What do you think of the Copenhagen deal?

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A 'meaningful agreement' on tackling climate change has been reached. Are you happy with the global deal?

(Feed provided by BBC News | Have your Say (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/talking_point/default.stm))

[bricolage]

No. It's a pile of shit.

[Eddie Ford]

I think this: :)

"As the Copenhagen climate conference draws to a close, the talks were predictably deadlocked. Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations general secretary, gloomily told reporters that “time is running out”, with “potentially catastrophic consequences”. The UK climate secretary, Ed Miliband, has admitted that the talks “could still fail” - as has his boss, Gordon Brown, who fears that “failure is a possibility”.

The prospects of any meaningful deal at Copenhagen seemed even less likely after the sudden and totally unexpected resignation of the conference’s president, Connie Hedegaard of Denmark, on the afternoon of December 16. She was unceremoniously replaced by the Danish prime minister, Lars Loekke Rasmussen - who on attending his very first plenary session was shouted down by angry and bewildered delegates.

So in the time remaining until December 18, when the conference officially ends, the various world leaders and delegates congregated in Denmark will presumably go without sleep (the usual stupid and macho ordeal of all such grand talks) in order to seal some sort of ‘accord’. But an accord aimed at doing what exactly, and when?

After all, Barack Obama has already openly stated that no binding agreements or deals will be made at Copenhagen - this will not be Kyoto 2, which itself was, of course, grossly inadequate (unsigned as it was by the US). Indeed, as revealed last week in leaked documents, an inner circle - the so-called ‘circle of commitment’ of the core developed nations like the US and UK - have been conducting their own private ‘members only’ conference as part of a plan to dump the aims and targets of the Kyoto Protocol altogether, by trying to force the developing countries to concur to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement. Naturally, the existence of this conference within a conference - the rich men’s exclusive club - has been a continual source of friction throughout the Copenhagen talks.

In fact, so great was the suspicion amongst the representatives of the developing countries that the rich countries were essentially ganging up on them - carving up Copenhagen to suit their own narrow designs - that on December 14 they staged a five-hour walkout. They only returned when their key demand, that separate talks should be held on the Kyoto Protocol, was granted - with Hedegaard trying to reassure them that the developing countries were not trying to kill off Kyoto, whatever the leaked (and undisputed) documents might say. This bloc of the ‘official’ least developed countries (LDCs) is adamant that the rich countries must commit themselves to the emission cuts as outlined by Kyoto - that is to say, they advocate the “twin-track” approach whereby the signed-up countries keep to their existing Kyoto targets, with the US and the major developing nations adding their own carbon pledges under a new ‘post-Kyoto’ deal.

After the slight drama of the Monday walk-out, Tuesday December 15 saw the beginning of the ‘high-level’ phase of the talks - with the arrival of the big boys and girls like Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Ban Ki-Moon, a team of top US negotiators and so on. Obama himself is due to make his big, Superman-like entrance on Friday, and, of course, this will be his second trip to Scandinavia in recent weeks - having nipped off to Oslo to fetch his Nobel Peace Prize (which had a distinctly surreal element to it, seeing how Obama is a self-confessed “war president” who has just escalated the US military presence in Afghanistan).

To date, the key unresolved issues remain essentially the same: the size of the emissions cuts or targets to be made by the developed countries; the method of raising and allocating climate finances, and perhaps most fundamentally - and contentiously - of all, the question of whether any (non-mandatory) deal cobbled together at Copenhagen should seek to prevent global temperatures rising by any more than 2ºC or, alternatively, 1.5ºC. Unsurprisingly, the rich countries are quite happy to settle for the less ambitious target of 2ºC - a figure which the representatives of the developing countries, quite understandably, feel is more the product of selfish self-interest than any genuine concern as to the technological/scientific or political-economic plausibility (or viability) of such a target.

Hence Ban Ki-Moon - who has frequently been accused of being an agent or apologist for the rich countries - came under heavy fire from many of the developing countries for asserting in a BBC interview that any Copenhagen deal must “put us on the path of limiting global temperature rise within 2ºC”. Loud protest ensued from the developing countries that consider themselves especially vulnerable to climate change, such as obviously small island states, and who therefore want a limit of 1.5ºC. Expressing this generalised frustration, the Lesotho delegate, Bruno Sekoli - who chairs the LDC group - starkly declared: “It is simply a true fact: if temperatures get to 2ºC, that spells disaster and almost doom to our countries.”

The debate around funding has also become acrimonious, to put it mildly. Thus the developing countries have demanded that a majority, if not all, of any future monies they might receive for clean technology and energy - and to cope with the rising sea levels and increasingly extreme temperatures - should come from public funds of various sorts. Billions of dollars of it. Furthermore, and with eminent logic, the African bloc at Copenhagen has steadily maintained that, since it is the rich countries that are overwhelmingly responsible for the current climate conditions - and crisis - then it should be they who effectively pay for the damage that is wreaking disproportionate ecological and environmental devastation on their continent.

On the other hand, though Ed Miliband (who has co-chaired the talks on finance) has conceded the need for “significantly scaled-up public funding”, the developed countries have been insistent that a substantial share - perhaps the majority - should come from levies on the prospective global carbon market. In other words, leave it to market forces - mostly. If you can get away with it.

Keen to dampen down the growing passions and tensions over the finance question, Brown has taken a leading role in these negotiations - hoping to broker a financial settlement/package that will please, or at least appease, the LDCs. To this end Brown has held intensive talks with Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister and representative of the African group of states, both in Copenhagen and in London. Zenawi has claimed, maybe more in hope than expectation, that there was “near total understanding” within the European Union for the African/LDC position, and is about to put forward proposals at Copenhagen that in the words of Brown provide a “framework within which developed and developing countries can work together”.

In turn, Britain and other EU governmental leaders have been working to increase the finance on offer. So far, the most likely looking deal is a plan from Norway and Mexico that envisages drawing on a mix of private and government funds of up to $40 billion (£25 billion) a year to help developing countries, and would go ‘live’ from 2013. If implemented, this would be considerably more ambitious than the short-term fund of $10 billion a year currently lying on the Copenhagen table and would be a step towards the $100 billion a year by 2020 as proposed by Brown and the EU. In the view of Camilla Froyn, a Norwegian ministry of finance official, it is “absolutely necessary” to get the funding above the original $10 billion a year target - way above, as the developing countries “will not sign on to anything if we do not have a scaled-up plan for climate funding”. More simply still, “financing is the key for everything” - as Juan Rafael Elvira, Mexico’s environment secretary, put it.

However, it is more than possible that Zenawi - and the proposed finance deal as a whole - could face a backlash from some or many of the developing countries believing that it is a compromise too far. Primarily, they argue, on the grounds that all but the poorest LDCs would be obliged to contribute monies to the putative climate fund and due to a perfectly valid fear that the carbon market is far too volatile - and inherently unstable - to act as a steady or reliable source of funds. So India, China and Brazil have already ruled out mandatory contributions to the climate fund and numerous representatives from the poor countries - most notably South Africa - have made clear their anger about the pressure being piled upon them to sign up to a deal, and agenda, masterminded and dictated by the rich countries. In the words of one anonymous source, “No-one wants to be the country to be accused of collapsing the talks” - but, having said that, “we fear that a political statement that is contrary to our interests may be imposed without real consultation” (The Guardian December 16).

Inevitably, Copenhagen saw the ongoing face-off between the US and China about mandatory target-setting - and ‘carbon imperialism’ in general. The US continues to insist that any ‘post-Copenhagen’ commitments should be legally binding, while China is equally insistent that any targets should be voluntary, as they currently are under the Kyoto Protocol. As made quite clear by a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, the US should “shoulder its historic responsibilities and obligations suitable to its national development level” - and therefore to demand that a developing country like China should reduce its own carbon output is grossly unreasonable, if not a virtual act of aggression.

As is to be expected, China is also virulently opposed to the notion that emission curbs and targets should be subject to a regime of international verification - something that many members of the US Senate, in a bit of old-fashioned cold war-type politics, seem to regard as absolutely essential if they are to sign up to carbon capping and binding targets.

But, of course, for all its self-righteous rhetoric aimed at the Chinese and others, the US is historically the number one culprit when it comes to greenhouse gases - still pumping out an estimated 30% of all the CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere. In that sense, the US lies at the heart of the climate change problem. However, the signs are not good - indeed, the rather grim reality is that the US shows no genuine commitment to kicking its gas-guzzling addiction and thus will continue to pollute and despoil the planet on an ever increasing scale: aided and abetted, of course, by the likes of China which economically is virtually a US semi-colony. Yes, Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, might have said “We can get an operational agreement that makes sense in Copenhagen” - but do not get too excited. The American negotiator at the conference, Todd Stern, has flatly declared that he did not expect the US to increase its current offer of cutting emissions by about 3% from 1990 levels by 2020 - absolute peanuts compared to the (between) 25%-45% reduction needed from all the developed countries if we are to avert possible ecological catastrophe."

Outside the Bella Centre in Copenhagen many of the demonstrators have been holding banners proclaiming - “There is no Planet B”. Communists thoroughly share this exact sentiment. Capitalism, as a destructive and irrational mode of reproduction, can only bring environmental and ecological disaster to the planet: by definition, its upholders and supporters are totally incapable of ‘saving the planet’ - regardless of subjective good intentions (or not). Retarded technological fantasies aside, there are no other planets to act as a bolt-hole when things get too sticky - or hot - on this one.

So we have to defend and preserve the miracle of life that is Earth. Only a communist world can do this, not the assembled grandees and bureaucrats at Copenhagen or the UN building in New York. Communism alone offers the possibility that humanity can start to reverse the centuries of ecology and environmental vandalism caused by the existence of class society.

[RadioRaheem84]

I am pretty skeptical of some of the doomsday assertions led by some scientists, but all in all climate change is very real. The deal in Copenhagen is more like the major nations making deals on behalf of corporations. None of them want to give up their slice of the pie or too big a slice that it hurts corporate interests. Personally, I think that a large sector of the financial industry is dying to get some legislation passed so they ramp up another commodities bubble and they know their speculative lust would be useless without deals like cap and trade, etc.

[Spawn of Stalin]

Can someone please tell me how this "deal" is any different to previous climate "deals"? I've not been following this too closely, I read a few articles but basically got sick of all the shit they were talking about China.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't like the cap and trade system much for obvious reasons. Even if I did, why was there no proposal for trade in kind to prevent misallocation of spending by poorer countries (i.e., Mugabe spending it on himself and his cronies, but can't if given environmentally friendlier equipment)? I think this technology transfer was what China really wanted.

[Revy]

It's a smokescreen. They don't really give a damn. Saving the Earth is not profitable.

[RadioRaheem84]

Saving the Earth is not profitable.


They'll try and make it profitable.

[ComradeMan]

I LOVE THE WAY THEY MAKE MEANINGLESS WORDS LIKE "DEAL" AND "ROADMAP" ACTUALLY SOUND GREAT!!!

I would have unleashed a polar bear in the conference room.
:(

My opinion on the deal- load of 5 h 1 t that once again exonerates rich countries and leaves the developing world out of the framework.

[IllicitPopsicle]

Doesn't matter. As long as the corporations are in charge, nothing meaningful will take place.

May as well start burning everything in sight.

[Revy]

They'll try and make it profitable.

No, really, it isn't. The rarity of oil and coal causes immense profits. The rays from the sun and wind are all around us. It may still be "profitable" but certainly not in the way they'd like.

[Delenda Carthago]

What do I think?I think its about time we make some fuckin noise.They are puttin the nail in the coffin of the planet and we still chit chat about it?Fuck that.Go out there,talk to people,show them the future capitalism brings to us.Smash,burn,scream,get naked,do graffiti, i dont know.

LETS DO SOMETHING!

[bricolage]

Hopenhagen, schmopenhagen. Yesterday, the papers were awash with claims that the US, the almighty saviour of mankind, had stepped in at the last moment to deliver the world (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/17/us-copenhagen-100bn-climate-fund) from eco-death. Well, that may be putting it a little bit strongly. To avoid such an eventuality, global carbon concentrations need to peak in 2015, and gradually return to 350 parts per million, thus avoiding a global temperature rise of more than 2 degrees. That isn't what is on offer. Instead, this veritable god, in the person of Hillary Clinton, laid down the new world order in bold headline grabbing commandments. First, the US would not reduce its carbon emmissions below 3% on the 1990 levels by 2020. Second, in order to protect the poor countries from the ravages of climate change, the US would launch a fund of up to $100bn a year specifically earmarked for that purpose. Now, such a solution is clearly amenable to one of the denialists' favourite last resorts: namely that, even if the environmental catastrophuck (copyright Malcolm Tucker) is man-made, then the most appropriate solution is not to try to stop it by restructuring global systems of production, but to adapt to it. That way, there won't be any nasty socialist surprises in the post. In this case, the US was simply telling the most likely victims that those most responsible for the problem would not meaningfully try to solve it, but would send a little compensation cash to make its effects a little more bearable.

That cash will probably end up in those dollar reserves that Third World countries have been compelled to amass over the last decade, thus making them net creditors to the world's superpower, but forget about that for a second and think about this (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/17/un-leaked-report-copenhagen-3c):


The emissions cuts offered so far at the Copenhagen climate change (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change) summit would still lead to global temperatures rising by an average of 3C, according to a confidential UN analysis obtained by the Guardian.
With the talks entering the final 24 hours on a knife-edge, the emergence of the document seriously undermines the statements by governments that they are aiming to limit emissions to a level ensuring no more than a 2C temperature rise over the next century, and indicates that the last day of negotiations will be extremely challenging.
A rise of 3C would mean up to 170 million more people suffering severe coastal floods and 550 million more at risk of hunger, according to the Stern economic review of climate change for the UK government – as well as leaving up to 50% of species facing extinction. Even a rise of 2C would lead to a sharp decline in tropical crop yields, more flooding (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/flooding) and droughts.
Now, I told you - didn't I tell you (http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/12/ecology.html)? - that this summit was going to be a flop. Half of the world's species facing extinction while the planet both burns and floods looks like a flop to me. Bear in mind that the Stern report is relatively conservative in its estimations. Recent research by the World Wildlife Fund (http://www.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/arctic/) suggests that the arctic ice-caps are melting much more rapidly (http://www.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/arctic/what_we_do/climate/) than previously anticipated and that even an average global temperature rise of 2 degrees could be catastrophic. It may be enough to reach that tipping point where the year-round arctic ice disappears for good. Melting permafrost will unleash enough methane to cause a major extinction event. Islands will be submerged, southern Africa will dry up, and global hunger will surpass its already disgraceful levels. And it isn't just those unpleasant poor people down south you've got to worry about (though you see how the politics of climate change is already being structured by imperialism). As Mark Lynas has pointed out, if you increase average temperatures in the sea in that fashion, even with a 1 degree global temperature increase, you get more hurricanes, more frequently, and much closer to home for Europeans. You also get dustbowls in previously fertile food-growing areas across North America, which wasn't particularly fun when it happened last time round. You get soaring temperatures in Europe, more extreme and death-dealing summers, water shortages as precipitation declines in the Mediterranean region.

At the 3 degrees rise predicted by the UN on the basis of current negotiating positions, you can declare the game over. That is potentially the tipping point beyond which it is impossible to regain any control over global temperatures, the point at which positive feedback mechanisms cause temperatures to increase exponentially. I cannot adequately describe the full horror of such a scenario - the food shortages, the droughts, the floods, the fleeing of millions of people from newly uninhabitable territory, the intensified geopolitical competition over basic resources, the extinction of half or more of the species on the planet... it's just unthinkable. But, as Copenhagen shows, unthinkable horror is exactly what the rulers of the world have in store for us.http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/12/hope-nope.html

[RadioRaheem84]

No, really, it isn't. The rarity of oil and coal causes immense profits. The rays from the sun and wind are all around us. It may still be "profitable" but certainly not in the way they'd like.

You're right. What I was getting at was inflating the obviously less profitable green technology to speculate on. driving another "growth" bubble. Green tech is costlier than the current way we do things. Right now many investors are putting their money into way over inflated green stocks.

[ComradeMan]

You're right. What I was getting at was inflating the obviously less profitable green technology to speculate on. driving another "growth" bubble. Green tech is costlier than the current way we do things. Right now many investors are putting their money into way over inflated green stocks.

I saw one guy explaining how if all the solar power potential of the Sahara desert were exploited we could supply clean and free electricity up to 4 times the total of current world consumption. All people did was make snide comments about how it wouldn't work and even who would have to polish the panels because of the dust etc... Imagine that the energy that is consumed by 6billion people x 4, free and clean.