The search for a global climate treaty - Climate Change: The Facts - page 142

Hedegaard hit back. It was clear that rich countries should do more than poorer countries,
the EU commissioner said, 'but all of us will have to do the maximum we can.' 29
China tried to insert language that backtracked from the Durban agreement on all
countries taking binding action. 'We're doing ridiculous things', Chinese delegate Su Wei
said, before withdrawing—for the time being. 30 Still, Hedegaard remained optimistic:
We are crossing the bridge from the old climate system to the new system. Now we are on our way to the 2015 global
deal. 31
Instead the COP became embroiled in arguments about money. Developing nations were
concerned about the lack of detail on ramping up of climate cash to the 2020 level. 'It's
troubling that some developing countries, for example the US, are very sceptical toward
doing anything beyond saying “we have made a promise of $100bn by 2020”', said Baard
Sohjell, environment minister of oil-rich Norway. 32 The reason was not hard to find. As an
EU climate change negotiator explained, 'these are tough financial times in Europe.' 33
However the parties did agree that the next COP in Warsaw would create 'institutional
arrangements' to compensate countries for loss and damages caused by climate change.
'This is a historic decision because it ends a twenty-year discussion on if and how loss
and damage from climate change will be addressed', Farhana Yamin, an environmental
lawyerandformeradvisertoHedegaard,said.AccordingtoGreenpeace,it'finallyputsthe
climate change bill on to the table at the UN talks.' 34
If Durban was the zenith of the post-Copenhagen negotiations, the November 2013
Warsaw COP was its nadir. The government of Shinzo Abe tore up Japan's Copenhagen
Accord commitment to cut its emissions by 25 per cent compared to 1990 levels, replacing
itwithanewtargetthatimplieda3.8percentincrease.'Idon'thaveanywordstodescribe
my dismay', China's Su Wei told reporters. 'This is not only a backward movement from
the Kyoto Protocol, but also a startling backward move from the Convention'—a crude
exaggerationillustratingChina'sintenttoexploitJapan'smove. 35 Italsoshowedthat,other
than the EU with its regime ofself-binding targets, the moral and political commitments of
the Copenhagen accord—the approach championed by the US—weren't worth the paper
they were written on.
Adding fuel to the flames, as it were, Poland—the world's ninth largest coal mining
nation—hosted a summit of coal producers not far from the COP. Christiana Figueres gave
the miners a pep talk. 'I am here to say that coal must change rapidly and dramatically
for everyone's sake', Figueres told them, though she said this didn't require the immediate
disappearance of coal. 36