G8 Summit Hits Snag in Establishing Global Emissions Reductions
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Developing nations have failed to deliver the collaborative consensus sought by US president Obama and other G8 leaders in anticipation of the Copenhagen Climate Conference scheduled for later this year. While G8 leaders agreed global climate policy should be oriented toward avoiding any increase in global average temperatures of more than 3º Fahrenheit, they did not reach agreement on how to cap or reduce emissions to set levels by 2050.
Pres. Obama had invited China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and other developing economies, to join the G8 discussions on emissions targets. The leaders gathered would represent 80% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and were to debate ways of reaching a 50% overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with the most advanced industrial nations committing to reductions of 80% by 2050.
With the US, China and others still heavily dependent on coal for electricity generation, and many developing nations uncertain about spending on the costs of infrastructure necessary to shift to green energy, planning for such massive cut-backs is still not universally accepted. And while the US, Europe and Japan, have been planning for and shifting governmentn funding to permit a green energy shift, nations like China and India say they should not be asked to cut back emissions at an earlier stage of industrial development.
The US Congress is currently debating the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), or HR 2454, legislation that would restrict carbon emissions from industry and promote the transition to renewable fuels for both power-generation and transport. While ACES pushes the transition to new fuel sources, and discourages continued dependence on carbon-heavy combustible fuels, it does not guarantee the level of emissions reductions being sought this week in L’Aquila.
China’s president Hu Jintao left L’Aquila, Italy, where the G8 summit is being held, in order to return to China to deal with the growing unrest in the western region of Xinjiang, where over 150 people have been killed in ethnic clashes and a tightening security clampdown. The next G20 summit will take place in September, in Pittsburgh, and will require leading developing nations like China, India and Brazil to find more common ground with the world’s richest nations, in order to lay the groundwork for success in Copenhagen, in December.
Pres. Obama plans to unveil a $15 billion food security initiative on Friday that will help deal with mounting stresses —environmental, economic, political and microbial— on the global food supply. Such moves, that would help ease the struggles of people suffering from lack of development or political stability in poor countries, are thought to be part of Obama’s broader vision for a more responsible and collaborative global approach to economic policy.
Winning the trust and the good will of top developing nations, who remain unconvinced both of the need to cut emissions and the political will in rich countries to actually follow such rigorous emissions-reduction schedules, is a vital step toward getting them to agree to concrete targets, as a foundation for a global carbon-emissions protocol, sought for Copenhagen.
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