Paris UN Climate Conference 2015: Exhaustion And Brinkmanship As Summit Stretches Into Overtime

Fairfax - Tom Arup

An historic global deal to limit and tackle climate change is a step closer after a final draft agreement has been completed at the United Nations conference in Paris.
After nearly a fortnight of negotiations, and several days in which exhausted country representatives including Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had thrashed out details through the day and night, French and UN officials have completed an edit to present to ministers Saturday night Australian time.

Climate activists carry a red banner during a demonstration at the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Le Bourget, north of Paris, Friday, Dec. 11, 2015. Hundreds of climate activists have stretched a block-long red banner through the Paris climate talks to symbolize "the red lines" that they don't want negotiators to cross in trying to reach an international accord to fight global warming. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

"We have a text to present," an official in the office of Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said, according to news agency Agence France-Presse.
The text was being translated into the six languages of the UN before being distributed, and then debated at a special session on Saturday - beyond the original Friday deadline for the talks.
That text will be released at 11.30am local time (9.30pm AEDT) according to Miguel Arias Canete, the European Union's climate commissioner:

US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks to reporters following a meeting with France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. Photo: Mandel Ngan

Earlier, Australia had joined a loose collection of wealthy and developing nationsthat were pushing for a strengthened global deal to tackle climate change.
If successful, the climate deal would be the first to include action from all countries. Nearly 200 countries have been negotiating towards an agreement.

Slogans were projected on the Eiffel Tower as the climate conference in Paris pushed into overtime.

As is often the case in United Nations climate negotiations, the final hours have boiled down to high-stakes brinkmanship between competing groups, particularly the industrialised world and major emerging economies including China and India.
Ms Bishop, who has been at the second week of the talks, said Australia had received a formal invitation to join the so-called "high ambition coalition" from the European Union, and had accepted.

The talks were supposed to finish at 6pm Friday but missed the deadline.

The group also includes the US, Canada and dozens of African and small island states. The coalition's chairman, Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum, said: "We are delighted to learn of Australia's interest and look forward to hearing what more they may be able to do to join our coalition of high ambition here in Paris."
"Everyone is welcome to join. Bring your credentials with you," Mr de Brum said.
The coalition featured prominently on Friday. Ministers from member countries held a press conference to announce that Brazil, a strategically important country because of its size and status as a developing nation, had joined. Other countries named as new members included the Philippines, Switzerland and the Seychelles.

The slogan "DECARBONIZE" is projected on the Eiffel Tower as part of the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, France, Friday, Dec. 11, 2015. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

Australia was not mentioned at the press conference, but Ms Bishop said: "I've talked to Tony de Brum, we've talked about it. We are part of this coalition.
"But it is not a negotiating coalition, it is just people signing up and saying 'we want to see an ambitious agreement'."
The coalition is seen as an attempt to push back against heavy hitting developing countries such as China, India and Saudi Arabia. Some negotiators accused those countries of launching a last minute, coordinated attack to try to reduce the scope of a deal.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and her Marshall Islands counterpart Tony de Brum meet at the Paris climate talks. Photo: Andrew McLeish

Ms Bishop and other government ministers worked through the night until 6am, but little progress was made, and by the morning Mr Fabius was conceeding the talks would have to run into Saturday.
One negotiator said oil-rich Saudi Arabia was playing a destructive role and challenging many parts of an ambitious draft text released by the French organisers on Thursday.
China and India also challenged aspectsof the draft, including how, and how often, emissions targets would be reviewed.
Developed nations tried to harden the language on who should contribute to climate financing for poorer nations. A group of non-European industrialised countries called the umbrella group, which includes Australia, have been trying to expand the donor base to try include China, India and other advanced emerging countries.
Ms Bishop said: "We want to have an agreement that reflects the contemporary reality of the world today and beyond, and so we believe there should be room in the agreement text relating to financing that those countries who are able to contribute [do] contribute."
Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, South African ambassador and the chairwoman of a group of developing countries called the G-77 plus China, said financing was the key to the whole deal. She said the umbrella group was holding the talks hostage by not moving.
"If this should fail it won't be the fault of the French, it will be the fault of the umbrella group," she said.
Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar accused the developed world of not showing flexibility.
"It's about differentiation [between developed and developing world], equity, and climate justice," he said.
In Washington, US President Barrack Obama called his Chinese counterpart Xi Jiping to discuss the talks. The White House said both leaders gave a commitment that their negotiating teams in Paris would continue to work "closely together and with others to realise the vision of an ambitious climate agreement".
Speaking to reporters, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Lui Jianmin defended his country's position on key sticking points, such as industrialised nations' insistence that there be a more common approach to reporting and reviewing emissions targets.
Mr Lui said this was a view held widely among developing counties, not just China.
"Our capacity and national conditions means still we shall have some difficulties... so the process needs to be more about encouragement. We need to avoid any punitive or intrusive measures," he said.
Mr Liu taunted the "high ambition coalition", describing it as a performance, saying it had only a dozen members. Coalition organisers said over 100 countries had signed up.
Australia had initially been caught unaware by the emergence of the high ambition grouping, but was expressing support behind the scenes for its aims later in the week before signing up on Friday.
The decision to join follows Mr de Brum taking issue with a joke made by Ms Bishop about the impact of climate change on islands in his nation. But that appeared to have been dealt with at a side meeting in Paris during the week, when Ms Bishop and Mr de Brum shared a hug.

Link

• The zombies tasked with avoiding a warming apocalypse

Follow The Money To Climate Science Denial

Independent Australia - Graham Readfearn

A Greenpeace investigation uncovers a complex climate science denial machine involving cash from big business in exchange for "peer review" studies. 

(Image via @AnneSpaceCoast.)

AN UNDERCOVER INVESTIGATION by environment group Greenpeace has found some of the world's most vocal climate science denial groups were willing to accept cash from fossil fuel interests in return for writing articles and reports that reject the impacts of greenhouses gases.
Greenpeace operatives posing as representatives of coal and oil companies were told that while the reports could be produced, there were ways that the sources of funding could be hidden.
Academics affiliated with leading U.S. academic institutions Princeton and Penn State universities are implicated in the Greenpeace research.
According to a report on the investigation at Greenpeace's EnergyDesk website, Princeton's Professor William Happer had revealed he had accepted cash from coal company Peabody Energy in return for providing testimony to U.S. congress but had routed the cash through a climate denial group. Happer also offered his services but said that a new climate science denial group, CO2 Coalition, should be used to channel the funds.
Groups including the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Donors Trust are also alleged to have been complicit in providing "peer review" services for fossil fuel clients and, in the case of Donors Trust, in providing an untraceable route for the fossil fuel payments.
The story comes as Happer is preparing to give evidence to a congressional hearing of the Senate Subcomittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, chaired by Republican and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. That hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, 8 December, also calls fellow "sceptics" Dr John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr Judith Curry of Georgia Institute of Technology and conservative commentator Mark Steyn.
A DeSmogBlog investigation into Donors Trust and its partner group Donors Capital Fund found that between 2005 and 2012, some $479 million of income to the two groups was untraceable. Of the amounts that were traceable, DeSmog found that $7.65 million had come from the Knowledge and Progress Fund (KPF).
On the KPF board are oil billionaire and major Republican benefactor Charles Koch, his wife Liz and son Charles Chase Koch. Richard Fink, a Koch company director and long-standing aide to Charles Koch, is also a KPF director.
The Greenpeace investigation raises questions about the use of the Donors funds in financing climate science denial groups. Donors Trust, together with oil giant ExxonMobil, have also funded the work of Harvard-Smithsonian affiliated researcher Dr Willie Soon, who claims carbon dioxide cannot change the climate.

Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding

Greenpeace also claims that CO2 Coalition board member William O'Keefe, a former Exxon lobbyist, had suggested in an email to Happer that Donors Trust be used as a route to conceal cash from a fictional Middle eastern oil and gas company.
The investigation also targeted Happer's work with the London-based contrarian group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), founded by former UK chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson. Greenpeace wrote:

'Professor Happer, who sits on the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council, was asked by undercover reporters if he could put the industry funded report through the same peer review process as previous GWPF reports they claimed to have been "thoroughly peer reviewed" '.

Happer explained that this process had consisted of members of the Advisory Council and other selected scientists reviewing the work, rather than presenting it to an academic journal.
He added:

I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review.

Asked for comment by Greenpeace, GWPF said in a statement that it rejected Greenpeace's investigation, saying any claims it had offered to put a fossil fuel commission report through its own version of peer review were a "fabrication".

Links

• ExxonMobil in Denial About Climate Science Denial
• Secretive donors gave US climate denial groups $125m over three years
• Video:

The Six Key Road Blocks At The UN Climate Talks In Paris

The Guardian - Suzanne Goldenberg

From a 1.5C or 2C limit, to climate aid and the public reporting of emissions, here are the main differences in the draft text

The COP21 conference is currently revising the draft text for a global deal on cutting emissions. Photograph: IISD

Negotiators at the UN climate talks in Paris are now nearing the end of a fortnight of searching for a global deal on climate change. The mood is upbeat but there are still significant disagreements over some key issues. They came out in the publication on Wednesday of the draft negotiating text.
These are the six key road blocks that negotiators will have to move or get around if a deal is to be done:

Temperature goal - 1.5C or 2C
The disagreement here is over what temperature rise (with a baseline of pre-industrial times) the politicians set as the goal for the world to stick to. Even fractions of a degree could make big differences in terms of the impacts from sea level rise and extreme weather the world is likely to see.
Small islands and low-lying states are at risk of disappearing under rising seas even at the currently agreed 2C temperature goal, and have long argued for tougher limits on warming. Last June, a group of more than 40 countries adopted the slogan "1.5 to stay alive". They now have the support of more than 80 countries, including the US, Canada and Europe, who call themselves the "high ambition coalition". But is 1.5C even possible given warming to date and that already built into the system? "The maths is simple," according to Myles Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford. "Human-induced warming is already close to 1C, so to limit warming to 2C, CO2 emissions need to fall, on average, by 10% of today's emission rate for every tenth of a degree of warming from now on. To limit warming to 1.5C, CO2 emissions need to fall, on average, by 20% for every tenth of a degree of warming. At the rate we're warming at the moment, a tenth of a degree means five to 10 years. So 1.5 will be tough."
That presents a serious problem for a diplomatic process that must be rooted in the science. Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University climate scientist and a longtime observer of the international climate negotiations, suggested 1.5C could remain as an aspirational goal, alongside 2C – but it would be problematic if it were the only goal. "If you put it as an agreed goal you would probably have a large fraction of the expert community saying you can't do this and it's very unlikely. The net effect of that is that it would undermine the credibility of the process because people would get the impression, rightly so, that diplomats are agreeing to things that are totally unrealistic just for the sake of producing an outcome and getting out of the room." The draft released by the French hosts on Wednesday has three options: 1. below 2C, 2. well below 2C with efforts to reach 1.5C and 3. 1.5C.

A schoolgirl tries to collect water from a dry puddle in Nongoma, north-west of Durban, that has been badly affected by the recent drought. Photograph: Mujahid Safodien/AFP/Getty Images

Zero emissions
Getting to 1.5C or 2C requires achieving near zero greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of this century. Business leaders, some campaign groups and even the Pope have called on negotiators to adopt a decarbonisation goal as a way of translating temperature goals into more tangible targets for action. How and when are the big questions, and language is critical. Net zero means emissions can continue but must be balanced by negative emissions efforts such as tree planting or technologies to suck emission from the air. The draft released on Wednesday has two main options. Under option 1, the stronger option, countries aim to peak global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, with rich countries making deep emissions cuts by 2050 with an end goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions. Even here, there are divisions on the scale of cuts and the date for reaching net-zero, mid-century or end century. Under option 2, countries would commit only to a vague goal of reaching climate neutrality over the course of the century, with no specific targets or dates.

Smoke billows from a coal-fired generator at a steel factory in Hebei, China. The Chinese government has set 2030 as a deadline to reach its peak emissions. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Money
Finance was the big issue leading into these negotiations. Developing countries need funding to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and build the infrastructure that will help protect their people from extreme weather and other climate impacts. Best estimates suggest it will cost trillions to transform the global economy. Rich countries committed to rounding up $100bn a year from private and public sources by 2020. Best estimates suggest the pot is currently only two-thirds full – and rising economies such as India and Brazil say the accounting is murky. Developing countries are demanding stronger guarantees rich countries will deliver on their pledges in 2020 and beyond – and that there will be more funds available to deal with the climate impacts they are already experiencing. To date, only about a quarter of climate funding has been directed towards dealing with those impacts, and countries say that is not a big enough fraction. The US doubled its climate aid to $860m on Wednesday. Developing countries will be looking to other developed countries to do more.

Loss and damage
Some low-lying and vulnerable countries are facing irreversible and permanent damage from climate change. Land loss could force millions to relocate. Those countries want the agreement to recognise those dangers, and offer some measure of protection. But the US is adamantly opposed to any language in the agreement about liability or compensation that could potentially expose US companies to the threat of law suits for causing climate change. "Loss and damage as an idea is meant to refer to the impacts of climate change that neither mitigation nor adaptation has been able to address and in so far as there is a focus on that kind of element, that is completely appropriate," Todd Stern, the state department climate change envoy, said. "We don't accept the idea of compensation and liability. We have never accepted and we are not going to accept it now."
The choices before negotiators in the draft released on Wednesday range from burying any reference to loss and damage in a separate section of the text to setting up an entirely separate process to look at the problems of land loss and climate refugees.

A man carries his baby along a seawall in an area lying more than a meter below sea level in the Maura Baru district in Jakarta, Indonesia. Jakarta, southeast Asia’s largest city is sinking slowly into the sea. Photograph: Ed Wray/Getty Images

Future improvements to the deal
Governments at the Paris meeting have come out with lofty ambitions, unlike other climate talks, and there is a sense of momentum towards an agreement. But what about the follow-through? Industrial countries in particular are pushing hard for public reporting of all countries emissions reductions, a so-called "stocktaking", which would subject climate laggards to public shaming. The US and other countries are pushing for an early stocktaking in 2018. Developing countries are trying to push back the first inventory to 2024. Then there is "ratcheting". Developed countries are pushing for governments to put forward tougher emissions plans at five-year intervals, in order to take advantage of advances in clean energy technology, and improve the chances of getting to zero emissions in the middle of the century. India and other developing countries want to put off those ratchet meetings to once a decade or so.

Wind turbines shrouded in fog near Petersberg mountain, Germany. The Petersberg hill, north of Halle/Saale, is the highest point in the Saale region, at 250.4 metres above sea level. Photograph: Jens Wolf/EP

Developed v developing world
This is the biggest stumbling block because the question about differentiation is rooted in history, unlike other areas of talks which are about actions in the future. Who should bear responsibility for climate change – the countries that industrialised first and were responsible for historic emissions, or developing countries such as China, now the world's biggest emitter? The bigger developing countries argue they did little or nothing to cause climate change but are being asked to trim their growth to reduce emissions. The US insists that the current structure of the agreement, which relies on voluntary pledges put forward by each country, acknowledges those differences in economic history. "This is all about differentiation," John Kerry, the secretary of state, said. India which has played a strong leadership role in the developing country bloc in the Paris negotiations, said the new structure represents progress, but that rich countries should not be trying to re-write history. "Today the world is experiencing and many countries are suffering because of a temperature rise of 0.8C and that temperature rise has taken place because of historic emissions of 150 years so that can not be wished away," Prakash Javadekar, India's environment minister, said. "Historic emissions are responsible."

Links

• Paris climate conference: negotiators to work overnight for a deal – as it happened 
• Paris climate deal 'close to finish line' but talks set to overrun 
• Paris talks: new draft climate deal published - as it happened 
• Paris climate talks: delegates warn of flaws in ambitious proposals for deal