L’Aquila Major Economies Forum Takes on Climate Change

Related subjects: Carbon Emissions, China, Climate Change, Diplomacy & Politics, Energy Supply, Environment & Ecology, Europe, Global, India, Obama administration, Renewable Resources, Sustainable Development, U.S. Environment Comments (2)

10 July 2009 :: J.E. Robertson

US president Barack Obama convened a G8-parallel Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, comprised of 17 nations representing over 80% of the world’s industrial and consumer greenhouse gas emissions. The goal was to push governments to move their emissions and energy strategies closer to consensus for meeting bold targets for carbon emissions reductions, in anticipation of the September G20 summit in Pittsburgh and the UN climate summit at Copenhagen in December.

Copenhagen has as its specific aim the establishing of a global climate treaty to surpass and replace the Kyoto Protocol. Scientists and major powers agree that the boldest reductions possible should be established. G8 leaders agreed earlier this week there should be concerted action taken to prevent global average temperatures rising more than a total of 2ºC throughout the entire arc of industrial human-induced climate change.

The total warming is near 1ºC already, and some project dire consequences for a further 1ºC rise this century. With carbon emissions expected to rise significantly before peaking sometime in coming decades, even with dramatic global efforts to impose reductions, climate scientists are fearful that the 2ºC target cannot be met.

Earlier this year, a poll of hundreds of leading climate scientists led to the finding that nearly 9 in 10 (86%) believed a 4ºC to 5ºC temperature rise by century’s end was more likely. The commitment of the world’s leading polluters to aim for protocols that bring the 2ºC target within reach may be a vital step in reducing overall climate fallout from carbon emissions, but without specific actions that effect concrete reductions, almost immediately, many believe the 2ºC target may already have slipped from possibility.

For the first time in history, the US, China and India have all agreed to a common climate-policy goal —the 2ºC target—, but specific steps designed to optimize chances of achieving that goal have not been agreed. The G8 summit and Major Economies Forum had aimed to set a target of worldwide 50% carbon emissions reductions by 2050, with the worst carbon polluters reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.

The climate crisis is proving to be one of the most globalizing public policy affairs ever confronted by a united global community, as every nation, from the most significant emitters, like the US and China, to the smallest developing nations, is wary of agreeing to major cuts, entailing costly infrastructure reforms, if any of the major economies fails to follow through on emissions reduction pledges.

As The Christian Science Monitor reports:

The G-8 included the percent cuts in its communiqué. But the G-8 also left unresolved the issue of what year to use as the basis for comparing before-and-after emissions: “…1990 or more recent years.”

And the 2050 date is so far off that developing countries say they won’t take such an agreement seriously unless developed countries also commit to aggressive mid-term targets for 2020 to ensure they would reach the 2050 goal. So far, developed countries haven’t been ready to do that.

Many in the US have heralded Obama’s complicated rise to power as the moment to enable and to commit to such near-term reductions. A deep global recession, trillions of dollars in wealth lost, millions of job losses in the US and tens of millions in China, and major generative economic refocusing of spending priorities, mean the US could seize the opportunity to spur a major energy revolution, capable of allowing for steep emissions reductions within a decade.

Former US VP Al Gore, whose work on climate policy won him a shared Nobel Prize —along with the IPCC— and an Academy Award, joined a nationwide movement to “Repower America”, aiming for 100% renewables-sourced electricity within a decade. There is science to back up the proposition, but industry and the financial markets are skeptical about the viability of spending in the way required to achieve that total energy revolution.

Obama’s Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate is perhaps the single most solid effort by any US president to spur global movement toward consensus on major emissions reductions, and allowed him to show clear leadership on arranging the field for coming negotiations. Observers expect the summer will see intensifying behind-the-scenes negotiations between governments, in anticipation of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, where many hope the world’s wealthiest industrial and developing economies will lay the groundwork for comprehensive global emissions commitments at Copenhagen.

The Major Economies Forum declaration did achieve the important milestone of industrial economies promising to lead by “promptly undertaking robust … reductions in the mid-term consistent with our long-term objectives”, while developing countries pledged to “promptly undertake actions whose projected effects on emissions represent a meaningful deviation from business as usual.”

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