WHAT HAPPENED IN COPENHAGEN?

E.U. Blames Others for ‘Great Failure’ on Climate
James Kanter (W.Andrew Jacobs), December 22, 2009 (NY Times)

"European Union leaders…sought to deflect criticism that they had fumbled their strategy at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting, just as a feud between the British and the Chinese over whom to blame for the outcome worsened.

"…[T]he environment minister of Sweden…said that the summit meeting had been a “great failure” partly because other nations [especially the U.S. and China] had rejected targets and a timetable for the rest of the world to sign on to binding emissions reductions…[Ed Miliband, the British secretary of state for climate and energy wrote] that China and a handful of other countries at Copenhagen had thrown up insurmountable barriers…Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, suggested that Britain [and other developing countries were] seeking to [shirk their obligations to their developing counterparts and foment discord]…Mr. Miliband contended that China vetoed agreement on…large [2050] reductions in emissions…despite support for those targets from a coalition of developed countries and a vast majority of developing countries…Ms. Jiang, the Chinese spokeswoman, said [such contentions are mistaken]…"

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"…[M]any Europeans…were unhappy with the deal struck…[but] Chinese leaders have been pleased by the outcome, which allowed them to walk away with their initial proposal — a 45 percent target for cutting the intensity of carbon emissions by 2020…At the core of the dispute between China and advanced economies like Britain is the responsibility that Western countries have for putting the vast majority of the gases blamed for global warming in the atmosphere, even as countries like China and India take center-stage as the largest emitters of the future…

"The agreement finally patched together in Copenhagen by President Barack Obama and leaders from China, India, Brazil, South Africa…set a commitment to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 Fahrenheit. The so-called Copenhagen
Accord also promised $100 billion dollars in yearly payments by the end of the next decade to poor nations that risk bearing the brunt of the global warming fallout…[but] failed to provide a fixed payout plan for the money, and…did not spell out crucial global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050 that would pressure other advanced economies to cut emissions by adopting tools like carbon trading…The result was a bitter disappointment for European leaders, who had insisted, by offering to cut their emissions by 30 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, that they could pry more concessions from China and the United States…"

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"…[T]he E.U. Emissions Trading System, begun in 2005…puts a cap on emissions from heavy industry and that obliges companies that exceed the limit to buy additional permits to pollute. The system is the main tool for the E.U. to meet its target to reduce emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and traders stand to gain if carbon markets expand…But the survival of the system — which is meant to make it more costly for utilities to continue burning polluting fossil fuels and thus less expensive to invest in renewable sources and nuclear power — could be become dependent on whether it is expanded to other parts of the world…[Business leaders have] suggested…industries based in Europe would increasingly move their operations to less regulated parts of the world as a result of the weak accord struck in Copenhagen.

"And with little assurance after Copenhagen that carbon markets were poised to spread and grow, and as disappointment set in that the E.U. would not deepen its own cuts, the benchmark price of permits traded on E.U. markets tumbled by as much as 10 percent…[P]rices regained some ground, but they are likely to keep drifting lower until at least the first quarter of next year as the impact of the global economic slowdown continue to hit industrial production and the demand for energy…"