Today on New Scientist: 30 November 2009

Today’s stories on newscientist.com, at a glance, including: the record-breaking LHC, the world’s fastest computers, and Ricky Gervais’s new stand-up act

Somalia: Security Council mandates international action against pirates for another year

The Security Council today renewed for another 12 months the authorization for States and regional organizations fighting piracy off the Somali coast to enter the strife-torn country’s territorial waters and “undertake all necessary measures that are appropriate in Somalia” provide they have the transitional government’s consent.

Swiss minaret ban discriminates against Muslims, says UN expert

An independent United Nations expert on religious freedom today voiced regret at the Swiss vote to ban the construction of new minarets, stating that such a prohibition clearly discriminates against Muslims.

Marking Day of Solidarity, Ban stresses importance of a Palestinian State

Voicing deep concern that talks between Israel and the Palestinians have stalled for nearly a year, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed the importance of creating the right conditions so that the two sides have sufficient trust in each other to return to the negotiating table.

Scant compensation

Further to Friday’s piece on the new EU Commission posts (described by Nicolas Sarkozy as a “victory” for France, who said the British were the ‘big losers’) it emerges that Jonathan Faull has been appointed as Michel Barnier’s right-hand man as Director General of the Internal Market portfolio.

According to PA, Faull will ensure that “the interests of the City of London are understood at the highest levels of the Brussels bureaucracy.”

We’re not so sure. The man is a career eurocrat – he’s been working in the Commission bureaucracy since 1978, including a stint running the EU’s propaganda department, “DG Press and Communication”, between 1999 and 2003. Judging by his CV Faull has never worked in the City or similar in his life. How can he possibly have the interests of the City of London at heart, when his whole career has been about European integration?

This is scant compensation for the loss of the influential trade portfolio and the appointment of the protectionist French Europhile Michel Barnier to regulate Europe’s financial markets.

Copenhagen conference: The countries to watch

America and China are the big hitters, but other nations also punch above their weight

David Adam and James Randerson
The Guardian, Monday 30 November 2009
United States
Influence rating ★★★★★
With China, one of the two big powers that can make or break these talks. But with Obama’s energy bill stalled in the Senate, US negotiators don’t know what they can offer – like bidding on a house before the bank manager has told them what they can afford.
Friends and foes Good backing from the EU, but perceived with suspicion by much of the developing world.
What they’re offering Obama’s keeping his cards close to his chest, but a grudging 14-20% cut in carbon emissions (2005 levels) by 2020 looks likely.
What they most want A deal that’s neither too expensive nor puts any curbs on economic growth. Call it the Pollyanna approach.
Least likely to say “Heck, we caused most of this mess – this round’s on us.”
China
★★★★★
UK officials have long been describing the Kyoto treaty’s successor simply as a deal (or lack of one) between China and the US. China overtook America as the biggest emitter in 2006, but has said it might sign a “political deal” at Copenhagen if rich countries make big cuts.
Friends and foes Has made common cause with India and other developing nations in the face of much pressure from those patronising rich countries.
What they’re offering A 40- 45% decrease in the “carbon intensity of the economy” – which actually equates to a 40% increase in emissions by 2020.
What they most want A deal that entails big financial support from developed nations to fund clean technologies and adaptation to climate change.
Least likely to say “Look, we’re No 1!”
European Union
★★★★
With a lack of commitments from the “big two”, Europe likes to portray itself as the most progressive force at the talks – a position flattered by the collapse of Soviet economies in the 90s.
Friends and foes Has given the US an easy ride in the hope of getting a deal.
What they’re offering €100bn per year from rich countries by 2020 to fund climate adaptation, and 95% cuts in its carbon emissions by 2050 (based on 1990 levels) if there’s a global deal. But that only means a 10% reduction to 2020. Like a luxury hybrid car, the EU is trying to look greener than it really is.
What they most want A substantial deal that sees major developing countries taking on some of the pain.
Least likely to say “We agree with China, the US hasn’t gone far enough.”
Japan
Influence rating ★★★★
New PM Yukio Hatoyama gave a boost to September’s pre-Copenhagen talks by massively upping the cuts in emissions he promises to make if there is a deal. With the EU, Japan now has the best offer of any developed country.
Friends and foes Plenty of mutual back-slapping with the US last month over their shared new clean-tech plans.
What they’re offering A 25% cut on their 1990 emission levels by 2020 – much better than the 8% cut unveiled by the previous government in June. Lime-green, if not quite deep green.
What they most want To be seen as a climate leader, steering the rest of the bickering rabble (sorry, eminent gathering) to a substantive deal.
Least likely to say “Listen, no one ever took Kyoto seriously anyway.”
Russia
★★★
With a bank of lucrative carbon credits, emissions way below 1990 levels (due to the collapse of the USSR) and an expanding network of gas pipelines, Russia has used climate and energy to clamber back up the international pecking order. Traditionally, it likes to use these UN meetings to grandstand. More will listen this time.
Friends and foes The two-headed eagle still looks west and east, and sells gas to both of them.
What they’re offering A 25% cut on 1990 levels by 2020, if others do the same.
What they most want To be feared and respected again. Warmer winters wouldn’t go amiss, though.
Least likely to say “Of course we understand your domestic constraints, Mr Obama. Have some gas on us.”
UK Influence rating ★★★
Britain talks the talk on climate change and, believe it or not, Tony Blair is widely admired for his efforts to push the issue on to the international stage. Lord Stern’s famous report carries clout, too – but the UK’s influence seems sure to wane as foreign players with big plans/wallets muscle in on the party.
Friends and foes Britain negotiates as part of the European bloc, which means regular scraps with France and Germany over targets and finance.
What they’re offering At home, a very ambitious 80% cut in emissions by 2050.
What they most want One last, desperate opportunity for Gordon Brown to smile triumphantly at the cameras.
Least likely to say “The sums don’t add up and it sets a shocking example, so let’s can the new Heathrow runway.”
Brazil
★★★
One of the largest emitters in the developing world (mostly from its forestry). And yet hydropower-heavy, biofuelled-up Brazil is ahead of most when it comes to renewable energy. Long-nagged to do more to save its Amazon rainforest, climate change now offers a sizeable extra incentive.
Friends and foes This figurehead of developing nations seems to have patched up differences with other tropical nations about outsiders buying into their forests.
What they’re offering Rainforest trees left standing, and a healthy 36-39% reduction on expected 2020 emissions.
What they most want Cash for those trees to be left standing.
Least likely to say “Bioethanol? Don’t like the sound of that, guv.”
India
★★★
Too often bundled with China in climate discussions, India has a determined mind of its own. Its massive coal stocks offer a huge opportunity to lift millions more out of poverty – but such guilty, ungreen impulses are tempered by knowledge that New Delhi is on the frontline of rising sea levels.
Friends and foes A solid member of the G77 group of developing nations, its reaction to any suggestion that China get special treatment will be interesting.
What they’re offering A tough line on rich countries’ responsibilities, and support for schemes that allow for voluntary carbon reductions.
What they most want Development, but perhaps not at any (climate) cost.
Most likely to say “Those Himalayan glaciers look fine to us.”
Canada
★★★
In stark contrast to its cuddly international image, Canada is the dirty old man of the climate world – missing its Kyoto emissions reduction target by a country mile (by 2007, it was 34% above its target) and showing no signs of reigning in its profligacy.
Friends and foes Roundly criticised by developing countries for being way off the pace, now there are calls to suspend it from the Commonwealth.
What they’re offering A pathetic 3% cut on their 1990 emissions levels by 2020 – an offer mired in thick black tar.
What they most want No curbs on its ability to mine those lucrative tar sands in Alberta for oil (a far more carbon-intensive process than regular extraction).
Least likely to say “Look, when you set a target, you’ve got to stick to it, OK?”
Australia
★★★
The easy ride it has so far enjoyed over carbon emissions makes a tricycle with stabilisers look difficult to master. Australia has one of the highest per capita emissions levels in the world, yet its deal at Kyoto allowed it to increase total levels by 8%.
Friends and foes Quick to welcome Obama’s emissions pledge last week, and invited to be a “friend of the chair” by hosts Denmark. The creeps.
What they’re offering A fence-sitting 5%-25% cuts (that upper-end target comes with lots of strings attached).
What they most want PM Kevin Rudd wants Australia to break with the past and be seen as a climate leader.
Least likely to say “Mate, did you know we chuck out more carbon per person than the US?”
Norway
Influence rating ★★★
With its carbon tax, pioneering efforts to protect tropical forests, and some of the most ambitious emissions targets in the world, Norway appears streets ahead of most other countries. However, rich on the vast profits from its offshore gas, it remains a key player in the fossil fuel industry.
Friends and foes An often critical friend of the EU – and a generous friend of most other nations.
What they’re offering A whopping 40% cut on their 1990 carbon emission levels by 2020, although much of that will be offset abroad.
What they most want A triumph for Scandinavia that entails more than Denmark just holding a tidy summit.
Most likely to say “Never mind the whaling, feel the carbon targets.”
Mexico
★★
Waiting in the wings to steal the glory if a Copenhagen deal does not materialise, Mexico is due to host the next round of negotiations in 2010. Has made all the right noises about carbon cuts, but could do with some dosh to make it happen.
Friends and foes Remember the Alamo! Mexico called its old foe the US a “stumbling block” in the negotiations last month. Imagine what they called them in private.
What they’re offering A very precise 50m tonnes knocked off their annual CO2 emissions by 2012.
What they most want Put it this way: a carbon-constrained US could tip the trade balance of the Americas.
Most likely to say “The Cancún protocol has a nice ring to it, yes?”
South Africa
★★
Ranks a surprisingly high 14th in the world for carbon emissions, thanks to a high reliance on all that coal in its backyard for both electricity and liquid fuels. One of the most carbon-intensive economies in the world, with per capita emissions slightly higher than the UK’s (which isn’t saying a lot).
Friends and foes A leading light in the African Union that represents 52 countries, most of whom may struggle to get their voices heard in Copenhagen.
What they’re offering Not a lot. Despite doing a study of mitigation options, no decisions are planned until 2012.
What they most want Likely to be hit hard by climate change, you’d think a deal would be very welcome.
Least likely to say “Coal is a dirty word – there’s got to be a better way.”
Maldives
★
Talk about punching above your weight. Thanks in no small part to the colourful and PR-savvy president Mohamed Nasheed, the Maldives have become a key voice for soon-to-be climate victims around the world. The island nation is the Vince Cable of the talks – no real power but solidly on the moral high ground (if not the literal high ground).
Friends and foes A member of the G77 group of developing nations, and pals with anyone wanting some good PR.
What they’re offering To go totally carbon neutral by 2020. A frog with solar panels would look less green.
What do they most want Large cuts by all the developed nations.
Most likely to say “I bet you’ve never had a cabinet meeting under water.”
Saudi Arabia
★
Perennial pantomime villains at UN climate talks, the Saudis are the world’s top oil producers and – perhaps not that surprisingly – no fans of curbs on emissions. Regular protests from their delegation are prone to trigger selective deafness in other negotiators and conference chairs, who gavel through decisions anyway.
Friends and foes Along with other oil-loving Opec countries (not all bosom buddies, mind), they are pushing for compensation for lost oil revenue.
What they’re offering Ten million barrels a day of black (but definitely not green) gold.
What they most want The world’s climate scientists, a desert and no water.
Most likely to say “That Don Quixote was spot on: never trust a windmill.”
Ethiopia
★
Crippled by drought and poverty, Ethiopia is likely to be one of the countries most affected by global warming, having done hardly anything to cause the problem, of course.
Friends and foes Understandably, given the above, the African group of nations has grown more militant over recent years in its discussions about climate change.
What they’re offering The problem is, they haven’t got anything substantial enough to offer in negotiations to be taken seriously by better-endowed nations…
What they most want …so all they can do is make optimistic demands: $67bn a year in aid for adaptation, and a 40% cut in rich countries’ emissions.
Most likely to say “Help!”

European Climate Exchange chief Patrick Birley defends the carbon trading system

People don’t trade carbon because they are good people,” exclaims Patrick Birley, the chief executive of the ICE European Climate Exchange, with characteristic bluntness.

By Rowena Mason Published: 7:47PM GMT 29 Nov 2009

“Why should it be different as a commodity to the way people trade oil or gas?”
As the man in charge of the world’s biggest exchange for companies, banks and hedge funds to trade permits to emit carbon dioxide, Birley is fed up with the environmentalists’ charge that dirty capitalists should not profit from the global effort to tackle climate change.

Ahead of the Copenhagen summit next week, campaigners such as Friends of the Earth have argued that the entire system is so flawed it may need to be demolished in favour of a straightforward tax on polluters.
Firstly, they insist, the European system has failed in its fundamental aim to reduce emissions, meaning its only effect is to redistribute wealth among companies and traders. Secondly, the market is a magnet for derivatives that few people understand, brewing up a second sub-prime bubble. Lastly, the opportunities for fraud are vast, given the intangible nature of the product. .
These well-worn concerns are resurfacing as the whole concept of carbon trading stands at a crossroads. This totally invented $126bn (£76bn) market has the potential to flare into a $2 trillion green giant over the next decade, if US President Obama manages to push his carbon trading bill through the Senate early next year.
The Commodities and Futures Trading Commission even believes that within five years, carbon could surpass crude oil as the world’s most traded commodity. Mr Birley is the first to admit that the European system “hasn’t actually reduced emissions” so far. But having run exchanges throughout his career, he has faith in the ability of the market to deliver in its own good time.
“The goal of the system is reducing emissions: why should it matter how we get there?” he asks.
With weariness, he debunks the idea that policymakers can control who makes money from reducing emissions. The point of a market mechanism is that the market decides.
“Carbon-related products are probably the most profitable part of trading for any of the investment banks right now, because the margins are so good,” Mr Birley admits. “Because it’s such a specialist area, a little bit of knowledge goes a very long way.”
Part of what makes the profits potentially so high are the price swings. Currently carbon is 20pc more volatile than oil, meaning utilities need the banks to help shoulder some of the risk associated with trading and provide liquidity.
But for many – maybe illogically – it still sticks in the throat to know that the vast proprietary trading desk of Citigroup or Vincent Tchenguiz, the property and carbon offset investor, are likely to end up with sizeable financial proceeds from a system that will have added to household bills by the end of the decade.
Underpinning resurging concerns about carbon trading is the world’s crisis of faith in capitalism itself. Markets have proved to be more capricious and uncontrollable than anyone imagined possible in the last year. Where does that leave the theory behind an artificial trading system set up to pursue a single, ethical goal? The economic concept is simple, but the practice itself has been fraught with complications. In Europe, since 2005, policymakers distribute permits to emit carbon to utility companies and heavy industrial polluters – at first for free.
Any allowances not used or extras required may be traded on the open market, as each country gradually reduces the amount of available credits and begins to auction them.
On top of that scheme, there is the Clean Development Mechanism, where companies can buy up a certain number of extra credits (known as offsets) from low-carbon projects in developing countries. However, the main problem is that industrial players, from cement-makers to paper companies, proved so effective at lobbying that they were showered with extra permits that they did not need in the early years.
Between 2008 and 2012, the UK power sector will make an additional €1.3bn (£1.18bn) purely from carbon trading, with windfall profits mostly going to the coal sector.
The recession has only exacerbated the glut as industrial emissions fall, pushing down the price of carbon credit to around €13. And instead of keeping their credits for the 2013 deadline when caps tighten in Europe, industry is liquidating its positions.
“You might have expected industrial users to hoard their permits for when fewer are given out for free, but they are selling them off just to keep afloat,” says the head of trading for a UK steel maker.
But does it really matter if emissions have been reduced due to the recession or carbon trading as long as the target has been hit?
When industrial activity comes back, defenders of the system argue that carbon price ought to rein in emissions below pre-recession levels.
All this, however, is threatened by the old risk of “carbon leakage”, where UK companies may relocate abroad to avoid a higher carbon price – shifting emissions elsewhere as well as damaging the economy.
The carbon trading system is expected to add £40 to household energy bills when the carbon price reaches €35 per tonne – but the cost to businesses could be even more crippling.
With more countries preparing for cap-and-trade schemes over the next decade, worries about global competitiveness ought to diminish. But the practical problem of international standards in auditing emissions remains.
Only this month, the UN banned Croatia from trading carbon after it cheated in the way it reported emissions. Greece has also been disciplined. And earlier this year, Greenpeace exposed phoney carbon offset projects in Bolivia, where 90pc of promised carbon reductions had not been delivered.
Architects of the US cap-and-trade system argue that there is time to iron out practical problems, but the concern remains that after almost half a decade of carbon trading in Europe, incentives still are not reaching those with a genuine commitment to reducing emissions.
While banks and hedge funds have created new businesses from their carbon trading desks, coal producers and heavy industry have banked billions in windfall profits. Meanwhile, utility companies complain that it is still cheaper to build a gas-fired power station than a wind farm or nuclear plant.
Joe Stanislaw, a leading independent energy economist working for Deloitte, argues that the world has no hope of hitting climate change targets without carbon trading.
“A lot of people can criticise Europe but it has led a brave experiment,” he says. “The US will need tighter caps and tighter regulation. It will take time, but I believe the world can learn from these mistakes.”

Three Spaniards Kidnapped in Mauritania

Published on France 24 (http://www.france24.com/en)

Three Spaniards kidnapped in Mauritania

By admin
Created 30/11/2009 - 05:01

Three Spanish humanitarian workers were kidnapped in northwestern Mauritania on the road linking the capital Nouakchott to the city of Nouadhibou, officials and aid workers said.

The three Spanish nationals, “two men and a woman, were travelling in a car, the last vehicle of a convoy that was heading from Nouadhibou to Nouakchott” when they were attacked on Sunday afternoon, a Spanish diplomat said.

The convoy had earlier delivered aid to Nouadhibou and was transporting donations that they intended to drop off in various towns along the route, the diplomat added.

A Mauritanian security source confirmed the kidnapping, adding the kidnappers fired several shots to force the vehicle to stop and then took the Spaniards away in a 4×4 vehicle.

A spokesman for the Spanish humanitarian group Barcelona-Accio Solidaria confirmed the three were members of their association and named them as Albert Vilalta, Alicia Gamez and Roque Pascual.

“The found all the supplies only the people were gone,” said the spokesman, adding “we don’t know anything more, if they were bandits or had any political motives.”

A Spanish humanitarian worker based in Mauritania, Montse Bosch, was able to speak by telephone with some of the other members of the aid convoy following the kidnapping.

“A group of armed men stopped and then took them, leaving their vehicle in place and without touching any of the supplies, luggage or money contained in the car,” she said.

Bosch said Barcelona-Accio Solidaria is part of the Caravana Solidaria, or Solidarity Caravan, which distributes aid in Mauritania and other African countries in the region.

The attack took place near the town of Chelkhett Legtouta, 170 kilometres (106 miles) north of Nouakchott, according to the Mauritanian security source.

Mauritanian army units in the area were searching for the kidnappers, the source added, and reinforcements had been sent to the area.

Mauritania, a vast country of three million people, has been hit by a number of attacks since 2007 claimed by the north African branch of Al-Qaeda.

The incident came days after a French citizen was kidnapped in the northeast of neighbouring Mali, which according to a Malian security source are being held by Al-Qaeda militants.

Several Westerners have been kidnapped in recent months in Africa’s Sahel region and transported to northern Mali before being freed.

In June, however, the Al-Qaeda militants announced on a website that they had beheaded Briton Edwin Dyer because London would not meet their demands. It was believed to be the first time the group had killed a Western hostage.

Source URL: http://www.france24.com/en/node/4936499

Spain turns down the air conditioning to save power

Graham Keeley in Madrid
Spaniards and holidaymakers sweltering in the summer heat might not be too impressed, but desperate times — and a deep recession — call for desperate measures. The Spanish Cabinet agreed yesterday to reduce energy consumption by limiting the use of air conditioning.
Madrid has decided to establish minimum and maximum temperatures for public buildings and thus shops, bars, airports, cinemas, railway stations and airports cannot be cooled below 26C (79F) in summer. During winter, moreover, heaters cannot be turned up above 21C.
The Economic Sustainability Law is designed to reduce Spain’s overreliance on imported energy, but this may not figure highly in the priorities of anyone gasping for breath in August.
It is not the only new direction taken by Spain as it seeks a path to better economic times: under new rules, banks and all publicly listed companies will have to disclose how much they pay their leading executives. Elena Salgado, the Economy Minister, said: “There will be more transparency, particularly in terms of top executives’ pay.” Shareholders should vote on executive pay at banks and listed companies at annual shareholder meetings, she said.

After a decade-long building boom, Spain is mired in its worst recession in decades. Unemployment stands at nearly 18 per cent, double the European Union average, and while the broader eurozone has climbed out of recession, Spain is not projected to do so until at least 2010.
The thrust of the reform is to try to wean Spain off its dependence on bricks and mortar and to introduce a more sustainable model of growth. Thus José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister, unveiled a ten-year plan to revamp the economy. A cornerstone of the new Bill will be greater investment in renewable energy, something that Mr Zapatero is known to favour over the nuclear power option. During the past five years, Spain’s Socialist Government has invested heavily in solar, wind and hydroelectric power.
Mr Zapatero has hinted that his Government may not renew the licences of old nuclear power stations, a move that has provoked opposition from within the nuclear industry and from the conservative Opposition.

Copenhagen climate conference: Emission impossible

Two of the top thinkers on climate change explain why the the most important political gathering of our time will succeed or fail

Nicholas Stern and George Monbiot
The Guardian, Monday 30 November 2009
Nicholas Stern The two defining challenges of our century are managing climate change and overcoming poverty. And if we fail on one we will fail on the other. So the world faces a stark choice at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen.
Do we collaborate and act to reach a strong political agreement that both decisively cuts the devastating risks posed by climate change, and rapidly opens up the opportunities offered by low-carbon economic growth? Do we in that way set ourselves to overcome poverty and promote prosperity? Or, do we give way to narrow, short-term interests, quarrelling, lack of ambition and delay, thus allowing the risks to the climate to grow to dangerous levels which will derail development in both rich and poor countries?
Given what is at stake, essentially the future peace and prosperity of the planet, world leaders must now recognise that Copenhagen is the most important international gathering of our time. A strong political agreement can and must be reached in Copenhagen. There can be no excuses for failure.
Recent weeks and months have shown country after country raising their ambitions on controlling emissions. It is now clear that if countries move together and they find ways to extend their action we could set the world on a responsible path. We can now see that it is possible to achieve an agreement that is effective, efficient and equitable. It will allow us to avoid the biggest risks of climate change, to overcome poverty worldwide and to usher in an exciting new era of prosperity based on a much more attractive and stronger form of economic growth – sustainable low-carbon growth.
Through innovation and investment in greener and more energy efficient technologies in the next two or three decades, the transition to the low-carbon economy can be the most dynamic period of growth in economic history. And the low-carbon world we can create will also be quieter, cleaner, more energy-secure and more biologically diverse.
For this to happen, there is a fierce urgency for leadership. The developed world in particular must face up to its responsibilities on both development and climate change. It will require radical change and significant resources. I believe we are now seeing strong momentum towards an agreement. Increasingly ambitions are being raised and shared. The developing world, if the rich world plays its part, will accelerate its actions and we can create an international collaboration which can transform the way the world works together.
Three issues hold the key to agreeing an effective and equitable framework in Copenhagen. First, to have a reasonable – around 50% – chance of avoiding an increase in global average temperature of more than 2C above preindustrial levels, we must reduce annual worldwide emissions from the present level of just under 50bn tonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent to 44bn tonnes in 2020, much less than 35bn tonnes in 2030 and well below 20bn tonnes by 2050 – or as sometimes expressed, at least 50% below 1990 levels.
Second, the need for national targets both to add up and to be fair means that the European Union, Japan and the US, should achieve emissions reductions of at least 80% by 2050, compared with 1990. Developing countries, including China and India, also need to limit the growth of, and then start to decrease, their emissions, but in ways that are consistent with their ambitions for continued economic growth and the reduction of poverty.
Third, given the relative wealth of rich and poor countries, the rich countries responsibility for the bulk of past emissions, and the urgent need for action, developing countries must receive reliable and substantial support from the rich nations for their climate action plans. This is necessary both for their plans to reduce emissions and also to overcome the additional challenges that climate change will pose for their efforts to tackle poverty.
Developed countries should show the extent of their commitment by providing $50bn per year by 2015, rising to $100bn in 2020, and progressing to around $200bn during the 2020s as effective low-carbon and adaptation programmes are developed and implemented.
Crucially, financial support should be additional, beyond existing official development assistance. While these might sound like large sums, $50bn is around 0.1% of the likely gross domestic product of the rich countries in 2015, and is very small compared to the costs we will face if we do not secure a strong international agreement to tackle climate change. The immediate priorities for spending should be halting deforestation, supporting adaptation in Africa and other vulnerable nations, and supporting technological change throughout the developing world.
We are seeking at Copenhagen an organisational framework with strong political commitment rather than a formal treaty. A formal treaty can follow in 2010 if the political framework is clear. But without such a framework, settled at the highest level, progress on a treaty or similar agreement will be impossible. Now is the time for heads of government to take charge – only they can forge such an agreement.
Let us not allow mistrust, pessimism and lack of ambition to take us stumbling into profound dangers. Instead let us have real vision and leadership in both developing and developed countries which seize the opportunities offered by Copenhagen, for us, our children and future generations.
George Monbiot
“To be truly radical,” Raymond Williams wrote, “is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”.
Believe me I’m trying, but at the moment hope is hard to come by.
A legally binding deal cannot now be struck at Copenhagen. The best that can happen is an outline agreement, which is firmed up next year. Even this would depend on the compliance of the US Senate. So far it has been hostile towards anything resembling an effective deal. As I write, Barack Obama still hasn’t proposed a number for US emissions cuts. He can’t make any firm commitment until the Senate sings, and the Senate won’t approve a climate change bill until the spring, if at all. I concentrate on the role of the US not because it is the only obstacle to a strong climate agreement (you should see what Canada has been up to) but because it has so far done more than any other nation to prevent global action from taking place. The Kyoto negotiations in 1997 were comprehensively trashed by a US delegation led by Al Gore.
The EU had proposed a 15% cut against 1990 emissions levels by 2010. The US ensured that this was knocked down to 5.2% by 2012, with enough get-out clauses (emissions trading, joint implementation, the clean development mechanism) to render even that feeble target pretty well meaningless. After wrecking the treaty for everyone else, the Clinton government failed to ratify it, and George Bush later pulled out altogether.
It wasn’t Gore’s fault: the Senate had already voted 95-0 to torpedo any treaty that failed to impose the same conditions on developing countries as it imposed on rich ones. The senators knew this was impossible for poorer countries to accept – in fact that was the point. The political impediments that made a deal with the US impossible in 1997 have scarcely changed.
Until there is comprehensive campaign finance reform in the United States, almost any progressive measure remains out of reach. The US Senate is one of the most corrupt institutions of any democratic nation: most of the incumbents owe their seats to massive corporate funding; in return they must deliver the political goods to their sponsors. These are hopeless conditions in which to broker an agreement which has to defeat vested interests.
Even if a legally binding treaty were to have been agreed at Copenhagen, getting it ratified and implemented before the Kyoto protocol runs out at the end of 2012 would have been a stretch. If it’s delayed until next year or beyond, the timetable becomes extremely tight. If world leaders can’t strike a deal this year, despite a massive build-up and intensive diplomatic activity, why should we expect them to be able to do so next year?
I fear that the climate negotiations could go the same way as the Doha round of trade talks. These began in 2001. Eight years later there’s still no prospect of resolution. When the initial deadline had been missed and the red carpets were rolled up, governments lost interest and let the process drift. Delegates are already talking of moving the climate talks to Mexico next December after they fail in Copenhagen.
This is what happened at Doha: the negotiations were reconvened at Cancún on the Mexican coast and vanished into thin air thereafter. Is “moving to Mexico” a diplomatic euphemism for abandonment?
And there’s a more important deadline which looks ever more likely to be missed. The narrow window in which we could prevent more than 2C of global warming is closing fast. The longer a comprehensive agreement is delayed, the steeper the emissions cuts will have to be if we are to avoid climate breakdown. Beyond a certain point the scale of the cuts becomes politically, economically and technologically infeasible. That point must already be close.
The postponement has an immediate consequence: no one will invest in low-carbon technologies unless they believe there’s a secure market. And no one will disinvest from fossil fuels unless they believe that they’ll cease to be profitable. If investors think the Kyoto protocol will run out before a new agreement begins, the bottom will fall out of the market for energy conservation and alternative technologies, setting the necessary transition back by years.
So is there any hope that world leaders could regain their sense of urgency? If the prospect of a climate crash doesn’t motivate them, can anything? Perhaps there is one straw to cling to. In its new World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) maintains that, to meet new demand and replace old equipment and exhausted reserves, the world will have to invest $25.6tn in energy supply infrastructure between now and 2030. The industrialised nations would also need to pay a fortune to the Opec countries to maintain their oil and gas supplies: the IEA predicts that the oil producers’ income will rise fivefold in this period, to $30tn. These costs will be much higher if oil supplies peak.
If moving to a low-carbon economy looks implausible, so does maintaining the high-carbon economy. Whichever route is taken, staggering amounts of money need to be spent. As resources become harder to extract and concentrated in fewer countries, it shouldn’t be too difficult to persuade world leaders that the money might as well be spent on exploiting ambient energy, which will neither run out nor allow us to be held to ransom.
That is the best I can do. Sorry.