Can Deepwater Horizon change US climate policy?

By Hilary Chiew - Free Malaysia Today,

COMMENT There’s a silver lining in the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Two months after the explosion of the BP’s rig off Louisiana coast that unleashed million of tonnes of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, blanketing hundreds square kilometres of the sea, soiling the shoreline of four states and smothering countless wildlife, the United States is reeling from possibly its worst environmental disaster in history.
So, what’s there to cheer about?
Well, it all lies in the latest thought of President Barack Obama. Following his latest tour of ground zero, the president announced in his first Oval Office address of his 18-month presidency that nothing short of a national mission to wean the US off fossil fuel is the answer.
“… The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now.
"Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash American innovation and seize control of our own destiny."
If realised, that vision will not only change the destiny of the Americans but also the rest of the world.
Not too long ago, this is the man who gave hope to the world that the big carbon emitter (occupying the No 1 seat until China took over in 2008) is finally coming on board to combat climate change. Unlike his predecessor who rubbished warnings from the climate science community, Obama is a believer that catastrophic climate change is humanity’s biggest contemporary challenge.
He also promised that the US will respect multilateralism in its international relations.
And the world believed him… until Copenhagen last December.
Heat-trapping carbon
Yes, the US will join a legally-binding deal to rein in its emission but on its own term. It wants other major economies, especially China, to take on similar responsibilities.
That may sound reasonable if one doesn’t care how the atmospheric space is nearly saturated with the heat-trapping carbon which, by the way, didn’t happen overnight.
Concentration of carbon has steadily built up since the Industrial Revolution that gave birth to the industrialised nations like the US and its western allies.
And this historical aspect is recognised in the UN convention that governs the global response to climate change. Article 3.1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) says: “Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities.
Accordingly, the developed countries should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.
The partial sentence in bold is the all-important provision that has come to mark the fight between poor and rich nations in the UN climate talks.
At its first Conference of Parties (CoP) in 1995, the Berlin Mandate was adopted and launched a new round of talks on strengthening developed countries’ commitments. An ad hoc working group on the Berlin Mandate was set up to draft an agreement which saw the creation of the Kyoto Protocol at CoP 3 in 1997.
Under this protocol, industrialised countries (collectively known as Annex I parties of the Convention) will reduce their combined greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 5% compared to 1990 levels within the first commitment period of 2008-2012.
The protocol entered into force in 2005 after the Russian Federation signed up and made up the 55% of the total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990 used as the baseline. The US under the Bush administration stayed out of this global treaty, citing fear of losing its economic competitiveness.
Under this treaty, parties must meet their targets primarily through national measures but it also allowed for flexible mechanisms like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which enable them to outsource their reduction targets to a non-Annex I countries in a cost-effective way.
Infamous accord
So, what actually happened at CoP 15 in Copenhagen?
An ambitious-less and aimless European Union, afflicted with Obama-mania, surrendered its long leadership on climate to the newly-minted Nobel laureate. The latter went on to broker the now infamous Copenhagen Accord in a small group consisting of less than 30 countries out of the 193 signatories of the UNFCCC. For that, he was strangely credited with saving the climate talks.

“
If those who are responsible for the perilous state of the climatic system are allowed to have their way, the world will miss any fighting chance of averting catastrophic climate change.

However, as the UNFCCC is supposed to be a parties-led process, the back-room deal was rejected outright by others that were excluded and were only given an hour to debate the three-page document in the open plenary.
The accord was merely “taken note” of (in UN jargon it means a document with no formal status) at the closing session of the tumultuous conference that promised so much but was marred by chaos from the start and ended in disarray.
Almost every delegation, especially those from the developing world, went home confused, frustrated and disappointed. International climate change negotiation descended into a state of gloom, much like the wintry environment outside the meeting venue.
But the fact that the accord has no legitimacy didn’t stop the US and its allies from soliciting for support, aided by the UNFCCC secretariat. To date, over 120 countries, including China and India, had associated with the accord. Malaysia, to its credit, has so far been steadfast in rejecting the accord.
The Obama regime’s climate team continues to promote the accord and has no qualms to link climate-related funding to support for the accord. Countries like Ecuador and Bolivia, which are among the strongest critics of what they regard as an illegitimate document, have been unceremoniously told that until and unless they associate themselves with the accord, they will not get a cent from the US$30 billion fast-start package slated for 2010-2012.
Besides the fast-start fund, the accord also promised US$100 billion to developing countries in their efforts to adapt, mitigate and switch to a low-carbon economy pathway from 2020.
While US and its allies are boasting that the accord has the support of countries accounting for 80% of global emission, giving the impression that the accord is the best solution in halting climate change, the details beg to differ.
Convenient excuse
An analysis of the pledges by scientists writing in the April 22 issue of the authoritative scientific journal Nature which warned that not only that the accord will not meet its declared aim of keeping temperature rise below 2° Celcius relative to pre-industrial temperature, it will ensure a more than 50% chance of exceeding 3° Celcius by 2100. That’s because developed countries will actually increase their emission by 6% and a corresponding 20% increase on a global scale by 2020.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the accord does not impose an aggregate or collective emission reduction target of developed nations and there is no legally-binding commitment from each of this rich country.
Recovering from the shock of Copenhagen, developing countries reinstated the authority of the CoP as the only legitimate forum for any global agreement that is to emerge when parties returned to the negotiating table in April.
However, Annex I countries remain adamant in disregarding the convention. The US has made it clear that it will not sign up to Kyoto Protocol and this has become a convenient excuse for other developed countries to abandon the Kyoto Protocol “ship” for the rust-bucket Copenhagen Accord “vessel”.
In doing so, these countries risk making a mockery of the Bali Action Plan that has already addressed the unique situation of the US and provided an avenue for the superpower to join the rest of the world in the war against climate change.
The Bali Action Plan, by the way, is a legitimate document adopted by all parties of the UNFCCC at CoP13 in 2007, which lay out a two-year process for countries to put together a post-2012 plan in the run-up to the annual summit in Copenhagen.
Hence, since Bali, parties had been engaging in what is known as a two-track negotiation process aimed at securing a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (discussed in the Ad hoc Working Group on Further Commitments of Annex I Parties or simply known as AWG-Kyoto Protocol) with more ambitious targets by developed nations according to what climate science demands as well as a long-term action plan involving developing countries (deliberated in the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action or AWG-LCA).
Under the AWG-LCA, the US will be allowed to play catch-up on emission reduction with an emission cut that is less ambitious than the EU at least for the second commitment period while it sorts out its domestic legislation on climate change.
Worsening rift
Developing countries, like Malaysia, are required to develop nationally appropriate mitigation actions to reduce its emission while taking into account their paramount rights to development. Of course, they are supposed to move to a low carbon development model but this paradigm shift must be supported financially and technically by rich nations as part of the latter climate debt to developing countries.
However, judging from the latest round of negotiation concluded in Bonn recently, where developed countries continue with their delaying tactics in the AWG-KP negotiation track and imposing more stringent monitoring scheme on poor countries emission reduction plan in the AWG-LCA track, the rift between rich and poor nations will likely worsen beyond reconciliation.
If those who are responsible for the perilous state of the climatic system are allowed to have their way, the world will miss any fighting chance of averting catastrophic climate change.
Hence, the US president's declaration might just turn him into the true saviour of the precarious UN climate talks.
Obama -- show us that you can. And will.