February 2008
Poles Apart In Hawaii
The world’s biggest polluters met in Hawaii last week for a US hosted conference on combating climate change without damaging the world’s economy. Representatives from the US, China, Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Germany, France and the UK will be attending, in addition to delegates from the UN and EU.
The meeting, which is the US’s attempt to regain an element of control in the climate change discourse is now hoped to provide an added impetus to UN negotiations for the next set of climate change agreements, dubbed "Kyoto 2", so as to ensure a smooth transition in 2012 when the original Kyoto Protocol comes to an end.
However, doubts remain over the intention and effectiveness of this group. The first time these participants met was in Washington in September of 2007, critics were skeptical of a hidden US agenda to hijack or refute the climate change debate, especially because there was no sign of movement in the US position. James Cannaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, suggested that Hawaii would be about "iterative discussions, [in] which the initial goal will be to lay out a variety of options without holding any country to a particular proposal." This is unlikely to prove a popular position amongst fellow delegates, who made their displeasure towards the US attitude felt at Bali in December of 2007, where US representatives were booed for opposing demands by poorer nations for richer countries to do more in the battle against climate change.
Indeed, Cannaughton and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have come under fire for the rejection of a push by California and 15 other states to set higher standards than the U.S. government for vehicle emissions, and the administration's overall policy on climate change. Similar headline grabbing news amongst environmentalists has been the US’s delay in determining whether polar bears should be classified as threatened by climate change. The new deadline proposed is three days after a potential sale of fossil fuel leases in the Chukchi Sea near Alaska, home to many polar bears.
In spite of this, participants are hopeful of a positive discourse, and the EU has once again attempted to provide an added impetus to negotiations by announcing new energy plans for its 27 members in an attempt to combat global warming, show up Kyoto non-compliant states and working towards a common European energy policy.
The proposal includes targets of a 20% share of renewable energy by 2020 (up from 8.5% today) and a fairly divided effort between member states, and to encourage better types of renewable energy (e.g. by setting sustainability standards for biofuels). Set to come into force as a directive in 2010, there are considerable benefits. In addition to saving between 600-900 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year, fossil fuel consumption will be reduced by between 200-300 million tonnes per year, making consumers less vulnerable to price fluctuations in the energy market. Most attractive of all to the consumer is the falling cost of renewable energy, which in the case of solar power is expected to plummet by 50% by 2020.
Whether the conference will have any real impact is debatable. With the prospect of "regime change" in the United States and a possible global economic recession, decision makers have a lot on their minds. Nonetheless, the fact that the meeting took place at all after angry exchanges in Bali is a feat in itself. Isn’t that progress of a sort?
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