The UNFCCC, which was adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and ratified by 192 countries after going into effect in 1994, is aimed at controlling harmful human interference with the global climate system. This interference is believed by most but not all climate scientists to have resulted in global warming. Global warming is widely accepted as having caused droughts by affecting rainfall patterns, forcing sea levels to rise and changing the differences in night and day temperatures, among other things.
This much-ballyhooed conference, attended by at least 15,000, is aimed at solving the global warming problem -- perhaps the toughest global problem of them all, given the complex interplay of political, ideological and vested business interests -- through a legally binding global agreement to supplant the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Kyoto Protocol, which went into effect in 2005 but has not been as effective as expected, imposed greenhouse gas emission reductions on developed but not developing countries during 2008-2012. It has been ratified by 187 countries with the major exception of the US.
COP15, which, according to The Economist is “almost as rich in complexity as in hyperbole,” will conclude with a summit of over 100 world leaders, including President Abdullah Gül and President Barack Obama, this Friday. The two major objectives of the conference are to set targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions, especially by developed countries, and to seek means of financial aid for developing countries in their mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. There are serious disagreements between developed and developing countries on the distribution of the emission cut levels as well as on setting a target date by which global emissions should peak and start to decline. There are also serious disagreements among developing countries themselves, especially between small island countries and poor African countries on one side and major large emerging economies, such as China, one the other side, on both of these issues. The former emit relatively little but are vulnerable to global warming. The unofficial draft of an agreement prepared by Denmark and leaked to the press on Tuesday was attacked by developing countries on the grounds that it favored developed countries, which are argued to be the major culprits in global warming. But although developed countries are responsible for most of the past emissions, they account for less than half of the current ones. Therefore, any globally effective effort to deal with global warming requires developing countries, too, especially China, which is now the world’s largest overall emitter, to commit to binding emission reduction targets. But even the official final draft released last Friday has been criticized by developing countries that are asking for preferential treatment similar to that under the Kyoto Protocol.
Controlling and curbing greenhouse gas emissions has costs as well as benefits. The costs, estimated in the several trillions of dollars over the next few decades, will come in the form of lower economic growth, especially in developing countries, due to rising energy prices as cheaper fossil fuels are substituted by more expensive non-fossil fuels. Shifting to low-carbon green technologies will also be expensive. The developing countries want developed ones to bear most of these costs. They want annual financial aid in the hundreds of billions of dollars from developed countries, between 0.5 percent and 1 percent of their gross domestic products (GDPs), for climate change remedies, much more than the latter are willing to even seriously consider.
One major positive factor for COP15 is its support by the US. The election of Obama as president has marked a decisive reversal in the US official position on climate change. Now the US supports UN-led efforts to control global warming. This was reinforced by the declaration, at the start of COP15, by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that “greenhouse gases threaten public health and the environment.” There is also climate change legislation pending in Congress.
However, one major negative factor is the explosive science scandal called “ClimateGate.” Late last month thousands of files and private e-mails exchanged over 13 years among climate scientists at the UK’s University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and their peers around the world were mysteriously hacked and posted on the Internet. Several of them seem to raise questions -- based on alleged attempts to silence those scientists who were skeptical about the causes and extent of climate change -- about the reliability of the scientific evidence on global warming caused by greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, released by human activities that use fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, containing hydrocarbons. Those who had rejected all along the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming alleged that the scientific data supporting climate change had been manipulated.
The row triggered by ClimateGate was inauspicious for the conference aimed at globally limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The chief climate negotiator of Saudi Arabia, which is a member of the “G-77 plus China” bloc that leads the 130 developing countries’ side in the climate negotiations, argued that ClimateGate refuted human-caused global warming and that it would derail the conference. Of course, we know that any global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions would harm the national interests of Saudi Arabia, the major crude oil producer and exporter. Whether ClimateGate has any merit or not, the controversy surrounding it has focused attention on the fact that among reputable mainstream climate scientists themselves, there are still disagreements on the specific causes and the precise extent of human-induced global warming. This makes it much harder for world leaders, especially when some public opinion polls indicate declining support for climate change action, to strike an interim political deal in Copenhagen on the outline of a legally binding global agreement to be reached in 2010. Next week I will discuss the outcome of COP15, after we find out whether Copenhagen has indeed become “Hopenhagen” for dealing globally with global climate change.
