Kyoto II abandoned as corporates call the shots

Any attempt to reduce the risk of runaway climate change with a new international treaty to limit carbon emissions is off the table for the foreseeable future as corporate profits take precedence.

The next round of UN climate talks in Durban next week will be a waste of time, since the richest countries have already made clear in private they are not ready to even make a start on negotiating a binding agreement to replace the Kyoto protocol before 2016.

As former Bolivian UN climate change representative Pablo Solon says: “The Kyoto Protocol has many weaknesses, but to turn it into an empty shell or make it disappear in Durban would be suicide. The only responsible alternative is to preserve the Kyoto Protocol with an emissions reductions goal that allows us to avoid incinerating the planet.”

The Alliance of Small Island States, which represents countries that would disappear in a “business-as-usual” scenario say the delay is "reckless and irresponsible". Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), warned that without an international agreement working by 2017 the chance to hold a rise in global temperatures below 2ºC “will be closed forever".

The failure to make a serious start on cutting emissions means global output of CO2 has already jumped again, rising by the biggest amount on record in 2010. The world pumped out about 564 million more tons of carbon than it did in 2009.

That's an increase of 6% a "monster" rise that is unheard of, says Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate the figures for the US Department of Energy.

As a result, the scenario for climate change is beyond than the worst case scenario outlined by scientists working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change only four years ago.

At the last round of talks in Cancun, developed capitalist countries promised to pledge emissions cuts (to be achieved between 2012-2020) that would limit warming to 2ºC. This rise in itself would mean millions of deaths from drought and flood, and putt some 20-30% of animal and plant species at risk of extinction. Many coastal zones and island states would sink below the waves and glaciers disappear entirely.

But the actual pledges made since Cancun would lead to an average increase in global temperature of around 4°C or more – a catastrophic level which it seems likely the ecosystem could not survive.

The complex impact of global warming on weather was highlighted this week in a new IPCC report. It warns that in a high emissions scenario “it is likely that the frequency of hot days will increase by a factor of 10 in most regions of the world” and that “heavy precipitation will occur more often, and the wind speed of tropical cyclones will increase while their number will likely remain constant or decrease”.

No measures are being taken to prepare for these problems – quite the opposite. More fossil fuels – the major contributor to global emissions – are being burned than ever before. No attempts have been made to support serious development of renewables. Air travel has contributed to the leap in emissions measured by the US Energy Department, and as far as manufacturing is concerned “from an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over,’ says Tom Boden, who chairs the US Energy Department’s carbon dioxide information analysis centre.

And that’s the heart of the matter: Capitalism and its political proxies at state level will pay any price to achieve growth. The only diplomacy that will achieve the kinds of cuts in emissions needed to halt climate change is the open discussion and debate taking place between global assemblies of free peoples. Liberated from the drive for profit, they will shift to a system of planned production for need, and start to try to repair the damage.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

'False victories won't save the planet'

The Cancun Agreement, hailed by climate secretary Chris Huhne as a “significant turning point”, is in reality a further step down the road to runaway global warming and resulting ecological disaster. Not one of the key points of the agreement signed earlier this month gives any hope for the kinds of radical actions that are urgently needed.

It is even a step back from the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, which committed UN member states to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that would keep warming below 2 degrees. Despite the fact that Cancun includes commitments by China and the US, which were not parties to the Kyoto Protocol, total pledges on emissions reductions would put the world on track for between 2 and 4 degrees of warming by 2050.

At this level, a series of feedback mechanisms will come into play, leading to dangerous, runaway climate change. There is no reason to believe that in the midst of the economic and financial crisis, countries will improve on their current pledges.

The agreement on finance for countries who protect forests is riddled with loopholes. For example, palm oil plantations and other arboreal cash crops, even those planted on land illegally cleared of virgin forest, will qualify for funding. And even worse, it extends the failed market in carbon credits into this crucial area of the world’s eco-system.

The offers of finance for developing countries of $30bn now and $100bn dollars “later”, is contemptible. The $30bn figure is about one year’s average profits for the world’s biggest oil corporation Exxon-Mobil. And whilst the climate fund will be run by a panel of developing countries, rather than the World Bank, what money will they have to distribute?

There was no agreement on who will donate the money, or when. Rich countries will continue to recycle their existing aid commitments or simply fail to live up to their promises, as they did with the Millennium Goals.

A new inspection regime will check that countries are meeting their targets – but given that the targets themselves are voluntary and too little, too late, this is not going to have any impact on rising temperatures.

The commitment to a scientific review of progress after five years is laughable, given that the agreement reached in Cancun ignores entirely the climate science which should be the foundation of these global discussions.

The final fate of the Kyoto Protocol will be decided next year at another climate summit to be held in Durban. The Protocol is the only legally binding agreement on emissions reductions, and it runs out in 2012. It requires emissions cuts from only 37 or the richest industrialised nations – not including China and the US – and it is likely now to wither on the vine. Amongst those countries who ratified it, Japan, Russia and Canada have made clear that they will not support its continuation.

Amidst the cheering and clapping with which delegates greeted agreement in Cancun, just one country stood out against – Bolivia, whose ambassador Pablo Solon denounced the talks as being swamped by diplomacy and nothing to do with real action on climate change. He said:

Unfortunately, a convenient realism has become all that powerful nations are willing to offer, while they ignore scientists’ exhortations to act radically now. Bolivia may have acted unusually by upsetting the established way of dealing with things. But we face an unprecedented crisis, and false victories won’t save the planet. False agreements will not guarantee a future for our children. We all must stand up and demand a climate agreement strong enough to match the crisis we confront.

He is quite right, and if the governments of the world are so in thrall to the needs of the corporations that they cannot deliver such an agreement, then the peoples of the world will have to find another way forward to protect themselves, their families and the eco-system of which we are a part.

Penny Cole
Environment editor