June 19, 2009

Global warming's disastrous affects loom, says the United Nations. But fixing it remains elusive and expensive, it acknowledges. To do so, the industrialized world must lead by example and help fund efforts taken by poorer countries.

It appears, however, that aggressive and mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions tied to global warming are unrealistic in the short term. Instead, the international community is likely to gravitate toward a gradual and flexible approach -- one that permits the lesser developed regions to grow their economies while they also take steps to reduce emissions. But as new pollution-cutting technologies are commercialized, the policies will become more ambitious.

"We need to be a partner to developed countries and to developing countries," says Todd Stern, special climate envoy to the UN, as referenced in news reports. With respect to the negotiations now occurring ahead of global negotiations in December, he adds that the United States will be "powerfully and fervently engaged" and notes that "we all have to do this together. We don't have a magic wand."

The UN, in fact, is trying to garner a general consensus on how the world's richest economies will work side-by-side with the less developed nations to achieve aggressive cuts in their greenhouse gases. Altogether, 192 countries are taking part in the climate change meetings, which will crystallize next December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

It is expected that the participants will agree to 80 percent cuts in those emissions that include carbon dioxide by 2050. Short term, however, is problematic. Even the United States will only commit to a 16 percent cut by 2020 compared with Europe, which has said it will reduce its heat-trapping emissions by at least 25 percent during that time.

China and India are among those developing nations that are reluctant to make any firm obligations. They are awaiting answers from the industrialized nations -- the ones that they say have prospered and which are responsible for global warming. China now leads the world in carbon dioxide emissions, although it is winning plaudits for incorporating alternative fuel sources into its generation mix.

Discussions are now transpiring, however, that would try to institute 25 percent cuts in such emissions for developing countries by 2050, from 2000 levels. Even then, they would only agree to those reductions if their richer brethren financed them. The UN released a report that such an undertaking would cost the developing nations $142 billion a year until 2020 -- subsidies that the organization says would be less than what those prosperous nations currently give their fossil fuel and agricultural sectors.

"Politics will only embroil us in problems and not solve it, we must hence keep away from it when dealing with environmental issues," India's Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said publicly.

Adoption Strategies

If the poorer countries implement such strategies, it would actually curb declining environmental conditions and lead to increased wealth, according to a report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Global warming, it adds, will not only create flood conditions and thereby diminish food supplies but it will also produce political instability. It all adds up to a greater spread between the haves and have-nots.

If the worst fears are realized and global warming was to lead to temperature increases of 5-7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, the economic disparity between the rich and poor countries would double in a decade, says the academic institution. By mid-century, it says that the inequality would have escalated 12 times.

The Kyoto Protocol, which requires 37 industrial nations to cut their greenhouse gases by 5 percent by 2012, started things off. The next phase will commence after the December 2009 meeting in Copenhagen. Earlier, the international community had agreed to nonbinding greenhouse gas reductions.

Besides hoping to reach a more precise definition of the level of emission cuts, those subsequent talks will specifically address how poorer nations can cope with tougher rules. For example, developed countries could earn carbon credits for paying Latin American and Asian nations not to cut down their tropical forests, which serve as a nutrient for their local ecologies. Meantime, developing nations would have easier access to Western technologies to increase power plant efficiencies.

In practical terms, negotiators will have to determine what level of greenhouse gas emissions cuts is acceptable and whether those targets will be fixed or flexible. They will also have to figure out how technologies can be shared and transferred across international boundaries. And, they need to say how those results would be paid.

One school of thought suggests that each nation could determine for itself just what its commitment to the cause would be. Nations are each at varying stages of their economic progression and it would be unrealistic to think one size fits all.

"I think we need something that establishes fair and effective commitments for all the major emitting countries," says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "From my perspective, that requires a flexible framework allowing different types of commitments."

The developing world understandably does not want to be short-changed. Those countries say that they want to do their part in limiting greenhouse gas emissions without sacrificing their economic growth. To accommodate their concerns, such nations will likely win concessions to allow them to move at a slower pace. The richer ones, meanwhile, will be asked to set the standard and to ease the transition to the new era in energy production by helping to finance global adoption strategies.

 

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Ken Silverstein EnergyBiz Insider Editor-in-Chief
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