Copenhagen: the dawn of a new political reality
A quite extraordinary insight into how high-stakes global politics were played in Copenhagen has emerged from an off-the-record briefing given to American reporters as they flew back to Washington from the climate change conference.
The briefing was given by a senior Obama administration official on board the Presidential aircraft after several hours of sometimes farcical, 11th-hour negotiations between the US and China, the world's two biggest emitters of greenhouses gases.
Here's the picture that emerges from an account of the briefing that I've seen. (Needless to say, I was not on board Air Force One myself.)
By early Friday evening, the last day of the conference, President Obama had decided he needed another one-on-one meeting with the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. They'd already had a private meeting earlier in the day, but at follow-up sessions, the Chinese had sent only relatively junior officials.
Obama also wanted to set up meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Jacob Zuma of South Africa. But for some reason, his schedulers had great difficulty in nailing down times for these encounters.
So when Barack Obama arrived for his 7pm appointment with Wen Jiabao, imagine his consternation to discover the Chinese premier already locked in discussions with - wait for it - Messrs Singh, Lula and Zuma.
If the US president didn't exactly gatecrash the meeting, he certainly invited himself in. And that was when the Copenhagen Accord finally took shape, endorsed by the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa.
It may well be that when the history of the 21st century comes to be written, that will be seen as the moment when the new world order was born.
What strikes you about those five countries? Try comparing them with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the traditional Big Powers: where's the UK? Or France? Or Russia?
This, I think, may turn out to mark the dawning of the new geo-political reality. (I do not, of course, expect the Brits, the French or the Russians to agree.) After all, India and Brazil, like China, are rapidly emerging economic super-powers; and South Africa is the undisputed economic power-house of Africa.
China, as a power only beginning now to understand how these global games are played, has identified them as the nations it needs to do business with.
The British energy secretary Ed Miliband seems to see things much the same way in an article in today's Guardian: "The old order of developed versus developing has been replaced by more interesting alliances."
So was China to blame, as US and EU officials are claiming, for the weak final text of the Copenhagen Accord?
Certainly, it seems China was not prepared to agree to a defined greenhouse gas emissions target being specified in the text. (The EU was pressing for a global emissions reduction target of 50 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050; and an 80 per cent target for industrialised nations.)
In China's eyes, that would almost certanly have meant signing up to far deeper emissions cuts than it's prepared to countenance - remember, it may now be the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but an average Chinese person is still responsible for only about 6 tonnes of emissions a year, compared to 25 tonnes for an average American.
One final thought: the UN model of consensual policy-making based on nation states doesn't work any more. If Copenhagen taught world leaders anything, it's that they need to work together in groups - geographical, economic, political - to define common positions ahead of global summits. (And no, it doesn't make much sense for China and India to be grouped together as "developing nations" with countries like Mali or Madagascar.)
Oh yes, and the EU needs to reflect on why it wasn't even included in that crucial 7pm get-together on Friday evening. Perhaps it was because Europe is already committed to emissions cuts far greater than anything that was under discussion in Copenhagen.
Or perhaps it's because in the eyes of Washington and Beijing, it simply doesn't matter as much as Brazil, India and South Africa.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~22~RS~)
Comments
Sign in or register to comment.
Spot on! And it explains why we have not seen our beloved leader on screen or in interview proclaiming that he led the talks and saved the world as was his clear intention earlier in the week when he must have said 'I' this and 'I' that more than a dozen times.
Complain about this comment
Excellent post, though I am trying to remember a time when the consensus-based UN really did work. A couple of items should have been mentioned or emphasized more. First, Obama has to contend with a Senate and a U.S. population that in large part seems to believe that the climate change initiative is all a giant conspiracy to take over the world by taking over the energy supply (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg-frkJBxm4). Obama can sign bills, but only if they get 60 votes in the Senate. Second, developing countries argue (with justification, I believe) that the West owes them a technology or other financial debt for exploiting not only their resources but the energy resources of the world as well (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmkgHwhWr9E).
Complain about this comment
Ahead of time Gordon Brown said this was going to be
the most important meeting in the world. Ever.
Then has said there was no plan B.
Later he told us what plan B involved.
Then he left the most important meeting ever and flew home before it had ended.
And he doesn't understand why people don't trust him.
Complain about this comment
And can we have more - er - balance from the BBC, please ?
You write as though you really believe that the UN can control the weather.
Complain about this comment
The US, UK, Chinese and Danish leaders all should share equal blame for the fiasco that Copenhagen turned out to be.
Mr Obama may according to poster 2 be at the mercy of the Senate, but I say so what?, he promised to come up with the goods, he failed.
Complain about this comment
The conference failed also for technical problems because the Danish Prime minister was badly prepared and he didn´t know how to organise the final election of suggestions. Chaotic! As for the UN Security Council powers UK and France, they don´t reflect the economic strength of Europe as Germany is the largest economy of Europe. In some parts that article is off the point, sorry for that.
The pushing power at this conference has been Europe. Your article turns around the US, alongside China the main polluters with therefore the most responsibility.
Much ado about nothing in Copenhagen.
Complain about this comment
I came to rely on the Guardian for minute by minute coverage of the Copenhagen Conference and felt well informed despite the plethora of protests, email controversies, and official confusion about accreditation that took place at the Bella Center. Even the incident that you relate about President Obama's chance meeting with the other heads of state was covered by the Guardian. I do not fully share your opinion about the new lineup of state power regarding the looming global warming catastrophe. While it is true that China and India because of their demographics and rapid economic growth will and must play a big role in efforts to reduce GHG emissions and Brazil because of the critical role of the Amazon rainforest in moderating the earth's atmosphere, the EU has and will continue to play a significant role in global warming mitigation as it has in the past because of its industrial and economic power. The US of course remains at the center of efforts to stop GHG emissions despite its opposition to the Kyoto Protocol and the climate scepticism of the Republican minority in Congress.
Complain about this comment
Mr. Lustig you have not told the truth, you have spun it around to fit your employer's usual propaganda;
"In China's eyes, that would almost certanly have meant signing up to far deeper emissions cuts than it's prepared to countenance"
China has not agreed to ANY CO2 EMISSIONS CUTS AT ALL. That is an undisputed fact. What they have promised is that their emissions as a percent of GDP would revert backwards to 1990 levels. That is not the same thing at all. In fact their emissions will continue to grow at an alarming rate from its already record high level. So much so that at the current rate, the rest of the world would have to shut down two coal fired power plants a week indefinitely just to offset China's increases. That increase is according to BBC reports itself. The deal is that in effect there is no deal. China and India will not compromise their plan to grow their economies at virtually any cost and the US will not unilaterally compromise its own position as a competitor in world trade. And you can take that to the bank. Even President Obama does not have enough pork in his pig sty to buy off enough Senators to vote for that kind of one sided treaty even if he were inclined to it.
Complain about this comment
EU countries including Britain started their negotiations by putting blank cheques on the table.
Is anybody surprised they were ignored after this ?
Complain about this comment
#8. MarcusAureliusII wrote:
"China has not agreed to ANY CO2 EMISSIONS CUTS AT ALL" - but has the USA either?
Does it actually matter from a scientific standpoint? Isn't this question important? My personal scientific analysis is the CO2 is not a problem - but pollution is (from acid rain onwards), de-afforestation is, as is global dimming caused by aircraft vapour trails in the high atmosphere etc. etc..
My view is that we, as a planet, should concentrate on developing systems that ameliorate the worst effect of a variable climate and act as responsibly so we can hand on a working viable planet to our descendants.
CO2 matters to the finance sector as they have constructed yet another synthetic financial instrument (see CDO etc. etc.) which they will use to take money from the poor to make themselves rich and in so doing destabilise the banking sector again - the carbon credit. If this matters, then CO2 matters.
Complain about this comment
"Copenhagen: the dawn of a new political reality"??? or just finding that it is no longer possible to deny the truth of a long standing one? Europe is now irrelevant to influencing the tide of men's affairs. If I were a European, I'd be looking for a lifeboat just about now.
Complain about this comment
Come on, the next summit of climate change is in Bonn/Germany, suggested by the Chancellor Angela Merkel. But hse isn´t herseld leading the summit.The German Federal minister for environmental affairs is trying to achieve a deal. The EU ministers want to get other climate friendly countries like Japan and Austrialia as their allies in order to cut emissions significantly.
See Ya in Bonn/Germany!
Complain about this comment
Re tonight's programme 23-12-09.
That was great to get the German perspective on clearing pavements... a fall for an elderly person here can mean death!
Why don't we copy the German example here? I think we Brits are so primitive in our social attitudes! Please let's hear more reports from Europe to compare notes etc....
Complain about this comment
"a fall for an elderly person here can mean death!"
It strikes me that the same can be said for an elderly nation on an ancient continent.
Complain about this comment
To Marc Aurelius II: You apparently misunderstand the terms "old world" -"new world" as they don´t implicate a general judgement about this countries or their stage of development as you think. Shameful lack of knowledge.
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
My article "President Obama Gets a Free Ride from Nobel Prize Committee" was sent to the Washington Post a couple of weeks after he accepted the
award. It was a prime opportunity for him to refuse this award as Commander in Chief of this country during a time when we are in the midst of two war conflicts in the Middle East. He could have demonstrated that regional rather than elitist strategies would be appropriate to serve the needs for those troops already stationed there while at the same time directing policy toward a one that is morally and politically sound.
His blatant lobbying effort for his old buddies in Chicago during the Copenhagen Olympic Committee's decision demonstrated that he did not in the least understand the notion of what is needed in economic policy directives for emerging market countries. Obviously, Brazil won the bid even with their competitors being England, Japan and the US.
My article called him another "Uncle Tom" due to his overt and arrogant elitist frame of reference in all language he has used with all regions
including Arab countries, Latin America and the Far East. Obama did not deserve the award though he has played his role in pleasing those powers that provided him the public relations ride he needed while flailing to produce a feasible option for the Middle East.
I debated a resolution when I was 15, that the development and allocation of scarce world resources should be controlled by an international organization. I won that state debate competition by always choosing the negative in this debate. We have a borderless
reality and needs to allow the assertion of free will of all regions.
Only this reality will decrease the large and expensive wars that result when world resources are coveted.
America did not end up with 60 billion in oil reserves. It was the correct outcome, however, the 40 billion price tag to build nations who did not really need us there in this manner was a little too high.
Yukie Yamada
Complain about this comment
As I predicted in an earlier topic on this World Tonight blog, the West would at the end blame China for blocking an agreement at the Copenhagen Conference. Sec'y of State for the Environment Ed Miliband has done exactly this in a Guardian article. Other Western leaders have so far refrained from placing blame for failure at Copenhagen but it can be inferred that they agree with Miliband. Martin Khor of the South Institute has now made a rejoinder to the finger pointing at China in which he places most of the blame on the host Denmark and its prime minister Lars Rasmussen for "hijacking" the conference by secretly convening a select group of 26 nations that produced the so-called "Danish text" which was expected to serve as the outline for an agreement. The "Danish text" is a violation of UN rules governing the conference according to Khor that requires a consensual and transparent decision making process among all 193 countries. Apparently Rasmussen took it on himself to organize the smaller and select group because time was running out in the final week of the Copenhagen Conference but the fact that he did this secretly without consulting the larger body of nations is the "straw that broke the camel's back" according to Khor. Naturally when a leak of the "Danish text" was released to the Conference there was near pandemonium at Bella Center. It should be kept in mind by the Western states that they are in better shape to adapt to the conditions of global warming compared to countries such as Bangladesh or the mini-states in the South Pacific. It is both unfair and a travesty of UN protocol to ignore the vital interests of all states in this process of setting limits to GHG emissions. Todd Stern, the chief US delegate to Copenhagen admitted in his formal address that the West has a moral and historical obligation to the international community as the instigators of widespread industrial pollution and the main economic beneficiaries of industrialization to take the most responsibility for the climate crisis caused by GHG emissions over the past 200 years. But there is growing evidence that the West wants to place most of the burden of adjustment on the developing countries. The process of limiting GHG emissions has only begun at Copenhagen and cannot be abandoned given the dire consequences we face as humanity. It was the short sighted decision by Rasmussen that caused Khor to react as he did in the article in the Guardian entitled "Blame Denmark not China for Copenhagen failure."
Complain about this comment
In an interview with climate scientist James Hansen on DemocracyNow, host Amy Goodman asked Hansen a wide ranging set of the most important questions facing humanity as a result of global warming. Hansen was head of NASA's Goddard Institute when he testified before Congress on the dangers of the looming threat of global warming. As we know the threat has become much worse in the 25 years since he made his warning. Hansen is considered the top scientist in the US on climate science and global warming. I will make two points from what he said but you must visit democracynow.org to get a full appreciation of what Hansen is thinking. During the George W Bush administration that most political of all American governments managed to keep Hansen from speaking out about the growing dangers of global warming because they wanted to protect the rapacious profits of the oil, coal, and gas industries. Hansen believes coal fired utilities are among the greatest obstacles we face in trying to stop GHG emissions. He also believes that cap-and-trade which the Obama administration is placing its strategy on, will be ineffective in curbing GHG emissions. He favors a direct carbon tax either at the point of extraction or further downstream. He also condemns the offer of $100 billion that Sec'y of State Hillary Clinton made to the poorest nations over the next ten years for mitigation and adjustment actions. He considers this a bribe to keep them from demanding more stringent emissions goals that would actually solve the problem. Naomi Klein also made this point in a Guardian article. Again, I urge you to visit democracynow.org to listen to or view this remarkable interview.
Complain about this comment
In the lexicon of the American political spectrum, the term "lunatic fringe" cannot be more aptly applied IMO than to Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, New York City radio station WBAI, and its parent organization Pacifica Radio. For example, Amy Goodman as far as I can tell uniquely managed to anger President Clinton during an interview he granted her like nobody else ever has even during the most contentious exchanges with his political enemies involving the President's wife and his private life during his stormy administration. And Ms. Goodman did not hesitate to rebroadcast it for my pleasure on one of those rare occasions I tuned to her program. The management of this sorry little extreme left organization publically aired its dirty laundry a couple of years ago in a very public power struggle between the old line Bolsheviks and the new left third world recent arrivals. To the public at large for which this whole organization is not even a pimple on the political backside of America, had they even known about it, it would have amounted to nothing but a very small tempest in a very small red teapot. Needless to say the entire station is vehemently anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-semitic, and is one contemptable test of the tolerance freedom of speech demands. Its best broadcasts are when it frequently has its beggar bowl out pleading with the unemployed and downtrodden to send their scarce money to the station to keep it alive. As its reward it offers to continue to squeak for them.
To anyone who has studied the issue of climate change seriously from a point of view of actual technical knowledge rather than political rhetoric, it is clear that the reason the summit failed and cap and trade or carbon tax will also fail is that assuming the argument that burning of fossil fuels and consequent evolution of carbon dioxide is in fact trapping heat from being re-radiated into space then the root cause is overpopulation. Unless that issue is addressed, no solution will work. The advocates of reduction of CO2 have never answered and can never answer the question of how effective reduction of CO2 output alone can be accomplished without destroying the world's economy and returning humanity to a pre-industrial level of living. Given the context of our current technology, no amount of alternative energy schemes or conservation will appreciably change the current trend and even the most desperate attempts would only delay its impact by a relatively short time. This is why all of the talk whether in Kyoto, Copenhagen, or Washington DC is futile and absurd. But severe population reduction is the one subject these people will not discuss. It is strictly taboo for them. So climate change goes back in the box and out comes terrorism on airplanes and violence in Iran. Next week it will be something else.
Complain about this comment
It is entirely predictable how an ideologue of the right typically reacts to a global crisis such as the global warming emergency by leading first with a purely ideologically charged condemnation of a news organization like Pacifica Radio (Democracy Now) and its sincere attempts to make up for the abdication of main stream news sources to honest public information. In this particular case we can add the usual Malthusian arguments of blaming overpopulation as the "true" cause of global warming. The fact is that Robert Malthus originally aimed his arguments at what he perceived as the overpopulation time bomb in Western Europe in the early ninteenth century. The answer to Malthus as we now know was the technological-industrial revolution which made Western Europe free of the extreme poverty of the Middle Ages. With the advanced knowledge of science and technology we can overcome the current crisis through the rapid development of GHG emission-less energetics. But the modern Luddites such as Marcus Aurelius and his neanderthal colleagues in the modern US Republican party will hear nothing of this and insist on continuing the nineteenth century fossil fueled energetics which can only end up frying mankind.
Complain about this comment
Whatever my political views, my views about global warming and energy comes from an outstanding technical education in one of the best engineering schools in the world and forty years of direct experience in the generation, distribution, and utilization of electrical power, my profession and life's work. From that point of view I can state categorically that the human race does not possess the technology to sustain 6.5 billion people at an industrial or post industrial level without most of its electrical energy coming from the burning of fossil fuel and if the theories about global warming are true, then consequent impact on the climate. The same can be said about its mobility, its vehicles largely depend on the burning of fossil fuel. In fact given the widespread poverty and pre-industrial level so many people around the world live at, it probably cannot sustain half that number.
What distinguishes the lunatic fringe in this case is its refusal to accept that immutable fact. Except for some unexpected development in alternative technology and its rapid implimentation, the world is faced with reverting to a pre-industrial level or runaway climate change if it will not reduce population to probably no more than one or two billion people.
The issue has clearly been turned into a political football by those who insist among other things that the already industrialized societies must be the ones to revert back to a more primitive levels while pre-industrial and industrializing societies continue to burn carbon based fuels unabated. By their twisted notion of "justice" they also insist that there is somehow a per capita quota which defines in equal measure how much CO2 each person should be allowed to produce as a result of their living process, their work, the entirety of their lives. This ignores the really relevant factors which includes the wealth they produce measured in GDP per unit of CO2 evolved as in a cost benefit analysis that any rational decsion maker would use nor the special circumstances of geography, climate, and the nature of what is produced which all relate to how much energy is required and is reasonable. For example, a nation like the US which is spread out over a vast geographical area, requires considerable travel between regions where major population centers are located, and has a harsh continental climate which requires much energy to keep the human environment habitable during temperature extremes needs far more energy per capita than nations which have moderate climates with few extremes and are geographically compact. The oversimplification of the problem allows this fringe to reduce their arguments to a mindless mantra and witch hunt for those they see as guilty of abusing the environment. They would also accede to the extortion of nations who allow their rain forests to be burned down for meager profit by a handful of their citizens engaged in slash and burn farming and lumber harvesting.
As a result, there will be no effective decrease in total CO2 output. Even if the post industrial nations were to agree and attempt to impliment severe cutbacks at their own substantial sacrifice, those reductions would be more than offset by increases by other nations both individually such as in China and by the aggregate of inefficient utilization of energy by an ever increasing pre-industrialized population. The projected world population at mid century is estimated to be nine billion. This suits those of the lunitic fringe who are the real Luddites of the world and would have us go back to an agrarian civilization where energy comes from windmills and solar panels and people eat only vegetables. Some lucky few might be allowed horse drawn carriages and no one would be allowed more than one wood burning fire in one room of their huts during the dead of winter. This is their sense of justice, their vision of the future for us. Small wonder nobody is buying it.
I also point out that when Malthus formulated his theories, neither the problem nor science of climate change due to rising CO2 levels was conceived of let alone understood. Nevertheless, if the theory of climate change holds true it applies to humanity living in the earth's biosphere just as yeast in a fermenting vat die from the alcohol they produce as part of their natural life cycle. Immutable facts that cannot be argued away by warped minds looking to impose their absurd notion of justice on the world.
Complain about this comment
View these comments in RSS