SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2010
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EZ RE POLITICS & THE NATION
A push to keep climate talks on track COPENHAGEN’S
Global warming's immediacy cools PROMISE FADES
High stakes for any sign of progress in Cancun BY JULIET EILPERIN
As representatives from nearly
200 nations prepare to gather for United Nations-sponsored cli- mate talks in Cancun this week, a central question looms: Can they achieveenoughtokeepthenegoti- ations alive? No one expects the two-week
meeting,whichbeginsMonday, to produceapact thatwouldcommit thenationsof theworldtocurbing climate change. Such an agree- ment seemed possible a year ago, when the last round of negotia- tions concluded in Copenhagen. At that sessionsomeof theworld’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters struck a deal: Industrialized na- tions would cut their emissions and by 2020 and would mobilize $100 billion a year in aid for the poorest countries suffering the ef- fects of global warming; in ex- change, major developing coun- tries agreed to international scru- tiny of their ownemissions cuts. But this agreement — the Co-
penhagen Accord—has come un- der fire over the past 12months as the procedural bickering that has dominated negotiations for years has reemerged. The collapse of domestic legislation in Congress, coupledwiththerecentelectionof dozens of lawmakers opposed to federal limits on greenhouse gas- es,have furtherunderminedpros- pects for ameaningfuldeal. Still, those most invested in a
global climate deal recognize that without somemodest progress in Cancun— on issues such as pre- serving tropical forests, transfer- ring clean technology to develop- ing nations and establishing the framework for international cli- mate aid—the processmight col- lapse altogether. “Wecannotaffordanymorefail-
ures,” said Erik Solheim, Norway’s minister for the environment and internationaldevelopment. Failure,however, remainsareal
possibility. For months negotia- tors have argued over whether to extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set binding targets for re- ducing emissions and whose first period is set to expire in 2012 — despite the fact that the United Stateshasnever ratifiedtheagree- ment,which imposes no emission cutsonmajorgreenhousegaspro- ducers such as China and India. And answers to the more funda- mental questions facing the 193 nations that make up the U.N. Framework Convention on Cli- mate Change — how rich nations can help poor ones cope with the impact of global warming in the near and long term, and to what extent rapidly industrializing countries will allow others to monitor and verify their carbon cuts—remainevenmore elusive. “This isamuchmoreimportant
meeting than people give it credit for. We’re at the point where the focus of climate policy is shifting, and that requires strong political leadership,” said Michael Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He added that “if negotiators don’t respect that high-level political decision” forged in Copenhagen, “they’re not leftwithanything, andit takes things in a more marginal direc- tion.” But several delegates from left-
leaning countries—such as Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s ambassador to the
A majority of Americans believe there’s strong evidence that the Earth’s temperatures are on the rise, according to polls by Te Washington Post and, more recently, the Pew Research Center. But the percentages saying so have dipped since the middle of the decade, as Republicans and conservatives became more skeptical about climate change.
Is it real?
Most Democrats who see global warming as real say it’s likely caused by human activity, while Republicans who see higher temperatures are more divided about the cause.
Q: Yes
Is there solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades, or not?
MOST RECENT POLL: All adults
59% 32% No
9 mixed/ no opinion Is it important to act now?
Six in 10 respondents to an October Post-Kaiser-Harvard poll said they wanted more government involvement in protecting the environment. But in a warning sign for environmental advocates, the numbers saying climate change is a big problem are significantly lower than in 2006.
PEW POLL:
July 2006 43% 61% 59%
46% 44%
October 2010 32%
Say global warming a “very serious” problem
Call for immediate government action
Say scientists agree the Earth is heating up because of human activity
Alternative energy proposals broadly popular
Most Americans remain supportive of a range of nontraditional energy policies, including new, tougher fuel efficency guidelines for vehicles.
Support for . . .
Requiring better fuel efficiency for cars, trucks and SUVs
Increasing federal funding for research on wind, solar and hydrogen technology
Spending more on subway, rail and bus systems
Providing tax incentives for buying hybrid or electric cars
All adults Democrats Independents Republicans 79% 74 63 60 89% 84 73 69
Complete data from the poll can be found at
www.washingtonpost.com/politics.
UnitedNations—questiontheCo- penhagen Accord because it was initially negotiated among just a handful of global heavyweights: the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. “You can- not come upwith an agreement of only some countries and impose it on the world,” Solon said. “We can have a good outcome, a regular outcome or a bad outcome, but it will be the outcome of all [193] countries, not the outcome of a smallnumberof countries.” At thispoint,manyparticipants
suggest that negotiatorswould be best off trying to reach agreement on the less-controversial aspects of a climate deal, including avoid- ing deforestation, encouraging technology transfer and deter- mining what sort of institution would deliver climate funding to poor countries in the future. Sol- heim suggested that delegates shouldn’t focus on the central points of Copenhagen, the depth of emission cuts and themonitor- ingof thosecuts,becausetheUnit- ed States’ failure to adopt climate legislation and other develop-
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mentsmake it impossible to reach anagreement onthesematters. “Everyone has appealed to the
U.S. to be flexible in Cancun. We should agree where we are in agreement, and not wait for the rest,” Solheim said. “There is no way we will be able to resolve the monitoring and verification issue [for major developing countries’ emissions cuts], aswell aswe can- not resolve the issue of nonemis-
76% 72 61 59 73% 64 55 49
SOURCES: Background from Washington Post-ABC News polls; enumerated data from Pew Reseach Center poll, conducted by conventional and cellular telephone Oct. 13-18 among 2,251 randomly selected adults. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
79%
Democrats 14%
Independents 6 56% 31% 12 Republicans 38% 53% 9
sion reductions in the United States itself.” Luis Alfonso de Alba,Mexico’s
special representative for climate change,saidthat,asthehostcoun- try for this year’s talks,his country will push for some advances even if they don’t meet the level of global agreement. “Wecangofartheranddomuch
better,” de Alba said. “But the worst isnot to start.” However, U.S. special climate
change envoy Todd Stern said the United States is standing firm on itspledgetoreduceitsemissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 even without domestic legislation having passed, and would not en- dorse any deal in Cancun that did notembodythefundamentalpolit- icalagreement forgedlast year. “To say, ‘Gosh, it’s really hard to
do these issues . . .Let’s justdo the issues we all agree on,’ you know what? No. That’s not the way we thinkitworks,”Sternsaid. If coun- tries abandon some of the key elements of the Copenhagen Ac- cord, Stern said, they are moving “awayfromwhatweagreedtoona leader level.” In recent weeks, key officials
have begun to question whether they can pursue a climate deal outside of the U.N. process if it sputters to a halt in Cancun, whether it’s throughglobalgroup- ings suchas theGroupof 20or the MajorEconomies ForumonEner- gy and Climate, which brings to- gether 17major emitters for regu- larmeetings. JonathanPershing, Stern’s dep-
uty, told reporters Oct. 6, “The consequences of not having an agreement coming out of Cancun are things that we have to worry about. It doesn’tmean that things maynothappen; itmaymeanthat we don’t use this process exclu- sivelyas thewaytomoveforward.” Stern said the United States is
open to pursuing other avenues if the process reaches a stalemate, “but our focus is onmaking prog- ress intheU.N.” ConnieHedegaard, theEurope-
an commissioner for climate ac- tion, warned that other negotiat- ingforumscouldhavetheir liabili- ties as well. “Yes, it’s easy to see what are the weaknesses in the UNFCCC process, but it is more difficult to say what would be al- ternatives thatwouldprovidealot of results,” she said. In the meantime some experts
suchasRajendraK.Pachauri,who leads the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, predict that bilateral agreements — such as one between his native India and theUnited States—may form the basis for any long-term cli- matepact. “Mybelief rightnowiswe really
ought to think in terms of a bot- tom-up approach,” Pachauri said lastmonth by telephone during a news conference. “Allof this, inmy view, will bubble up and could provide the conditions foramulti- lateral agreement.ButGodknows when, because everyone seems to think it’snot aroundthe corner.”
eilperinj@washpost.com
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