The Barcelona Climate Change Talks have opened today amid very mixed expectations. There still are some very clear divergences to tackle before a text for the Copenhagen agreement can be finally agreed upon.

Sergio Abranches

We are still far from a global climate agreement. There is consensus about what should be agreed upon for the deal not to fail: 1. binding targets for all industrialized countries on line with scientific requirements; 2. a clear commitment from major developing countries along the same lines; 3. a firm financial commitment by the developed world to fund mitigation and adaptation efforts in the developing world.

What to do about the Kyoto Protocol has also become an issue to be solved before a Copenhagen deal takes its final shape. Diplomatic discourse sometimes seem to be saying the same thing, when it is really saying different things. There is extensive disagreement between de Boer’s, the EU and the US positions on the future of the Kyoto Protocol.

At the opening press conference in Barcelona, today, UN top climate official, Yvo de Boer said that only the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is going to end by 2012. He expects a second period to be agreed upon.

This should be a task for the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP5), to take place at the same time COP15 will convene. For this second term to be effective, new commitments will have to be defined, and the US Congress would have to ratify Kyoto.

Asked whether Kyoto should be retained, de Boer argued that we should not “throw away the old shoes before getting a new pair.” However, de Boer asks for far more than an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, as a successful outcome for the Copenhagen Climate Summit. According to his statements, the Copenhagen deal should bring clarity of commitments, by defining clear targets and timetables for emissions reductions by the industrialized countries, and for major developing countries to reduce their emissions. These commitments would also require a managing mechanism, to be spelled out at the deal.

The European Union representative said that the Copenhagen deal should build on the Kyoto Protocol to set a 30% global target for emissions reductions. The deal should also include all sectors of the economy, set binding short-term targets for the industrialized countries, and mid-term targets for major developing countries.

Although there is a convergence between what the EU considers the necessary elements of a successful global climate deal, and Mr. de Boer’s own views, it seems the UN official is far more supportive of maintaining the Kyoto Protocol as a central part of the deal. Yvo de Boer’s new pair of shoes would be a more comprehensive global deal, that should definitely include the major developing countries. But he does think Kyoto should run parallel to this more encompassing treaty, because it has all the mechanisms necessary to enforce commitments by industrialized countries. Referring to the fact that the US was not a party to the Protocol he said that the US did sign the Protocol, although it did not ratify it. He stressed that one should not forget that at the time ratification failed relations between Congress and the US Presidency were under severe stress. Now he sees an intense constructive relationship between Congress and the Executive.

The European Union is not defending the persistence of the Kyoto Protocol along a second phase, but that it be used as a building block upon which a new treaty could be established. The new rules should retain Kyoto’s achievements but definitely go beyond it. That’s why the EU delegates say they “expect a second commitment period [of the Kyoto Protocol] to happen.” But they are clearly also expecting another set of binding commitments to engage emerging economies and to manage risks such as Russia’s oversupply of carbon credits. The best way to manage this risk would be to significantly raise Russia’s own emissions reductions figures. The EU also rejects the fairness argument major emerging countries have been using not to accept biding targets. The EU is far from being a homogeneous entity, they argued, and have countries as poor as Bulgaria, poorer than several major developing countries. Nevertheless they’ll have to comply with he EU targets. Spain is doing greater effort than more developed EU countries to meet its Kyoto targets, and is not saying this additional effort is unfair, one exemplified.

To governments like the Brazilian, rewriting Kyoto to create a new Annex for major developing countries such as Brazil, China, India, South Africa, and Mexico, would amount to abandoning it altogether. The Annex-I, non-Annex-I countries distinction, separating those having binding commitments, from those asked to voluntarily act, at their own pace, to reduce emissions is an issue of principle for diplomacies like the Brazilian.

The US government has been saying that Copenhagen to succeed has to move beyond the Kyoto Protocol. Although the US representative, Jonathan Pershing, did not mention Kyoto, he has stated that the US is committed to an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen. One that sets robust absolute reductions targets for industrialized countries, and mid-term significant reductions from major developing countries. They are proposing no commitments from least developed countries. They should only be asked to develop low carbon policies with financial and technical assistance of industrialized nations.

The US delegate to Barcelona has also said that the US is proposing a “text-based” agreement, dealing with operational issues. The US will not present a set of commitments different from what Congress is about to vote, he clarified. “We’re taking the opposite route”, he explained, the US will commit internationally with what will become effective domestic policy, with Congressional approval. It is obvious by now that the US will only take effective steps in Copenhagen if Congress votes the climate bill before. Pershing thinks this is still likely to happen, because the Senate is working faster now than some weeks ago, and an internal agreement is quite near.

Increasing market awareness about climate change risk and costs has been driving a growing number of companies to adopt climate friendly corporate policies in the US.

Sergio Abranches

Now this movement towards sustainable corporate behavior is becoming political. It is spreading all over the US and has already reached Washington. One could only hope it got there on time to push a Senate vote on the Kerry-Boxer bill before December.

A realignment of business interests regarding climate change issues is provoking shifting alliances in Washington, the growth of pro-climate change lobbying, and defections of important corporations from traditional – and conservative – trade organizations. It is likely also to affect some of GOP’s traditional corporate ties.

Two good stories report these shifting alignments due to divergence over cutting GHG emissions. WSJ’s Political Alliances Shift in Fight Over Climate Bill, and NYT’s Divisions in U.S. Over Emissions. Both recommended reading.

But the odds against an effective deal are increasing. The NYC Climate Summit and the G20 meeting did not break the deadlock. Negotiators are working on a raft agreement in Bangkok this week. Meanwhile the UN has released the latest draft.

Sergio Abranches

Meetings of heads of governments and states have rarely led to very specific and detailed policy communiqués. But the last two, the Climate Summit in New York City, and the G20 meeting, in Pittsburgh were even more vague than official communiqués use to be.

Both meetings were a lost opportunity to sort out the differences that are stalling sound decisions on critical matters. Both failed to raise hopes that the climate deadlock might be approaching its end, and that COP 15, in Copenhagen, could be different from the others. We don’t need another roadmap. We need a substantive deal.

The G20 made no real progress regarding a climate deal. It has also failed to advance on new regulation to the domestic as well as global financial industries. The financial markets are returning to pre-crisis behavior due to the lack of new rules for their game. Governments are again getting as complacent as the markets.

The financial crisis was the result of both market and regulatory failures. The signs are that we will do nothing to prevent both to happen again. I know it is impossible to eliminate the risk of market or regulatory failure. But it is entirely within our possibilities to prevent the same sort of failure to happen again. That’s why new regulation is needed. And that’s why this lack of substance of government’s responses is a serious risk.

Will Copenhagen be a business as usual conference of the parties to the Climate Convention? The likelihood of a positive answer increases with each new failed summit. The signs are mixed, and are raising controversy: here, here, and here. The New York Summit was an opportunity for some countries to show part of the cards they are expected to play in Copenhagen.

Most of the uncertainty regarding an effective climate deal lies on what president Obama will be able to do about it. The fact that the US is no longer in denial has a significance of its own, but will not be enough. The effectiveness of a US shift towards a scientifically sound deal will be strongly mitigated if the US Congress fails to approve a substantial climate change bill. In Europe there is much concern about a US inertia that could ruin the prospects for a good deal in Copenhagen.

The second major source of uncertainty is China. President Hu Jintao’s address in New York on China’s new plans was very much welcome. The core of these policies is the program for reducing the Chinese economy’s carbon intensity by unit of GDP. It is an important step, but it falls short of what is expected from China. The same is true of the changes in India’s and Brazil’s last announcements regarding their intentions to act more effectively on climate change mitigation.

If the Us cannot show the capability to act domestically, developed nations will probably reduce the intensity of their own commitments. That is not to say nothing will happen. EU countries will certainly move forward. The new Japanese government is likely to implement what prime-minister Yukio Hatoyama has announced in New York. But these unilateral moves, though helpful, would not be enough.

We still have time to save the deal. Reuters said this Monday that the United States has “asked Britain to hold the meeting of the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF) it set up earlier this year, to provide an informal forum to discuss climate issues in London on October 18 and 19”. The meeting “will cover most of the climate issues discussed in the official UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) talks ahead of Copenhagen but is not an official part of the negotiations,” Britain’s Department of Energy and Climate Change said in a statement, according to Reuters. “Real commitment from all countries is needed to secure a breakthrough deal,” says the statement.

Delegates are currently in Thailand to discuss an outline of the new institutional arrangement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. The UNFCCC has released a “Draft Agreement” today. The 200-page long text is a difficult read not only because of diplomatic jargon, but also because it is full of optional clauses and remittances to previous drafts and documents.

A first reading of the document shows that delegates are prepared for a breakthrough deal as well as for a watered down one. Let me show two good examples of texts that might be developed into a stronger commitment by all parties.

On page 15, an optional phrasing of two paragraphs says: “All Parties should aim at a long-term goal of achieving at least fifty per cent reduction in global emissions of greenhouse gases from their current level by 2050, with a reference to scientific knowledge of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change through realization of a low carbon society and development of innovative technologies. In order to achieve this goal, peaking-out of the global emissions of greenhouse gases in the next ten to twenty years, 2015 for developed countries and 2025 for developing countries, should be pursued and all Parties should share the vision on how to pave the way to reduce global emissions by 2050 with flexibility and diversity of nationally appropriate actions.”

The major problem is that the text fails to set these goals as binding commitments. Rephrased to commit all parties it could be a good starting point.

On page 59, the draft also has an option that points to an effective deal:

“Parties recognize that in this context greenhouse gas emissions must be stabilized as far as possible below 350 ppmv CO2 eq, with temperature increases limited to as far as possible below 1.5^oC above pre-industrial levels; hence global emissions must peak by 2015, and then be reduced by more than 85 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Economy-wide emission reductions by all countries shall be set as a stabilization of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere at 350 ppm carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 eq) and a temperature increase below 2^oC above the pre-industrial level. For this purpose, Parties shall collectively reduce global emissions by at least 45 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020 and by at least 95 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050.

To stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate, the Parties recognize that the global temperature increase should be limited to 2^oC above the pre-industrial level.

In accordance with scientific findings, this implies that the aggregate greenhouse gas emissions by developed country Parties shall be reduced by [25–40] per cent by 2020 compared with 1990. Emissions from developing country Parties shall collectively deviate significantly from business as usual by [15–30] per cent by 2020. The global greenhouse gas emissions should peak by 2015.

Parties shall further collectively reduce global emissions by 50–85 per cent by 2050 compared with the 2000 level. These collective obligations should be adjusted in accordance with best available scientific information, including the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC.”

Add the proper wording to create a biding commitment to all parties, even if at different time frames, and we could seal an effective deal. Especially if another provision contained in the draft agreement holds: the one determining a review of goals and commitments every five years, the first review being set to 2015. Gradualism and effectiveness coupled with sound targets for all would do the trick.

The UNFCCC’s rules require all parties to sign the deal. This unanimity rule turns all parties into veto players. It’s a major obstacle to any ambitious agreement. But politics is never egalitarian. If the 40 major powers and emitters sign the deal, it will very likely be approved by all.

Sergio Abranches

Chief US Climate negotiator Todd Stern’s statement at the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming that “the tenor of negotiations in the formal U.N. track has been difficult,” was only the most recent warning of a dimming prospect for an effective deal in Copenhagen.

Stern also urged the US Senate to “do its part to move this process forward in a timely manner. Nothing the United States can do is more important for the international negotiation process than passing robust, comprehensive clean energy legislation as soon as possible.”

Meanwhile, new scientific evidence, and stronger scientific warnings indicate we are approaching a point of no return on global warming. The Royal Society recently issued a report saying that “it is likely that global warming will exceed 2°C this century unless global greenhouse gas emissions are cut by at least 50% of 1990 levels by 2050, and by more thereafter.” The report adds that “unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successful then they have been so far, additional action may be required should it become necessary to cool the Earth this century.” We’ll need a “Plan B”, involving geoengineering, “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming.”

The Royal Society calls for substantial research funding to study the use and consequences of geoengineering. It proposes the development of “a code of practice for geoengineering research,” and provides recommendations for a voluntary research governance framework. John Shepherd, who chaired the Royal Society study, said geoengineering may become “the only option left to limit further temperature increases.”

This outlook points to a “tragic choice” between the climatic consequences of unmitigated global warming, and the risks of geoengineering. Shepherd noted that their research “found that some geoengineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems.”

One of the panels I sat at the American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting, in Toronto (September 3-6), was on “Geoengineering and Global Order.” Political Scientist and author Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, of the University of Waterloo, pointed out that, since the drivers of global warming are stronger than mitigating factors, “the precautionary principle requires us to aggressively research geoengineering and be prepared to use it extensively.” He recommends we make sure we have all arrows in our quiver, and geoengineering is one of them.

Physicist Jason Blackstock, a Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, cautions that there is significant uncertainty on the spatial and temporal response of the most promising geoengineering technologies, making their near-term deployment extraordinarily risky.

The methods the scientific community considers the most promising are Shortwave Climate Engineering. According to Blackstock basic physical science, exploratory climate modeling, and the impacts of volcanic aerosols on climate all suggest that this method could partially compensate for some effects of increased atmospheric CO2, particularly net global warming. Existing data “also reveal important limits to the range of CO2 impacts that it could ameliorate.”

Blackstock argues for increased research on the possibilities and risks of geoengineering, since we might need to use it as a last resort. Undesirable consequences will, however, be unavoidable, and they’ll do more harm to countries in the tropical belt, that are not interested or cannot afford to study these methods of intervention in the climate system.

The conclusion is that “we might have to choose another type of climate change instead of the one we’re now heading to.” This sort of “tragic choice dilemma” requires a prompt answer to the unsolved problems regarding the international governance of geoengineering research. He argued we need to start studying fast and efficiently who does this research; how, when, under which conditions, and by whom this knowledge will be appropriated and used.

Blackstock is co-author of the report “Climate Engineering Responses to Climate Emergencies,” indicating that “the climate system might be inherently too complex—and therefore the possibility of ‘unanticipated harmful side effects’ too large—for any intentional human intervention to ever be considered safe.” A point he has also stressed on his presentation at the APSA panel. Another relevant risk from geoengineering is moral hazard: that it can be perceived as a substitute for greenhouse gases emissions reduction and serve as a justification to delay action. The “climate skeptics” are already defending this solution. Additionally, “significant international tensions might emerge surrounding who gets to define what the ‘optimum’ climate should be,” the report says.

Are we really heading towards this catastrophic scenario, where we’ll have to choose the climate change we have been causing with our GHG emissions, or the climate change we’ll generate by trying to engineer the climate system?

If the rate of emissions does not come radically down within the next three to four decades, the answer is likely to be yes. Some analysts are convinced we can no longer avoid a climatic cataclysm. At the panel “Adapting to or Avoiding Doomsday: Dealing with Climate Change”, also at APSA, Wolfgang Brauner, political scientist of the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, suggested that even “maximum mitigation is unlikely to avoid catastrophic climate change”, and it would “overwhelm the adaptive capacity and resilience of social, political and economic systems.” We would be facing a likely temperature rise around 4^oC, moving essentially into uncharted territory.

This scenario seems too pessimistic, but the fact is that we are not making any progress so far to avoid it. I talked at the panel “It is not easy going green,” about how it would be advantageous to Brazil to build a low carbon economy. The costs of this conversion would be comparatively low because of the country’s relatively clean energy matrix, and most of its emissions come from deforestation and degradation. Yet, the dominant political and business elite resists such change.

Wei Liang, from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, showed that, in spite of the environmental costs the country is facing, the Chinese government will not take any steps to join a climate deal that might impair the country’s development over the short run.

In the US, the Senate has delayed action on the climate bill. The US Chief Climate Negotiator says negotiations are at a dangerous standstill. This is also the opinion of UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. A few days ago he has warned of a “real danger that negotiations to tackle climate change could collapse, with catastrophic consequences.”

Looking at the very few panels dedicated to climate change at the APSA meeting, one might get the impression that US political science deems it to be the greater challenge of our time. This is not the case. APSA’s president, Peter Katzenstein, didn’t even mention it on his “presidential address”. He lectured the audience on: “Those People: Contrasting Perspectives on World Politics.” It is fair to suppose he talked about the most relevant issues on world politics. Climate change was not among those issues. Not one of the plenary sessions was dedicated to the discussion of climate change. Of the 1082 papers uploaded to the

Social Science Research Network’s site dedicated to the meeting, less than 1% dealt with the global warming challenge.

It seems the establishment of the US political science does not consider global warming and its climatic consequences to be a core problem to be addressed by the discipline as a whole. The notion that the US should lead talks towards an ambitious climate change deal is at odds with the apparent alienation of its political science establishment regarding the most dangerous governance problem of the 21st century.  As we know, the academic political science elite in the US is representative of the frame of mind of the governing elite.

It seems that we should start considering the hypothesis that “doomsday scenarios” are becoming more realistic than “positive change scenarios”, given this environment of blocked politics and climate change alienation among some of the major mature and emerging powers.

The agribusiness bloc has staged a multi-targeted attack on environmental legislation over the last few months in the Brazilian Congress. It has recently become far more active and is visibly gaining clout in Brazilian politics. The core focus of this new attack on environmental laws has been forest protection, and the Amazon region is its main priority. The rural lobby associated to this Congressional bloc has successfully engaged several government authorities, succeeding in persuading the president to sign a series of presidential decrees. The ministers of Agriculture, Mines and Energy, and Transportation have been working actively both on the media and within Congress to support changes on the environment license legislation, on forest cover legal reserves, and several other areas of the environmental legal framework. The minister of Agriculture has been the most outspoken in favor of agribusiness interests, but the Minister of Transportation, while defending the end of environmental licensing requirements for road-building, was also defending lifting barriers to deforestation in the Amazon. There are several road-projects in the Amazon, pending license, that directly interest the region’s soy and beef producers. The same is true of the minister of Mines and Energy attempts to lift licensing requirements for large hydroelectric power plant projects in the Amazon region.

The first important victory of this concerted anti-environmental action came when Congress turned into law a presidential decree granting land rights to thousands of illegal settlers. A sizable portion of those benefitted were acting as front to large cattle and soybean producers. The new law grants tenure rights to holdings of land illegally occupied of less than 100 ha cost free; and authorizes the land authority to sell at highly subsidized prices holdings between 100 and 400 ha. Land-tenure rights of holdings larger than 400 ha will be sold at market prices, and of those larger than 1500 ha will be auctioned. Land-rights of holdings larger than 2500 ha will depend on Congressional approval. The immediate result will be a de facto amnesty for most land-grabbers. As land-tenure rights begin to be issued, land-speculation will very likely result, increasing the value of legal land, and generating strong incentives to grabbing and clearing of new areas.

This outburst of political action by agribusiness lobbies resulted from progress of the environmental and global-warming agenda and an increasing of government raids against illegal deforestation in the Amazon. Fiercer action against deforestation, and the success of social organization initiatives, such as Greenpeace’s campaign against soybean exporters that led to a soy moratorium, recently extended until 2010, have also contributed to induce this political offensive.

Over the last years there have been some important substantive gains in terms of tools and means to protect the Amazon. Satellite monitoring of deforestation has been very much improved, and today Brazil has first-class monitoring by both the official agency, INPE (National Institute for Space Research), and the independent “think-act” organization iMazon. The National Monetary Council banned financing by official banks and agencies of activities that are not fully certified and licensed. This means that illegal deforestation had been getting official subsidized financing. Figures for monthly and annual deforestation became part of routine media coverage. Although modest and falling short of meaning a permanent and irreversible gain of Amazon forest governance this surge of environmental concern and control was perceived as a capital threat by the more retrograde sectors of Brazilian agriculture.

This case came back to my mind when reading Dan Morgan’s piece published Sunday by the Washington Post, Prodding the Liberal Agenda With a Pitchfork. He argues that climate change legislation was moving along in the US, “when it ran into a tractorcade.” He describes the mobilization of rural interests, to prevent climate legislation from going too far. Dan Morgan says that the demonstration of their remaining political clout “may come as a surprise to those who thought the ‘farm bloc’ disappeared sometime around the end of the Eisenhower administration.” He claims that “its clout has been reshaping — and in some cases halting — the ambitious agenda of President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).”

From his story it seems that the action of the American Farm Bureau Federation, US’s largest farm organization, parallels that of the National Confederation of Agrilculture (CNA), Brazil’s largest farm organization. He says that the AFBF has vowed to kill the climate change bill in the Senate. In Brazil, the CNA has vowed to revoke all environmental laws today protecting forest cover, mandating the preservation or restoration of riparian vegetation, setting licensing rules, and many other aspects of environmental legislation, also having as an end-result crippling any serious climate change initiative. It is important to note that in Brazil by far the largest source of GHG emissions comes from land use change in general, and deforestation and forest degradation, in particular.

In Brazil, we call this new “farm-bloc” that is getting more powerful through clever political maneuvering the “ruralistas” (“ruralists”). Dan Morgan suggests “the US newly empowered farm-state lawmakers” should be called “the Agracrats.” They’re a “bloc of moderate-to-conservative rural Democrats in both houses.” The Brazilian ruralists, we could also call them Agracrats (agrocratas, in Portuguese), form a multiparty bloc, and although its core is on the opposition center-right “DEM” party it has spread even into pro-government and left-wing parties. Dan Morgan suggests that the Agracrats bloc might become influential in other than farm or climate related issues. The same is probably true for Brazilian ruralists.

Their political advantage, in both countries, also comes from the fact that they hold a tighter and more consensual view of the issues they prioritize. Those who defend climate change and environmental policies tend to have a more plural view of the issues and are often unable to consensually supporting a single position, when it comes to Legislative battles.