THE EU delegation at the Copenhagen climate summit, which opened yesterday, has said it would be “astonished” if US President Barack Obama did not put more on the table when he arrives here at the end of next week.
Swedish environment minister Andreas Carlgren, who heads the EU’s negotiators, was referring to the recent US offer to cut American greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent by 2020, relative to 2005. This equates to a cut of only 5 per cent, based on 1990 levels.
The EU has unilaterally pledged to cut its emissions by 20 per cent, relative to what they were in 1990, by 2020 and by up to 30 per cent if other developed and major developing countries were to adopt more ambitious targets aimed at tackling the threat of global warming.
Asked at a press briefing if the EU would go for the higher figure to seal a deal in Copenhagen, Mr Carlgren made it clear that this would only arise “during the end-game” and intended to use the 30 per cent figure as a lever to put pressure on other parties to offer more.
“The EU wants to go to 30 per cent, that is very clear,” he said. “The question is whether other parties will go as far, as part of the global effort to limit the rise in temperatures to two degrees. And from our perspective, the US and China are not there yet.”
Mr Carlgren made it clear that both the US and China “know what we expect of them”. The US offer was a “promising leaning of the curve” but still too low, while China’s emissions would still rise significantly despite a recent pledge to cut the “carbon intensity” of its economy.
US chief negotiator Jonathan Pershing insisted the Obama administration still wanted “the strongest possible deal” to be reached in Copenhagen.
Its offer of a 17 per cent cut “puts us on the path to achieve a reduction of 30 per cent by 2025 and 42 per cent by 2030”.
He said the US was bringing “an unprecedented level of effort” to the negotiating table and the highest-level delegation to attend a UN climate conference, and he foresaw Copenhagen producing a “political arrangement to be followed by a legal arrangement”.
Asked about the impact of “Climategate” – the embarrassing e-mails hacked from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit’s computer system – Dr Pershing said it would amount to “a small blip in the history of this process” and would have “virtually no effect at all”.
As lead author of one of the chapters in the fourth assessment report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he said it was “shameful” its scientists were now being “pilloried”, given the “enormous multitude” of evidence they had presented in 2007.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, earlier defended its work in his address to the opening plenary session of the conference. He said some sceptics who found it “inconvenient to accept the inevitability” of climate change were now “resorting to illegal acts”.
Wearing a green tie and matching pocket handkerchief, he said the IPCC was proud of its record of independent research by tens of thousands of scientists throughout the world, all of which had been “peer-reviewed” repeatedly by 2,500 scientists in the process.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said there was “unprecedented political momentum” for a deal in Copenhagen. But he said it would only be a success “if it delivers immediate action that begins the day the conference ends”.
The “Christmas cake” he envisaged Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen lighting the candles on would have three layers: fast funding for developing countries, ambitious commitments to cut emissions, and a long-term shared vision on a low-carbon future.
Opening the conference, Mr Rasmussen told delegates that 110 heads of state or government would be arriving in Copenhagen for the final “high-level segment” at the end of next week, and this reflected “an unprecedented determination to deal with climate change”.