Next week, international climate meetings begin in Copenhagen. With leaders from around the world attending the talks, including high-level involvement from the two largest emitters—China and the United States—there is renewed hope that some kind of agreement can be reached.
President Obama will travel to the talks with a provisional pledge to reduce U.S. emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao will also attend, following an announcement that China will reduce emissions relative to the size of its economy by 40 to 45 percent by 2020. In a new video Q&A, Taiya Smith discusses climate change and the upcoming negotiations in Copenhagen.
“It’s important that Copenhagen not be seen as a failure so that international momentum to address climate change is not lost,” says Smith. "We need to put a global climate deal in perspective—it’s difficult and complicated. It’s not a simple thing to do, but it is doable and it’s something that we are going to have to take one step at a time.”
- Who are the major players in the global negotiations over climate change, and where do the negotiations stand?
- What are the essential elements of a deal to reduce carbon emissions?
- What will the economic consequences of a climate change deal be for the United States, China, and other countries?
- Will a global agreement be enough to alleviate the effects of climate change?
- What are the prospects for reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen?
- If no deal is reached, what happens next?
Who are the major players in the global negotiations over climate change, and where do the negotiations stand?
Right now the negotiations for climate change are in a very interesting position in that the United States is clearly the key player, but it’s not the U.S. administration—it really is the U.S. Congress. The administration is in a difficult negotiating position because they cannot move forward and commit to anything, as they did in Kyoto, without having Congress’ support. So they are going to the table without climate change legislation and will be trying to help wherever they can to facilitate a conversation without necessarily committing the United States.
The other key players are going to be China, the other largest emitter of carbon in the world, with India, Brazil, and the European Union also playing important parts. The Africa bloc, which walked out of discussions earlier in Barcelona, is not going to be a significant player in terms of reaching the necessary carbon targets, but it is an important player because it represents a vocal part of the G77—and these are the countries that feel they have not contributed significantly to current greenhouse gas emissions and will need to have some assistance in dealing with climate change as it goes forward on the adaptation side.
What are the essential elements of a deal to reduce carbon emissions?
There are four essential elements to reducing carbon emissions overall for any kind of a global deal. These are very controversial discussions, mostly because it’s coming up with a global deal on climate change that is, in essence, committing countries to a different type of economic growth than they’ve had before.
First, I think every country needs to be part of a global deal. You can’t have just the industrial countries committing to carbon caps, you need to also find ways for the developing countries to participate. That means the countries like China, which are now producing the largest amount of emissions in the world, also have to be part of that discussion.
The second element is that you have to find a way to really use the markets to help us pay for this. If you take advantage of the market system, right now cap and trade seems to be the most likely option, but you will also see other ways that we can utilize markets to encourage innovation. We think that about 86 percent of the new technology developed is going to have to come from the private sector. So, to develop and disseminate that technology means that we have to come up with ways for the private sector in every country around the world to be motivated to develop that and get it out.
Another key element is that we have to find a way to help fund adaptation over time. This has been a key requirement by the developing countries, they are saying they are going to be hit very hard, especially small countries in Asia and in Africa dealing with flooding, rising sea levels, desertification, extreme storms, and they don't have the ability right now to handle that. So that’s going to require new technology but it’s also going to require help and support in development assistance, education, and other key development factors as we look forward.
The real issue is focusing on the long term. We need to have some short-term targets, but we also have to recognize that climate change requires a fundamental change in how we look at our economic growth—you need to develop a new model of sustainable economic growth. And what that means is that we can’t expect it to happen immediately. We are going to have to utilize the market forces, we’re going to have to have caps, but we are really going to have to understand that short-to-medium term targets of 2020, 2030, and longer-term targets after that are the only ways we are going to reach our achievable goals.
What will the economic consequences of a climate change deal be for the United States, China, and other countries?
When we are looking at climate change, the first thing that everybody is thinking about is money. It’s about the economics. So, over time climate change negotiations have really focused on environmental issues or energy choices, but when we get down to actually coming up with a global deal it’s really all about economics.
And what does that mean for every country? It means more than just turning off the lights when you go in and out. The World Bank has issued a report saying they think adapting to climate change will be between $75-100 billion a year between now and 2030. There have been other reports that have estimated closer to $500 billion a year. The developing countries right now in the negotiations are looking for $200 billion a year. So for an overall cost to deal with adaptation, the numbers vary widely.
The consequences for the United States in particular are being debated in Congress right now. So, this is where we come to the questions: will agriculture be included in where we should be reducing our carbon emissions from or will it just be industry? Will we also include a section for the private citizen and what every person’s carbon emissions are? And how will we look at that? Most likely the bill is going to focus on big business with a lot of focus on power generation. There have been some discussions of carbon taxes.
When we look around the world at the impact that U.S. legislation could have on countries that are export driven, like China, this discussion of a border adjustment mechanism or carbon tax comes up as a big piece of the pie for them. While the current legislation has a border adjustment mechanism that would not have a significant impact (according to the studies we’ve done) on Chinese exports to the United States, given the types of exports we receive here, it’s an issue for concern. As you look at how you spread the cost of climate change throughout the world, mechanisms like these are going to be ones that are creating increasing trade frictions.
So what the United States does to try to make climate change not have a significant impact on our economy, will be affecting all the other economies, just the way that those economies’ decisions will affect ours as well. And when you come down in the end to the global deal discussions, what all the industrial countries are looking for is an assurance that China, India, Brazil, and other developing countries will not take advantage of us if we commit to a carbon cap. So we need to make sure that there continues to be a level trading field and that climate change does not become yet another trade mechanism that allows countries with a lower cost of labor to be able to sell more cheap goods to all of us.
Will a global agreement be enough to alleviate the effects of climate change?
We’re going to be dealing with climate change regardless of where the global deal puts us. Estimates right now are that we will have at minimum one degree change in temperature over time and we’re hoping through these global negotiations to limit it to two degrees of an increased temperature over time.
We’re sure that we’re going to be dealing with climate change as we go forward. And there are plenty of examples that are suggesting that climate change is already underway, and those examples are often controversial. For example, the Indian environmental minister recently issued a report suggesting that the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas is not a result of climate change; he thinks it might fit in with historic norms. The IPCC has already said that it doesn’t think that is a valid claim, but as you can see, the science is easy to manipulate and difficult to predict as we go forward.
We’re going to be dealing with climate change. There is no way not to deal with it—this is the underlying message to everybody. The question is, can we limit its effects and move fast enough to not have to deal with really dramatic changes in our environment?
What are the prospects for reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen?
There’s a coming consensus throughout the international community that a full global deal will not be reached at Copenhagen. We’re looking for different types of deals. Is it possible to put together a framework agreement? Or should we be focused on there being a political agreement on the top-level issues? And those issues are that industrialized countries will commit to caps on their carbon emissions and that there will be a certain level of assistance given to developing countries. We’re not sure yet if that deal is possible. Clearly the negotiators are working very hard and as you know with any international negotiation it’s ongoing 24/7 throughout the world.
While we don't think there is going to be the perfect follow on to Kyoto, we do think that there will need to be some agreement in order to keep the momentum for the international discussion on this topic. The job right now for all of us who are either in governments or outside of governments is to make sure that Copenhagen is not seen as a failure.
This is a difficult agreement to reach, it’s complicated. I think about the Doha [trade] discussions and note that we did not reach agreement in Doha, and yet the climate change negotiations are much more complicated than Doha, involving more players than the Doha agreements did.
So we need to put this in perspective. It’s not a simple thing to do, but it is doable and it’s something that we are going to have to take one step at a time to get to.
If no deal is reached, what happens next?
If we don’t reach a deal in Copenhagen, the thought is that we will want to have a fairly rapid follow on. People have suggested that we try to come up with a framework agreement in Copenhagen, which includes an agreement to get back together in six months. Normally these types of meetings happen once a year or once every two years, but the concern here is that if we let it go for a full year we are going to lose a lot of the momentum.
The hope is that there will be U.S. legislation in January, February, hopefully not as late as March, which would then set things up to have a real discussion around a global deal sometime in the spring. The key thing will be for everyone to keep the momentum up, keep the energy moving forward, and at the same time keep countries working together on some bilateral agreements. A bilateral agreement between the United States and China on how we are going to deal with carbon caps for China and the United States might be very helpful for pulling together a global deal.
At the same time, if it’s not possible to have a global deal, we can be looking at bilateral agreements or multilateral regional agreements to help pull together different actors from around the globe—the important players—to start to deal with climate change in a concerted manner.
So, possibly something in six months, very likely we will be looking at some intermediate deals on a bilateral or regional basis before we come up with a final global deal.