Several days of diplomatic maneuvering, lobbying and arm-wrestling could pave the way for the heads of states to seal a political deal after 12 days of strenuous conversations and off-the-record conspiring.

Sergio Abranches, from Copenhagen

Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen’s opening speech at the Climate Summit has caused discomfort, frustration and irritation among many well-informed observers. He returned to the idea of an agreement to save face because there is no time to create the necessary and sufficient political conditions for a full deal.

At the same time, much negotiation, arm-wrestling and maneuvering are already taking place behind the curtains. At the center of off-the-record conversations are two main issues: the level of commitment of the developed countries, especially the US; and finance for both mitigation and adaptation efforts in the developing world.

A negotiator has told me that “the numbers can be somehow dealt with. The main difficulty is to arrive at an acceptable finance equation.”

There are numerous rumors about finance proposals circulating the Bella Center, the headquarters for the Climate Summit. Some are contradictory among themselves. One rumor says the US is about to announce a far more aggressive financial proposal, to compensate for president Obama’s political limitations regarding the US numbers of GHG emissions reductions. Other tell about an agreement towards a small short-term finance commitment, to postpone any firm decision on a broader and more expensive scheme. There is also signs that Japan’s Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, could propose a third way to the financial hurdle.

There are several political crosscutting undercurrents heating up the convention center. EU diplomats, and NGOs that work hand in hand with European governments are dissatisfied with the US weak inputs to the deal. The leading countries of the G77 and China (a conglomerate of more than 130 disparate countries), Brazil and China, have been entertaining bilateral conversations attempting to take the lead on the negotiations. A broad majority of the persons I talked with today tend to agree that the host country – Denmark – has not been very helpful so far. The text it has forwarded as a draft of the agreement, for example, has been widely rejected as a “nonstarter”.

From a predictable opening to heated background discussions, an overflow of rumors, and an unending political wrestling from room to room of the Bella Center, everything point to a major political and diplomatic event. That’s how progress is made. Piece by piece, with much struggling, testing, teasing and bickering.

At the end of the day, when the heads of governments meet, they’ll probably turn a formal diplomatic meeting into a full political dealing. Some good news could come from this shift from diplomacy to realpolitik.

Sergio Abranches

The fundamental issue about large scale risk is the uncertainty about the probability of the chain of events that will trigger the transition from the status quo to another, very different and more hostile, state. The core of climate change risk is this combination of the identification of the possibility of a catastrophic risk and the uncertainty about the likelihood of its realization within a given time frame.

Events with high probabilities are not technically risks. They are dangerous or hazardous events with high probability, hence low uncertainty. Risk emerges out of uncertainty. Harmful unexpected surprises pose a risk worse than well-known, highly likely, dangers. The reason is that uncertainty may breed complacency and inertia, whereas present and visible dangers tend to stimulate preparedness.

As the negative consequences are formidable, that science says there is a small chance it will happen should be reason enough to take strong action to try to prevent it from happening or to reduce its intensity. All controversy about probabilities, model accuracy, data quality is academic and scientific and should not be stopped. It is a prerequisite for the advancement of knowledge. Science advances through doubt and contestation. Certainty stalls scientific inquisitiveness.

At the practical level, however, once the existence of risk is asserted beyond a reasonable doubt, there is ground for action. Societies cannot afford to wait until uncertainty is eliminated to take action against catastrophic risk. They should act under uncertainty to prevent the worst scenarios. A decade long political deadlock has been impeding the world from taking effective global action to face climate risk. The knot is political, not scientific. If the politics is not solved, there will be no incentive to develop innovative policy that meets the scientific requirements to manage global climate risk. No adequate regulatory framework to provide inducements and constraints to the markets to look for new technologies and new patterns of production will be defined without previous global and domestic political accords.

Let’s consider the following quote from Mark New, Diana Liverman and Kevin Anderson’s “Mind the Gap”, just published by Nature:

While adapting to a 2°C temperature rise may mostly involve adjustments of existing practices, a world at 4°C presents large and complex challenges that are likely to require fundamental socioeconomic and technological transformations, rather than adjustments assuming such transformations are achievable through planning at all. Moving from 2 to 4°C would also bring, for any particular location, an accumulating load of increasingly severe impacts. While one or a few impacts considered in isolation may be manageable, a ‘perfect storm’ of multiple severe impacts may be catastrophic.

It is a synthesis of scientific evidence beyond reasonable doubt in spite of an important degree of uncertainty about the specifics – the CRU Hack episode notwithstanding – that points to a catastrophic scenario.

The conclusion is rather straightforward:

The challenges involved in reducing emissions soon and fast enough to have even a small chance of keeping temperatures below 2 °C are much larger than most people realize, requiring unprecedented collective will among the governments of both the developed and developing world. Ongoing climate negotiations offer little to suggest that sufficient collective will currently exists to meet this mitigation challenge. Yet aiming to reduce emissions to keep the average temperature below 2 °C remains a crucial political objective. To try and possibly fail at achieving this goal is better than to renounce the effort, as the larger the gap between the 2 °C target and the final temperature change, the more catastrophic the consequences. The risk of allowing the world to experience 4 °C of warming this century demands both accelerated efforts at effective mitigation and serious planning for adaptation to changes that may be larger than those usually considered.

COP15 is about breaking the political deadlock that is impairing a more consequential global discussion about global policy mitigation and adaptation action. There is a clear imbalance between the politics and the science of climate change. While the science has become clearer over the next decade, the politics has been deadlocked by a decade of denial. The first political step to make the politics of climate change to converge to the scientific requirements for mitigation and adaptation is breaking the deadlock. The Copenhagen summit should focus more on the binary and extraordinarily difficult political operation of switching from “Nay” to “Aye”, from political denial to political engagement.

This shift requires hard political negotiation, facing strong lobbies both domestically and globally by all major developed and developing powers. It will bring about a power shift from old high carbon coalitions to emerging low carbon coalitions. It requires an enormous feat of political engineering. I don’t think we should underestimate the possibility of this happening in Copenhagen. If so, it will be the first and crucial building block for a new political architecture of climate politics.

]]> http://www.ecopolity.com/2009/12/04/the-big-deal-breaking-the-deadlock-on-global-climate-change-politics/feed/ 0 http://www.ecopolity.com/2009/11/15/can-the-us-congress-set-the-global-climate-change-agenda/ http://www.ecopolity.com/2009/11/15/can-the-us-congress-set-the-global-climate-change-agenda/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:50:07 +0000 sabranches http://www.ecopolity.com/?p=433 APEC has become the opportunity for the US to try to recast the expectations about Copenhagen. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already forewarned that the US was “100-percent committed to creating a framework agreement, not a legally binding treaty.”

Sergio Abranches

President Obama had already decided to only accept internationally binding mitigation commitments that were already voted by Congress. Although EPA has a broad mandate, the Executive felt it still needs a Federal Climate Change bill approved by Congress to fully define its range of action at the global arena.

It is unlikely that Congress will approve a climate change bill within the next 20 days. Without it the US would not help designing a legally binding treaty in Copenhagen.

The problem is that without a definition from the US, China will hardly play all the cards it has prepared to take to Copenhagen. The US and China are the two pivotal players to seal a global climate change deal.

The fate of the Copenhagen Summit now depends on a tree-way dilemma, a variation of sorts of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” game. Obama will only commit the US internationally to what Congress writes into law. China will only move forward after the US plays its hand. As Congress stalls the climate change bill, Obama retreats from his own personal pledge to lead an ambitious climate deal, and China also holds its hand. This amounts to both the US and China defecting from a deal in Copenhagen.

Enters the solution of a “politically binding”, rather than a “legally binding” agreement. It helps Obama to save face, and gives him more time to wrestle with a recalcitrant Democratic majority and a hardline Republican opposition to get a climate change bill voted. But it also breaks the momentum that has been building up towards sealing a meaningful deal in Copenhagen.

China had made an important move at the New York Summit, announcing it was prepared to decide on a relevant reduction of the carbon intensity of its GDP by 2020. The details of what a “relevant reduction” would mean were left to be laid down at the table in Copenhagen. The condition was that the US also made a significant commitment. The European Union has already made a concrete commitment. The Japanese prime-minister Yukio Hatoyama stated that the new government he leads is committed to deeper emissions cuts than his predecessor had approved. Brazil announced, for the first time, its own commitment to a quantified target for emissions cut, just a few hours before president Lula took the presidential plane to visit his French colleague.

Why should all, now, step backwards, just to come into line with the US? Is the fact that president Obama’s domestic leadership has not been strong enough to get Congress to act reason enough for a regress? Should we loose momentum so arduously gained over the last months to keep waiting for Obama’s own momentum?

What would this compromise solution look like anyway? How different would it be from simply redrawing the “Bali Roadmap”?

Denmark’s Prime Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, also chairman of the climate conference, flew to Singapore on Saturday for an emergency meeting to help answer this question.

As Jonathan Weisman reported for The Wall Street Journal, this Sunday, what he said was:

“Even if we may not hammer out the last dot’s of a legally binding instrument, I do believe a political binding agreement with specific commitment to mitigation and finance provides a strong basis for immediate action in the years to come.”

According to The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Rasmussen laid out in some detail his goals for the Copenhagen summit. He said leaders should produce a five- to eight-page text with “precise language” committing developed countries to reductions of emissions thought to be warming the planet, with provisions on adapting to warmer temperatures, financing adaptation and combating climate change in poor countries, and technological development and diffusion. It would include pledges of immediate financing for early action.

That doesn’t sound much different from the “Bali Roadmap”, and we should be reminded that the Roadmap led us nowhere but to the same deadlock we were before. Remember the Poznan dismal ending.

Mr. Rasmussen was also very much concerned to make it clear that his idea does not serve to save face:

“We are not aiming to let anyone off the hook,” Mr. Rasmussen told the leaders. “We are trying to create a framework that will allow everybody to commit,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

Helene Cooper, writing from Singapore for The New York Times says  Michael Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs has explained that:

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen, which starts in 22 days.”

Nothing that secretary Clinton had not said prior to the APEC meeting. Most of the difficulty now lies on the side of the US, not of other pivotal players that could lead the Copenhagen talks towards a real deal.

The US government keeps talking about a remote future on vague terms. Typical diplomat’s escapist phases were rapidly learned by Secretary of State Clinton to adorn the US pledge for more time. At a news conference earlier this month, she warned that the parties to the climate summit could not

“let the pursuit of perfection get in the way of progress.”

She also said that

“if we all exert maximum effort and embrace the right blend of pragmatism and principle, I believe we can secure a strong outcome at Copenhagen and that would be a stepping stone toward full legal agreement.”

This sounds pretty much like what has been done in Bali. In Poznan, the world agreed to wait until president Obama’s administration fully took hold of affairs so that it could make its pledge at COP15, in Copenhagen.

Most of the nations have already moved a step forward regarding both COP13 and COP14. Only the US remains basically where it was since Obama’s inauguration. Would it not now be the time for the US to get some speed of its own?

President Obama could surely use a “framework agreement” (Secretary Clinton has never used the term “politically binding”) as a powerful resource to persuade the Democratic majority to vote more swiftly the climate change bill, before next year’s midterm elections. But that would come at the cost of another year lost.

It should come as no surprise that president Obama choses the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting to state the US  position about what is feasible to do in Copenhagen.

It is well known that the US and China have been discussing a common strategy for Copenhagen for some time now. Although they are not playmates entirely at ease with one another, the fact that China conditions its own commitment to the US’s perfectly suits the Obama strategy. Obama needs to seem to be leading the US into a meaningful attitude at the climate talks, to differentiate himself from the Bush era climate diplomacy. He doesn’t want, however, to commit to any concrete action before knowing what Congress has approved. A “framework agreement” suits him well, and he expects China to follow suit.

Their interplay has, however, already raised some strong reactions among other pivotal leaders in Copenhagen. Presidents Sarkozy, of France, and Lula da Silva, of Brazil, reacted to the US-China entente by declaring they would push for a complete deal in Copenhagen. President Lula went as far as raising suspicion that the US and China were trying to create “a G2” to impose their common interests to the rest of the world.

It is unlikely that the United States and China could solve all their conflicts of interest to form an alliance to play a two-party hegemonic role in world affairs. It is true, nevertheless, that the two are the key players regarding many critical global issues, climate change being paramount among them. It is far better that they try to work together, than to build a new bipolarity as the one between the US and the USSR, during the Cold War, that plagued most of last century’s international relations. But this maneuver to delay an agreement in Copenhagen clearly deviates from the endeavors of several other players.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Michael Froman interpreted the decision as meaning that “Copenhagen would be the first step to a legally binding agreement.” This two-step doctrine was also behind the Bali Roadmap, to no avail.

We need far more than that to break the deadlock. If a political agreement is the only way, it cannot be drafted on such vague terms as US authorities have been using. It has to point to concrete political solutions to the hurdles that are still holding back a treaty.

The scientific and technical details for such a deal are well known and there is not much room to deviate from them. It is the political groundwork that is still lacking, and most of what is lacking must come from president Obama and the US.

In other words: it would have to be far more of a “politically binding” agreement, than a “framework agreement”. The US would have to commit to far more real action than it has been willing to do so far. And it would still be a second best, or suboptimal, outcome.

The deadlock and the divide among countries are set into political, not technical grounds. This is a fact. Another roadmap for future talks is not a solution to this political deadlock, only its reiteration.

Copenhagen has not been politically saved yet. It is up to the other world leaders to urge the US and president Obama to come up with a more substantive response. After all we are still talking about the world’s largest emitter.

Sergio Abranches

The major contribution to this deviation from a BAU trajectory of GHG emissions will come from reduction of deforestation and degradation, around 25 percentage points. The remaining will come mainly from agriculture, and a ban on the use of charcoal from native forest logging by pig iron mills. Contributions from the manufacturing and transport sectors will be very modest.

Real emissions reductions will depend on the baseline adopted and on the assumptions used to project the future trajectory of emissions. Part of the conflict between the so-called “developmentalists” led by Chief of Staff Dilma Roussef and the “environmentalists” with Environment minister Carlos Minc at the front was over the rate of future growth used for the estimates.

Original projections from the Secretary for Climate Change of the Environment Ministry used a yearly 4 percent average GDP growth as reference, already higher than the average economic growth of the last decade. The projections were then rerun using 5 percent and 6 percent growth averages, that seem highly unlikely to obtain in the near future. Higher growth figures tend to overestimate both the physical values and the pace of increase of emissions associated to the percentages.

Another important issue the government has yet to clear regards the emissions data used in the projections. The only official figures publicly available for emissions date from 1994. An explanation is still due for how government experts have calculated the future trajectory of emissions, without a series of actual emissions for the last 14 years.

Structural change since currency stabilization, commercial opening, and privatization have totally reconfigured the Brazilian industrial, agricultural and transport sectors. The auto industry has more than doubled output from 1994 to 2008. Commodity exports have increased dramatically. The manufacturing, transport, agribusiness, and energy industries are totally different today compared to their condition in 1994. All this structural change has deeply affected the distribution of GHG emissions among the different areas of activity.

The current coefficients for all sectors ought to be very different from those of 1994. Deforestation, for instance, averaged 20,700 sq. km for the period 1994-1996. The average for the last 3 years came down to 14,800 sq. km. The government has used an average of 19,500 sq. km to set the target of 80% reduction to 2020. This means that to meet the target, actual decline in logging will have to be far less steeply than if the government chose more recent figures as a baseline. This lower figure will, however, also contribute to lower the five-year average for the next period. The target is defined by periods using a five-year moving average.

This week the government has announced the smallest estimate for annual deforestation since measurement began: 7,000 sq. km. If this number is confirmed, and can be sustained after recession is gone, it means that half the target set for 2020 would have already been met, due to the high starting point chosen to define the goal.

Contribution of deforestation to GHG emissions was much higher in 1994, than it is today. The contribution of the transport and energy industries has increased significantly. Over the last 8 years most of the new electricity added to the Brazilian grid came from fossil fuel fired power plants.

How seriously this target will be taken by the government remains to be seen. It could well be no more than an act of electoral marketing. One of the reasons to suspect that much is that the center stage was occupied by president Lula’s appointee to run for president next year, Chief of Staff Dilma Roussef. She was clearly not at easy defending the same environmental issues she has opposed during all her tenure at the government.

To gain credibility the government has to publish, the sooner the better, the model and the data base used to project future emissions, the scenario assumptions, and the coefficients for the contribution of each sector to the reduction of emissions. Transparency and independent review of the data and projections used to set these goals will be a necessary condition for a credible commitment.

Depending on the data used for the projections, the announced policy could represent a reduction between 10% and 20% of 2005 emissions.

The final GHG emissions cut resulting from the policy notwithstanding, the fact remains it is a major political shift. After years denying any responsibility to mitigation and rejecting the idea of committing to a quantified goal, the government has finally decided to present a quantifiable and verifiable mitigation action at COP15.

Once the diplomats officially announce the target, Brazil will become accountable for it. The country will have crossed a point of no return. Whether it is legally binding or not is just a formality. Politically it will make the government accountable.

From this point onwards it will be a matter of refining and enlarging the country’s commitment. The next step will likely be for the new administration to take office in 2011 to substitute this deviation from a projection of future emissions with a target based on real emissions for a base-year, probably 2005.

The state of São Paulo, whose governor, José Serra, from PSDB, the main opposition party, is a likely presidential candidate, has already written into law a reduction of 20 percent of 2005 GHG emissions, by 2020. A far more concrete and incontrovertible goal.

This move from Brazil, together with the likely cooperative attitude from China, and depending on what the US will do could well change for the better the prospects of a meaningful political deal in Copenhagen.

Sergio Abranches

Even the most unyielding European leaders now admit that a new comprehensive and legally binding treaty is unlikely to be attained in Copenhagen.

All are now converging towards the  conclusion that the nations should cut a political deal at COP15. A high level political commitment to set the parameters, rules, and the procedural terms for a new treaty to be detailed over 2010.

Is this such a bad outcome as to conclude that Copenhagen is likely to flop? Isn’t there a way to cope with the signs of failure and flip the cards the right side?

The US will be the pivotal actor among the great powers in Copenhagen to this effect. If Obama does get a climate law, he can still make a substantial difference. Even a political agreement would be more credible, deeper and encompassing with a firm commitment from the US, especially if Obama does make it to Copenhagen.

There is an enormous difference between a political agreement negotiated and signed by heads of governments, and one made by diplomats. Diplomats can negotiate treaties. Political commitments are an affair for chief political officers.

I’ve heard questions in Barcelona about whether this political accord would have numbers on it.  I’ve also watched delegates in Barcelona being asked whether what the US Congress is discussing wouldn’t fall too short of what should be demanded from the US. Many doubt Obama could really to take a leading role in the negotiations with such dismal numbers.

They would amount to something between what the House has already approved -17 percent below 2005; 4 percent below 1990;  and what the Kerry-Boxer bill proposed in the Senate – 20 percent below 2005; 6 percent below 1990. Greens and the G77 will probably say it is not enough.

But are these first figures really as important as getting the US in the playing field? I think not.

Obama will be more at easy to discuss financing figures and technological terms, than emissions figures. After years of denial and vetoes at global summits, it is only natural that the politics of a first bill be that hard to tackle. Let us remember that EU’s numbers are relatively new. The first European figures were nothing very impressive either. The US is late. It really is. Blame it on George W. Bush.

More important than the US numbers in themselves would be the breadth of the legislation. If it is able to alter the structure of incentives in the economy, it may trigger investments that will make the R&D pipelines for clean technologies and renewable energy to move faster. It could also stimulate companies to move ahead and go deeper with their sustainability and low carbon strategies, to gain a competitive edge given this new set of incentives.

There is also the demonstration effect to take into account.

It is hard for politicians, under the crossfire of lobbyists, to discuss cost and benefits at an abstract level, or looking at simulations that vary from one set of assumptions to the other. Green lobbyists would show simulations pointing to smaller costs and higher benefits, while the lobbyists for the high-carbon industries would show simulations pointing to high costs and low benefits.

Once the bill becomes law, and companies start acting within the new framework of inducements and constraints it sets, actual costs and real benefits start to show. The correlation of forces among organized interests starts to shift in the direction pointed by the new gains and benefits generated by the new rules of the game. Politicians start to see more clearly what really is feasible, and how to proceed.

This process tends to be fast, depending on how dynamic the economy is. I’d say that in the US it could take from 2 to 5 years. More to the lower end, because of the competitive structure of the economy, the progress already achieved in several states and large cities, and the unique role venture capital has in accelerating R&D in the US.

With the economy already moving in the right direction, these initial targets can be easily overcome and the bar can be set higher at a much lower political cost.

Another important point is that not all the difficulties are related to the US standing. The G77 said in Barcelona it will not support any agreement unless industrialized countries cut their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That won’t happen. And that is not a necessary and sufficient condition for a global climate treaty to be effective.

Some of the G77 demands are more workable. One of its spokesperson said that “an equitable agreement can be reached in Copenhagen” provided that the industrialized countries make “a firm commitment of reduction of emissions; a firm commitment on finance; and a firm commitment on technology”. Quite right, and fair enough. To set 40 percent over 1990 as a sine qua non is to deny any possibility of agreement. Several countries, the US first among them, will not arrive at that in the short run.

Obama will not commit to what he cannot get approved by Congress. Midterm elections are nearing and if he looses the majority, or it narrows downs, it will become even harder to deal with Congress. He is only too realistic to promise only what he can agree with Congress.

The US needs time for experimentation with the first Federal climate change bill ever, before it moves ahead. This is not a dreamworld, it is the real world we’ve got to cope with.

The conditions spelled out by G77 in Barcelona also included that the agreement “remain within Kyoto.” This is a good example of mixing opportunism and ideology.

Why Kyoto? Because it has the Annex-1 and nothing else. Such a demand generates immediate polarization. Representatives from Japan and the EU immediately answered they do not see why “non-Annex-I” countries should not commit to binding emissions cut themselves. Kyoto is not a relevant issue any longer.

The statements and demands of the G77 mix some fair points (criticisms of the uncertainty about industrialized countries’ commitments) to opportunism and ideological prose in unequal proportions.

The real fact is that it is too heterogeneous to legitimately speak with only one voice for all its members. First of all they are 130 members. Secondly, countries like China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Qatar and Bahrain – to name a few – should admit they do not belong together with Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Burundi, Congo, and so many other poorer nations. Even more so when discussing high carbon emissions. They are using the poor opportunistically, as shields to elude their own responsibilities.

They belong to an “Annex-II” with binding though differentiated commitments. They would still be eligible to financial and technological assistance, but at different conditions when compared to the poor countries.

The poor developing world is entitled to a greater financial assistance for adaptation, and all help in developing low-carbon development plans.

Emerging powers should be asked to present mid and long-term plans to cut emissions and build a low carbon economy. To do that they would be entitled to special financing mechanisms for mitigation and technological partnerships to develop low-carbon alternatives.

Another major obstacle to a new ambitious treaty lies on the the rules of the Climate Convention. They turn every player – rich or poor, relevant emitter or not, oil producing or oil consuming, large or small – into a veto player: one who is decisive to whether or not a decision will be made. All have the same power, because decisions are by unanimity.

This is only apparently a fair rule. In fact it treats very unequal actors very equally, feeding opportunism, and leading to a deadlocked situation that inevitably gives room only to muddling through, incremental policies as outcomes. It leads to a typical opportunistic situation in which a player maneuvers to shift the burden of deadlock to other players and to appear as the most righteous among the players.

Copenhagen is not flopping. It couldn’t deliver what it has been expected to deliver. But Copenhagen could successfully cope with the major obstacles preventing us to make real progress. Coping the right way with divergence and asynchronous national situations among the industrialized and the emerging powers we could still make progress towards the scientific requirements to prevent the worst case scenarios. Coping might be the only way to scape the BAU syndrome: the business as usual straightjacket were in.

First, it is in our powers to converge toward short and mid term objectives, and on accelerating rates dynamically adjusting the outcomes to the scientific requirements.

Second, we can try to solve once for all the financial hurdle that keeps several developing countries from playing the cooperative game. We have the expertise, and the resources to do it.

Third, we could do the same thing with the difficulties to get a firm technological commitment. The US technological partnerships with China and India are a good starting point that could lead us into a general model for technological cooperation in critical areas for mitigation of carbon emissions.

Fourth, countries need to be better, and positively, discriminated. The industrialized countries are correctly under one set of commitments proportional to their historical contribution, and their present level of nominal and per capita emissions.

Large emerging powers should agree to a different set of commitments proportional to their present nominal and per capita emissions and the trajectory of their emissions under BAU for the next decade.

Poor countries should be asked no emission cuts, but assisted in designing low-carbon development programs, to lead them to the new pattern without sacrifice, and at the same time enabling them to eradicate misery along the way.

This could be written into firm a political agreement, with the necessary elements for a new treaty to be negotiated and detailed over 2010. Meanwhile the large emitters – industrialized and emerging – could cut a deal of their own, sometime between next year and 2012, to establish national policies in line with their commitments written into the political agreement.

This is in our power to do, and Copenhagen could yet deliver such an outcome. So let’s hope we can have a COPEnhagen, not a FLOPenhagen.

Sergio Abranches

The decision was postponed to November 14. Meanwhile government officials will try to agree on a set of actions and figures that go beyond the commitment 80% reduction  of deforestation by 2020.

The new commitment would include the agricultural sector (land use change), by means of a program of quality and productivity gains to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. The program could include new production practices, increasing non-tillage farming, and direct seeding; changing use of fertilizers; fighting agricultural wildfire, especially on sugar cane plantations; and recovery of spoiled land to move the agricultural frontier without forcing deforestation.

Another action considered almost fully approved is to ban wood from deforestation in the production of charcoal for steel mills. Government officials are labeling it “green steel”. President Lula has recently criticized private giant iron ore mining company Vale, for not producing steel for export. He and his Chief of Staff (also his presidential candidate to be) Dilma Roussef are staunch supporters of steel production.

Some sources have told me there wasn’t too much conflict over goals or over the idea of an enlarged commitment to be taken to Copenhagen. Most of the divergence centered on figures and procedures. The meeting was adjourned so that the different ministries could get together and agree on both.

The major source of opposition to an extended commitment continues to come from the Foreign Ministry. They argue that the Kyoto Protocol does not impose such obligations on Brazil. President Lula’s political advisors, however, are reported to have said that there is great expectation in the Brazilian society about a new attitude in Copenhagen. The president was apparently sensitive to the argument, because he is very fond of his domestic popularity, and also because he is already looking at the 2010 presidential elections.

Brazil would present a new and more ambitious set of NAMAs – Nationally Appropriated Actions, that, although not considered technically as legally binding commitments, are “quantifiable, reportable and verifiable commitments.”

Although there are those who say the government has already decided to commit only with the 80% reduction of deforestation in the Amazon, I heard from more than one official source that the president wishes to go beyond that.

The expectation is that actions and corresponding quantitative figures, consensually supported by all ministers involved, should be finally evaluated with the president next November 14.

President Lula’s last words were “let’s move ahead, but bring me a consensual policy with figures all of you agree with.”

The Royal Geographic Society has hosted , last September, a panel discussion on “The World in 2050”, with scientific experts from the 21st Century School.

The event was a joint endeavor of the James Martin 21^st Century School and Intelligence². Panelists were Ian Goldin, director of the the 21st Century School at the University of Oxford; Malcolm MacCulloch, director of the School’s Institute for Carbon and Energy Reduction in Transport; Sara Harper, director of the Oxford Institute of Ageing; and Julian Savulescu, director of the School’s Programme on Ethics of the New Biosciences.

In many places, academic institutions, corporations, NGOs, think tanks, numerous people study, research, and discuss future trends. In daily social life, however, in the media in general, and in the governments of almost all countries, the long-term, envisioning the future, is a lateral, peripheral section of the agenda. Is is not a priority. We’re tied to the short-term, to the joys and tribulations of our daily life; to the immediate  policy agenda. However, disregarding the future, failing to look ahead and to focus the uncertainties and possibilities beyond the horizon of our daily obligations is riskier than one can imagine. To be the able to take our destiny in our hands, we’ve got to have a vision for the future, a long view.

Stewart Brand, one of the founders of the Long Now Foundation, reminds us in his book “The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility”, that

“time is asymmetrical to us. We can see the past but not influence it. We can influence the future, but we cannot see it. Both the invisibility and potential malleability of the future draw us to lean into it, alert to threat or opportunity, empowered by the blankness of its page (if the future is not determined, we might do anything).”

He also teaches us that “rigorous long-view thinking makes responsibility taking inevitable because it responds to the slower, deeper feedback loops of the whole society and the natural world.” Ultimately, it is clear that “in the long run, saving yourself means saving the whole world.”

Perhaps the best introduction to this panel is the concluding remark by Ian Goldin, on his presentation:

“It is in our power to eradicate poverty by 2050; it is in our power to eradicate disease by 2050; but it is also in our power to destroy ourselves by 2050.”

I hope this is justification enough to persuade those who visit this page to watch the video.

Sergio Abranches

At the opening press conference in Barcelona, UN top climate change official Yvo de Boer said China is now the world leader on actions to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. The representative of the European Union has also commended China for its endeavors at reducing carbon emissions. Jonathan Pershing considered China’s attitude towards curbing emissions a “terrific” example.

A recent report by the World Resources Institute says China is getting ready to meet the climate change challenge, and will likely meet its targets to reduce GHG emissions. According to WRI, China’s national program has clear targets and goes beyond mitigation.

Reducing the energy intensity of GDP by 20 percent over the five years 2006 through the end of 2010.

Increasing alternative energy in the fuel mix to 15 percent by 2020.

Increasing forest cover to 20 percent of China’s land mass by the end of 2010.

The national program is more than a mitigation program. It also contains support for climate science and for preparedness and adaptation. China’s scientists have been active in the global effort to understand climate change and are increasingly involved in developing technical approaches to both mitigation and adaptation.

Professor Wei Liang, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies has told me that when president Hu Jintao spoke about the new Chinese National Program in New York, although he did not announce any operational detail, he was talking about real change. China will set the details on the negotiation table, and ask for a commensurate response from industrialized countries, especially the US.

The Brazilian proposal to reduce 80% of deforestation in the Amazon by 2020 has also been praised worldwide by commentators and government officials. But the Brazilian proposal lacks substance on operational grounds, and still has very fragile political foundations. Differently from the Chinese program, it is the result of neither considered government planning, nor a government policy consensus. The government is deeply divided.

Carlos Minc, minister for the Environment, has drawn a more careful proposal to deviate Brazil’s carbon emissions between 30% and 40% from the business as usual trajectory by 2020 – but it yet lacks effective operationalization. This proposal, adequately operationalized and implemented, could amount to a reduction of about 20% of total carbon emissions by 2020. That would require stopping deforestation not only in the Amazon, but also in the rich savannah (Cerrado), the Wetlands (Pantanal), and the Atlantic Rainforest; abandoning all fossil fuel fired thermal power plants the government has approved for the coming years; adopting new regulation for automotive emissions, fuel efficiency, and quality of fuel; among other measures.

President Lula is holding a cabinet meeting, with the ministers that will be in Copenhagen, to decide whether to adopt Minc’s proposal. On a prior meeting, Chief of Staff – and presidential candidate appointee – Dilma Roussef has been very critical, saying the plan would jeopardize Brazil’s growth prospects. Minister of Science and Technology, Sérgio Resende, was also unyielding. Celso Amorim, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, opposed the plan, because it would be offering far more than what is expected from Brazil in Copenhagen.

Carlos Minc has called on the Climate Network, a coalition of several Brazilian reputed scientific institutions, to help him draw different growth scenarios for his proposal and to better detail the actions required to meet the target. (See an interview of the president of the Brazilian Agency for Space Research explaining the network – in Portuguese). This new version will be discussed today with president Lula, in the cabinet meeting. There the Brazilian president will choose whether or not Brazil will join China as a pivotal player in Copenhagen, returning to the leading role it had at the Rio ’92 meeting.

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.

Sergio Abranches

Great novelist Isaac Asimov – did I say he writes sci-fi?- created this dialogue in his outstanding novel, Foundation:

A. The psychohistorical trend of a planet full of people contains a huge inertia. To be changed it must be met with something possessing a similar inertia. Either as many people must be concerned, or if the number of people be relatively small, enormous time for change must be allowed. Do you understand?

Q. I think I do. Trantor need not be ruined, if a great many people decide to act so that it will not.

A. That is right.

I propose we do three things. Let’s first substitute Earth for Trantor. Let’s add climate change as the most important long term threat to Earth. And let’s call the reasoning expressed on the dialogue, the Asimov Paradox. Now the Asimov Paradox would read like this:

To change a planet full of people either as many people must be concerned, or if the number of people be relatively small, enormous time for change must be allowed. Earth need not be ruined by climate change, if a great many people decide to act so that it will not. Or else, an enormous amount of time must be allowed for Earth to be saved.

Earth will have as much time as needed, given the inertia of global warming – and the resulting climate change – and the planet’s resilience, to find another state of ecosystemic equilibrium. We humans, or earthlings, aren’t allowed that time. So, the Asimov Paradox for us humans, or earthlings, has only one solution: to convince as many people as required to generate the momentum necessary to change our high-carbon behavior into a low-carbon one.

We’ve got to multiply initiatives like Blog Action Day 2009, 350.org’s International Day of Climate Action, and tcktcktck’s mobilization, among many others. But clearly we cannot have a “Day” grand event every day. More creativity is needed to mobilize larger numbers of people every day. We need continued innovation.

And we need to reach out to non-environmentalists, non-initiated, “non-believers”. We’ve got to persuade those people that are not aware of how close a danger climate change can be, those who do not care, those who do not believe it is happening, those hoping someone will come up with a costless solution and save the world. These examples represent heroic efforts of an embryonic global civil society. And this endeavor has to gain muscle, breadth and width as fast as ever.

The numbers are indeed impressive:

- On October 15, Blog Action Day, 13,599 Blogs of 156 countries posted about climate change to 18,085,076 readers;

- On October 24, 181 countries came together for International Day of Climate Action. At over 5200 events around the world, people gathered to call for strong action and bold leadership on the climate crisis.

- tcktcktck was counting 2,614,923 “global citizens for Climate Action” at the moment I was writing this post.

But, as Asimov’s psychohistorian would say, perhaps they’re still “too few”. Or so it seems. It doesn’t seem pressure has been enough to push governments, politicians, and businesses to change policies. The discussions on the US Senate today show that a fair number of senators remain unimpressed by all this mobilization. The way the Brazilian government is designing its emissions reductions targets show they are not taking seriously the warning of the mobilized part of their civil society, even less the demands of the emerging global civil society. The same is true of the governments of China, still talking about reducing the carbon intensity of the country’s GDP, or India, not even considering a reduction. Simple arithmetics can demonstrate that China could reduce GDP carbon intensity without reducing the nominal level of carbon emissions.

This is not, in any way whatsoever, to diminish the importance and worth of all these awesome achievements on the part of several devoted organizations trying to convince as many people as possible of the need for change. It is just to say we must keep walking and talking, and that we need more innovative ways to reach out to “Main Street”, to the very many.

I really don’t know how to move forward. I have only one conviction, it is not telling people about doomsday. Scare tactics, a good social psychologist – or a psychohistorian, where are them, when we need them most? – would tell us, tend to alienate, rather than to attract attention, or to mobilize for action. People try to avoid listening about nightmarish futures. They need a dream. They need dream that connects to their daily lives in a constructive, positive way.

They need to see examples of people like them who have changed their behavior towards the environment and are better than before. There are people out there telling them that all this talking about climate change is a lie from radical agents. Others are arguing that tackling this threat today would mean an unbearable sacrifice, and the load would be lighter on future generations.

The fact is that we disagree about climate change. Consensus among opinion makers of all sorts is not strong or wide enough. People have reasons not to see how urgent change has become.

Now, the solution to the Asimov Paradox involves another paradox we’ve got to tackle first: how to tell people the threat is only too real, we don’t have much time left to act, without scaring them into alienation and paralysis? How to turn a nightmare into a good dream, the end of the world into the beginning of a new era of prosperity, doomsday into renaissance? I wish I knew.

When Mahalia Jackson cried “Tell them about the dream”, Martin Luther King walked out of the valley of tears, and told them about a dream, writing with words full of faith and vision the history of their future. We need strong voices like Mahalia Jackson’s to remember us the need for a dream, and we need several inspired speakers on every media like Martin Luther King, to tell the people about this dream.