Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
13 The search for a global climate treaty
Rupert Darwall
'Yousealedadeal,'UNSecretary GeneralBanKi-moontoldexhausteddelegates attheend
treatyorevenadrafttextresemblingone.Insteadtherewasatoothlessaccordwhichmerely
listed countries' voluntary pledges. 'We will try to have a legally binding treaty as soon as
whentheKyotoProtocol'sfirstcommitmentperiodranout.ThedestinationoftheBaliRoad
Map, adopted in 2007, had been to arrive at agreement on a son of Kyoto before it expired.
Now Bali looked like a road going nowhere.
Copenhagen was 'an incredible disaster', newly installed president of the European
Council Herman van Rompuy told an American diplomat four days later, predicting that
the 2010 climate conference in Cancún would be too. The Europeans had been 'totally
excluded' and 'mistreated'. It was lucky he had decided to stay away. 'Had I been there
my presidency would have been over before it began', van Rompuy confided. His top aide
likened the prospect of the Cancún talks to a repeat of a bad film: 'Who wants to see that
horror movie again?'
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As a means of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the architecture of the climate change
treaties had a fundamental defect. Ever since adoption of the Berlin Mandate, brokered
by Angela Merkel in 1995, there had been a rigid bifurcation between industrialised and
developing nations. Yet as everyone knew, it would be impossible to cut global emissions
if China, India and other large emerging economies were excluded. At Bali, the Bush
administration had insisted on a process that included the large developing economies. One
way or another, the climate change Berlin Wall had to be torn down—not least to avoid
repeatingthefateoftheKyotoProtocol,asitremainedhighlyimprobablethattheUSSenate
would ratify any treaty that did not include China.
The Obama administration accepted the Bush strategy and carried it forward.
Copenhagen was the moment of truth which would test the proposition that China and India
were willing to be legally bound to restrict their greenhouse gas emissions and, therefore,
that a global treaty was possible. There was no ambiguity about the required outcome:
China and India had to be in. While the US and Europe had a shared objective to find
some way around the climate change Berlin Wall, the conclusions they drew were diametric
opposites.Thisfundamentaldisagreementwastohaveprofoundlyadverseconsequencesfor
the chances of achieving any meaningful outcome from the post-Copenhagen negotiations.
