ARCTIC SUMMER sea ice is probably melting faster than the glacial pace of climate talks in Bonn this week, but those involved in the latest round of negotiations insist progress is being made – if slowly.
Delegates arriving at the Hotel Maritim conference centre have smiled wryly at a Greenpeace poster pinned to one of the trees off Robert Schuman Platz: “If the world was a bank, you would have already saved it.”
“It’s moving at a snail’s pace, but the movement is significant,” an EU source said. The ad-hoc group set up under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) “started negotiating from day one, when they could have been arguing about technicalities”.
But at least this group has a draft text on the table, which is being expanded on a daily basis.
The second ad-hoc group, dealing with further commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, has not got that far and will not start real negotiations until the next meeting in August.
The EU is ahead of the rest of the world because it has already set a minimum target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 per cent by 2020 – and even more if others sign up for ambitious targets as part of a global agreement in Copenhagen in December.
By contrast, and despite the positive approach being taken by US president Barack Obama, the US is playing a “relatively low-key role because it doesn’t yet have hard proposals to put on the table”, the EU source said. “And that may not happen until after Copenhagen.”
“The Americans are no longer being negative, but they have to know what they’ll be able to deliver before they sign up,” the source said, referring to doubts about whether the US Congress will adopt the climate change package in what is known as the Waxman-Markey Bill.
This Bill, which would introduce a “cap and trade” regime for US industry and energy utilities, passed its first hurdle on May 21st when it was adopted by the House of Representatives energy committee. But it has yet to go to the full house, and then the US Senate.
Nick Roy, congressional lobbyist for the moderate Pew Research Centre in Washington DC, warned yesterday that Democratic senators representing oil, coal and manufacturing states hit hard by the recession may baulk at a Bill to cut carbon emissions.
What would strengthen Mr Obama’s hand in twisting their arms would be a firm indication from other major emitters, notably China, that they would “come on board” by agreeing that their path to further economic growth would be more environmentally sustainable in the future.
Legislators in Washington DC are not concerned about such nuances as the fact that China’s per-capita emissions are a fraction of those in the US, or that China bears hardly any responsibility – except in recent years – for the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
That is one of the main reasons why US secretary of state Hilary Clinton was dispatched to Beijing within days of taking office to talk to Chinese leaders and why another high-level US delegation is there again this week – with climate change near the top of its agenda.
“Ultimately, as two of the world’s biggest coal-producing countries, the Americans and the Chinese will have to do a deal on this,” the EU source said, adding that new technology for carbon capture and storage at coal-fired power stations was bound to be part of it.
Canada, Japan and Australia (which has huge coal reserves) also need to define their positions more clearly if progress is to be made at the Copenhagen summit and in further rounds of talks scheduled for Bonn, Bangkok and Barcelona in the remaining months preceding it.
However, it now seems highly unlikely that more ambitious targets than those set by the EU will be agreed in December. “We’re running out of transactional time,” as another EU source put it. “So there’s zero possibility of coming up with a new set of numbers in Copenhagen.”
The more likely outcome is that the framework of a global deal will be agreed, with the details to be fleshed out over the following year or two – in effect, a fast-track version of what happened with the Kyoto Protocol, which waited four years for its “modalities” to be finalised.