The Guardian
In November, nearly 200 countries meet in Paris for UN talks to agree a new climate deal. Find out below how their pledges - known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs in UN jargon - compare in our in-depth analysis of 14 key countries and blocs
Without new action on carbon emissions, this happens
This is why Paris is necessary. Developing countries still have a lot of developing to do – and that means big increases in emissions that would lock in dangerous global warming. That’s why, unlike the only previous international climate protocol, Paris will apply to rich and poor countries.
The European Union’s promised emissions cut will almost certainly be the most far-reaching climate offer on the table in Paris.
If
it is fully achieved, with no loopholes or carbon accounting tricks,
the EU can say that it is walking a path that offers a greater than 50%
chance of limiting global warming to the “safe” threshold of 2C.
Despite being the host of the UN summit that led to the Kyoto
protocol on climate change in 1997, Japanese negotiators will arrive in
Paris in November with an underwhelming plan of action for greenhouse
gas reductions.
Just as US president, Barack Obama, issued a call to arms
to save the climate “while we still can,” Japan announced modest carbon
emission reductions that drew criticism from environment campaigners
and earned it Fossil of the Day award from the Climate Action Network.
In a country famed for icy temperatures, the concept of global
warming is often greeted with jovial chuckling. While many in the
Russian political elite understand the seriousness of the problem, the
current economic downturn, and conventional short-term economic
thinking, means the political will to prioritise reducing emissions is
absent.
Russia’s greenhouse gas emissions did not grow in 2014,
as the country entered economic downturn, due to western sanctions and
the falling price of oil. In recent years, greenhouse emissions have
risen, but at a much slower rate than economic growth, mainly because
the economy has been restructured from heavy industry and manufacturing
towards resource extraction and services, since president Vladimir Putin
came to power in 2000.
Barack Obama pledged the second half of his presidency to fighting
climate change – even in the face of strong opposition from industry and
a Republican-controlled Congress.
The target Obama set ahead of
the Paris climate talks of a 26-28% cut in carbon pollution by 2025 from
2005 levels is proof of that commitment, experts said.
Canada put forward one of the weakest climate targets of any major
industrialised economy, which experts said was a direct result of the
Stephen Harper government’s promotion of the highly polluting tar sands
industry.
The Canadian government proposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Australia’s emissions reduction target for 2030 is lower than some
comparable developed countries, but the greatest scrutiny now is whether
the new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, can improve policies widely
regarded as inadequate to achieve it.
Before he was ousted in a leadership coup in September, the former prime minister Tony Abbott announced Australia would reduce emissions by between 26% and 28% of 2005 levels by 2030. Turnbull has since backed the pledge.
Abbott argued it put Australia “foursquare in the middle” of the pledges comparable economies will take to the United Nations meeting in Paris in December
and argued Australia’s higher population growth and the higher economic
costs of global climate action on coal exports should also be taken
into account.
“It’s better than Japan. It’s almost the same as
New Zealand. It’s a whisker below Canada. It’s a little below Europe.
It’s about the same as the United States. It’s vastly better than Korea.
Of course, it is unimaginably better than China,” Abbott said at the
time.
Pylons running from Liddell Power Station near Muswellbrook. Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters
Others
disagreed. Bernie Fraser, the chairman of an independent government
advisory body – the Climate Change Authority (CCA) – which the Abbott
government had unsuccessfully sought to abolish, said the target put Australia “at or near the bottom of the group of countries we generally compare ourselves with”. Fraser has since resigned.
The CCA had recommended much deeper cuts of between 45% to 63% on 2000 when taken from the 2005 base year.
The Climate Institute thinktank said
the target was not scientifically credible, because it did not
represent Australia’s fair share of the global task to limit warming to
2C (a goal the Australian government accepts), describing it as
“pathetically inadequate”.
But the focus is now on whether Turnbull changes Australia’s climate policies, which business leaders and environment groups say have little chance of meeting the new target.
Climate policy is one of the most contentious issues in Australian
politics and Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership when the conservative
parties were in opposition in 2009 because of his insistence that they
back the then Labor government’s economy-wide emissions trading scheme.
Abbott,
who wrested the Liberal leadership from him and went on to win the 2013
federal election, said at that time he thought the “settled science of
climate change was absolute crap”. The first bill introduced by the
Abbott government after the election victory was to repeal the emissions
trading scheme, which had been eventually legislated by Labor with the
backing of the Greens party.
The Abbott government also
tried – unsuccessfully – to dramatically reduce Australia’s target for
the uptake of renewable energy and to abolish agencies aimed at
commercialising and providing finance for clean energy. Abbott and key ministers said they
found wind turbines “utterly offensive” and “ugly” and promised to
appoint a special commissioner to investigate complaints about health
impacts of windfarms.
Turnbull has been forced to promise the
conservative wing of his party that he will not revisit that argument
and will stick with the coalition’s so-called “Direct Action” climate
plan, which sets aside $2.5bn for a competitive grants process to pay
for greenhouse gas abatement.
But it is anticipated he will bring a far less hostile approach to action on global warming.
He
could change other aspects of the policy – including “baselines” for
the biggest industrial emitters, which are scheduled to be set at levels
which would allow many to increase their greenhouse pollution and without the aim of forcing any reductions.
Coal is stockpiled in preparation for loading onto ships for export at the Newcastle Coal Terminal in Newcastle. Photograph: Ian Waldie/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Abbott
once described buying international carbon permits as being like
sending “money … offshore into dodgy carbon farms in Equatorial Guinea
and Kazakhstan”, but when announcing the new target he did not rule out
allowing offshore permits after a review of Australia’s policy in
2017-18. Turnbull could bring forward their inclusion.
The Labor
opposition has not revealed what post-2020 emissions reduction target it
would favour, but environment spokesman Mark Butler has said the
government’s target is not high enough. Labor has promised to
reintroduce an emissions trading scheme if it wins the general election
in 2017.
The government modelled the economic cost of its 2030
target. It showed the 26% target would shave between 0.2% and 0.3% from
Australian GDP in 2030, but the same modelling found that – based on similar assumptions, a 35% target would cut only 0.3% to 0.5% and a 45% target would cut between 0.5% and 0.7%.
Brazil’s promise to reduce total emissions by 2025 is a bold
political move that should allow the country once again to play a
leading role in climate negotiations.
As the first major developing nation to pledge an absolute reductions target
(rather than relative to GDP), Brazil will be in a strong position to
bridge the gap between rich and poor nations at the Paris talks in
December.
China is the world’s largest carbon emitter due to its voracious
appetite for coal to fuel its massive economy. For this reason, much
attention is on China ahead of the UN climate change negotiations in
Paris and its post-2020 climate action commitment was eagerly awaited.
China has changed its approach to cutting carbon emissions since the disastrous Copenhagen negotiations in 2009 when it was blamed for blocking an agreement.
The government is now taking the need to cut emissions seriously and
this is reflected in its submission to the United Nations. As part of
its pledge to reduce carbon emissions beyond 2020, China has said it
will cut its CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65% from 2005 levels by
2030.
India was a day late in its submission of its climate change plan to the UN, and was the last of 140 countries to do so.
The
delay was partly deliberate. The government of Narendra Modi waited
until the anniversary of the birth of the Mahatma Gandhi , the revered
independence leader and campaigner for a low-tech local model of
economic development based on village communities, to give their
announcement added resonance.
Indonesia’s pledge to cuts its carbon emissions by 29% by 2030
compared to current projections has been criticised for failing to
adequately address large-scale forest and peatland loss, which account
for the majority of its emissions.
Campaigners said the final submission to the UN is full of “empty words” that are too “vague” on deforestation.
Ethiopia was until recently a byword for African famine, drought and
absolute poverty. But the climatically vulnerable country where 10
million people rely on food aid and which is responsible for just 0.3%
of global carbon emissions will go to the Paris climate talks as a
leader of other developing countries, planning to hold its emissions and
to double the size of its economy by 2030.
Officials in the
ministry of the environment in Addis Ababa say they have no option but
to act on climate change. “Ethiopia did not cause [it]. But we are
confronted by the threat that it poses. It has the potential to
destabilise us and other countries in the Horn of Africa, bring more
fierce competition for water and other resources,” says a government
spokesman.
Mexico received international praise for being the first major developing country to submit its pledge to the UN on curbing greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the Paris summit.
Mexico
promised to start reducing emissions from 2026, with an unconditional
pledge that by 2030 they would be 22% lower than business-as-usual
projections. With conditions, the government said the reductions could
be 40%.
Morocco will host next year’s UN climate summit and is becoming an
Arab leader at the Paris talks in December. Earlier this year the north
African country, which is 95% dependent on Middle East oil and gas for
its energy, committed to spending $10bn (£6.5bn) of its own money to
make a 13% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
But it also pledged to cut emissions a further 19% if $35bn of additional money can be generated from UN climate funds, the private sector and other countries.
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