil, which might be discouraged from taking vital and painful decisions within a comparatively short timescale. The ultimate danger is that the whole global drive for decisive and sufficient action against climate change begins to unravel.
Two factors make this issue unprecedented in magnitude. First, unlike any previous international treaty, it requires universality or something close to it in the response of all countries. Any lack of inclusiveness in the form of any sizeable and populous region would undermine the efforts made by all the rest. The world cannot afford free riders. That escalates the complexity of the negotiations drastically, as so many countries demand recognition of what they insist are their own special circumstances.
That requires difficult and complex negotiation to seek accommodations across the spectrum without sacrificing the core necessities of the outcome. The conflicting demands between rich industrialised nations and poor developing ones, island states and mainland continents, oil-rich and resource-rich countries and arid and impoverished ones all open up almost unbridgeable gulfs.
Old-style socialism may have collapsed with the Berlin Wall, but a new-style socialism, in which all have to contribute and share equally if all are to gain and prosper, might just have the capacity to usher in a different era of world governance in which commonality of purpose would be a condition of survival.
The second factor which makes this vastly different from any other challenge in history is that it threatens the underlying tenets of the economic model on which the world is based. Capitalism can only prosper as a system where the potential for growth is largely unconstrained. But unlimited mining of coal, uncontrolled deforestation, exponential increases in the number and use of cars and aeroplanes, and rapacious and ever-increasing industrial exploitation are stalled by two overriding constraints: an intensification of climate change and the finite nature of the Earth’s resources.
It is not surprising that the Copenhagen process has been temporarily checked when the stakes are so momentous. Climate catastrophe will either destroy large parts of the world and large parts of the human population with them or it will mark a decisive shift from growth-ridden, hyper-exploitative capitalism to a much more balanced, inter-dependent and environmentally coherent economic model.
Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton and a former environment minister
