Lethal Heating: 12/18/18

18/12/2018

UN Climate Talks Set Stage For Humanity’s Two Most Crucial Years

The Guardian - Jonathan Watts

Decisions made from now to 2020 will determine to what extent Earth remains habitable

COP24 in Poland highlighted the growing threat of fossil fuel interests and the nationalist politicians they fund. Photograph: Koji Sasahara/AP

The mood was more one of relief than triumph on Sunday when the world’s governments eventually found common ground at the UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland.
This was not just because exhausted delegates were glad to go home after negotiations that dragged on 30 hours beyond the deadline. It also reflected the harder miles and tougher battles to come over the next two years if the planet is to remain habitable.
Scientist after scientist told the conference that the decisions made by 2020 will determine whether global heating can be kept to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, after which the already apparent dangers of climate instability become far worse.
The toughest decisions, however, were pushed into the future, to a special climate summit next September called by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the next two COP conferences – in Chile in December 2019, and then to the country chosen to host in 2020.

COP24 delegates applaud the agreement reached in Katowice. Photograph: Marek Zimny/EPA

Katowice showed that the multilateral system of global decision-making is still alive, but under growing threat from fossil fuel interests and the nationalist politicians they fund.
Decision-making at the UN is painstakingly difficult at the best of times, because it requires a consensus among 195 nations. In Poland, 14,000 delegates took two weeks to debate the latest science and proposed policy instruments as they whittled down more than 2,800 areas of disagreement.
The result was a new global rule book on emissions that requires nations to report every two years on their progress toward Paris agreement commitments to keep temperature rises to between 1.5C and 2C.
Several past obstacles were overcome. China accepted standards on transparency, and richer nations – particularly Germany and Norway – put their hands deeper into their pockets to provide more than $100bn (£80bn) to help poorer nations adapt. A renewed division between the developed and developing world did not materialise as feared.
But more fundamental obstructions also came more sharply into focus. The malign role of fossil fuel interests has often been hidden in bureaucratic language or lost in the distractions of diplomatic spats, but in Katowice there were several moments of blinding clarity. Chief among them was the alignment of the world’s top three oil-producing nations – the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia – to downplay scientific warnings about temperature rises beyond 1.5C. Soon after, an ambassador from Australia – a major coal exporter – joined Trump administration officials in a panel that promoted carbon fuels. Brazil was also accused of holding up talks with a highly contested carbon-accounting proposal that could have reshaped how emissions from the Amazon are calculated. The country’s diplomats denied this but the issue has been kicked forward and it is unlikely the incoming nationalist president Jair Bolsonaro will make life easier for the negotiations.
There was also more clarity as a result of the recent protests in France, which prompted policymakers to think twice about the social implications of higher fuel prices. The leading energy economists Nicholas Stern and Ottmar Edenhofer said carbon taxes were still an important instrument to nudge economies away from fossil fuels, but that the transition has to be fair as well as fast, which means using the extra tax revenue for green infrastructure or redistributing it among poorer members of society who are often hardest hit by fuel tax rises.
Tensions will grow along with the stakes, as will frustration at the widening gap between the science and politics. More protests and lawsuits can be expected from climate litigation groups, financial divestment activists and a growing number of direct action campaigners, including 350.org, Extinction Rebellion and striking students such as Greta Thunberg. They, along with many scientists, say it is not enough to agree on rulebooks. After delaying action for so long, they argue the world now needs leaps rather than steps.
All of which suggests the next two years will be among the most fraught and crucial in the history of humanity. Investment decisions on power stations and infrastructure taken during this period will determine whether carbon emissions can be cut by the 45% needed by 2030 to give the 1.5C target a chance.
It would be fitting if the UK won the right to host the crucial climate summit in 2020. Done well, it would showcase how the world’s first industrialised nation is shifting away from carbon faster than almost any other. Done badly, the UK – by then probably outside the EU – will highlight the folly of shifting away away from multilateralism just when when the world needs to pull together.

Links

We Finally Have The Rulebook For The Paris Agreement, But Global Climate Action Is Still Inadequate

The Conversation - Kate Dooley

Delegates at the closing ceremony of the Katowice climate talks. Marek Zimny/AAP Image

Three years after the Paris Agreement was struck, we now finally know the rules – or most of them, at least – for its implementation.
The Paris Rulebook, agreed at the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, gives countries a common framework for reporting and reviewing progress towards their climate targets.
Yet the new rules fall short in one crucial area. While the world will now be able to see how much we are lagging behind on the necessary climate action, the rulebook offers little to compel countries to up their game to the level required.
The national pledges adopted in Paris are still woefully inadequate to meet the 1.5℃ or 2℃ global warming goals of the Paris Agreement. In the run-up to the Katowice talks, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report detailing the urgent need to accelerate climate policy. Yet the summit ran into trouble in its efforts to formally welcome the report, with delegates eventually agreeing to welcome its “timely completion”.
Rather than directly asking for national climate targets to be increased, the Katowice text simply reiterates the existing request in the Paris Agreement for countries to communicate and update their contributions by 2020.
Much now hinges on the UN General Assembly summit in September 2019, to bring the much-needed political momentum towards a new raft of pledges in 2020 that are actually in line with the scientific reality.

Ratcheting up ambition
A key element of the Paris Agreement is the Global Stocktake - a five-yearly assessment of whether countries are collectively on track to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals to limit global warming.
The new rulebook affirms that this process will consider “equity and best available science”. But it does not elaborate specifically on how these inputs will be used, and how the outcomes of the stocktake will increase ambition.
This raises concerns that the rulebook will ensure we know if we are falling behind on climate action, but will offer no prescription for fixing things. This risks failing to address one of the biggest issues with the Paris Agreement so far: that countries are under no obligation to ensure their climate pledges are in line with the overall goals. A successful, ambitious and prescriptive five-yearly review process will be essential to get the world on track.

Transparency and accounting
One of the aims of the Katowice talks was to develop a common set of formats and schedules for countries to report their climate policy progress.
The new rules allow a degree of flexibility for the most vulnerable countries, who are not compelled to submit quantified climate pledges or regular transparency reports. All other countries will be bound to report on their climate action every two years, starting in 2024.
However, given the “bottom-up” nature of the Paris Agreement, countries are largely able to determine their own accounting rules, with guidelines agreed on what information they should provide. But a future international carbon trading market will obviously require a standardised set of rules. The newly agreed rulebook carries a substantial risk of double-counting where countries could potentially count overseas emissions reductions towards their own target, even if another country has also claimed this reduction for itself.
This issue became a major stumbling block in the negotiations, with Brazil and others refusing to agree to rules that would close this loophole, and so discussions will continue next year. In the meantime, the UN has no official agreement on how to implement international carbon trading.
Accounting rules for action in the land sector have also been difficult to agree. Countries such as Brazil and some African nations sought to avoid an agreement on this issue, while others, such as Australia, New Zealand and the European Union, prefer to continue existing rules that have delivered windfall credits to these countries.

Finance
The new rulebook defines what will constitute “climate finance”, and how it will be reported and reviewed.
Developed countries are now obliged to report every two years on what climate finance they plan to provide, while other countries in a position to provide climate finance are encouraged to follow the same schedule.
But with a plethora of eligible financial instruments – concessional and non-concessional loans, guarantees, equity, and investments from public and private sources – the situation is very complex. In some cases, vulnerable countries could be left worse off, such as if loans have to be repaid with interest, or if financial risk instruments fail.
Countries can voluntarily choose to report the grant equivalent value of these financial instruments. Such reporting will be crucial for understanding the scale of climate finance mobilised.
The Paris Agreement delivered the blueprint for a global response to climate change. Now, the Paris Rulebook lays out a structure for reporting and understanding the climate action of all countries.
But the world is far from on track to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. The latest report from the UN Environment Programme suggests existing climate targets would need to be increased “around fivefold” for a chance of limiting warming to 1.5℃. The newly agreed rules don’t offer a way to put us on this trajectory.
Multilateral climate policy has perhaps taken us as far as it can – it is now time for action at the national level. Australia, as a country with very high per-capita emissions, needs to step up to a leadership position and take on our fair share of the global response. This means making a 60% emissions cut by 2030, as outlined by the Climate Change Authority in 2015.
Such an ambitious pledge from Australia and other leading nations would galvanise the international climate talks in 2020. What the world urgently needs is a race to the top, rather than the current jockeying for position.

Links

Climate Negotiators Reach An Overtime Deal To Keep Paris Pact Alive

New York Times - Brad Plumer

Michal Kurtyka, president of the climate talks in Katowice, Poland, leapt over his desk as the final session ended. Credit Janek Skarzynski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

KATOWICE, Poland — Diplomats from nearly 200 countries reached a deal on Saturday to keep the Paris climate agreement alive by adopting a detailed set of rules to implement the pact.
The deal, struck after an all-night bargaining session, will ultimately require every country in the world to follow a uniform set of standards for measuring their planet-warming emissions and tracking their climate policies. And it calls on countries to step up their plans to cut emissions ahead of another round of talks in 2020.
It also calls on richer countries to be clearer about the aid they intend to offer to help poorer nations install more clean energy or build resilience against natural disasters. And it builds a process in which countries that are struggling to meet their emissions goals can get help in getting back on track.
The United States agreed to the deal despite President Trump’s vow to abandon the Paris Agreement. Diplomats and climate change activists said they hoped that fact would make it easier for the administration to change its mind and stay in the Paris Agreement, or for a future president to embrace the accord once again. The United States cannot formally withdraw from the agreement until late 2020.

The United States agreed to the deal despite President Trump’s vow to abandon the Paris Agreement. Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

Observers said United States negotiators worked constructively behind the scenes with China on transparency rules. The two countries had long been at odds because China had insisted on different reporting rules for developing countries, while the United States favored consistent emissions-accounting rules and wanted all countries to be subject to the same outside scrutiny.
“The U.S. got a clear methodology to make sure that China and India are meeting their targets,” said Jake Schmidt, international policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “That creates the level playing field they have been asking for.”
Many of the attendees at this year’s United Nations climate talks — known as COP24, shorthand for their formal name — expressed disappointment at what they saw as half measures to deal with a mounting climate crisis. Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising around the world, and millions of people are facing increased risks from severe droughts, floods and wildfires.
But supporters of the deal reached Saturday said that they hoped the new rules would help build a virtuous cycle of trust and cooperation among countries, at a time when global politics seems increasingly fractured.
“Particularly given the broader geopolitical context, this is a pretty solid outcome,” said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “It delivers what we need to get the Paris Agreement off the ground.’’
“The fundamentals are in place,” Mr. Diringer added.
Not every country got what it wanted at the meeting, which had been scheduled to end on Friday. Developing nations were hoping for more robust promises on climate aid, but that issue has been postponed for future talks.
The negotiations over the Paris rule book, often dense and technical, were frequently bogged down by sharp political disputes inside the saucer-shaped convention center here in Katowice, at the heart of Poland’s coal country.
Midway through the conference, a huge fight over climate science, with the Trump administration at the center, threatened to derail the negotiations altogether.
Most delegates at the talks had wanted to formally endorse a major report issued in October by the United Nations scientific panel on climate change, which said that fossil-fuel emissions would have to fall roughly in half within 12 years to avoid severe climate disruptions.
But the United States and three other big oil producers — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia — tried to weaken the statement’s language, enraging delegates from some of the most at-risk nations. By Friday, negotiators had crafted compromise language that expressed “appreciation and gratitude” for the report.
Then, on Friday, Brazil’s delegation held up the talks all through the night because it was fiercely opposed to proposed changes in rules around carbon trading markets. Negotiators eventually agreed to table the issue until next year.

Edson Duarte, the Brazilian environment minister, at the talks in Katowice. Credit Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

With a diplomatic framework still alive and rules of the road in place, analysts said it was now up to individual countries to come back before the 2020 talks with concrete pledges to cut emissions more deeply. A few countries, including Chile, Vietnam and Norway, have already said they will start that review process.
When world leaders signed the Paris agreement in 2015, they said they would try to limit the rise in global temperatures to roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels to avoid climate-related disasters like widespread food shortages and mass coral die-offs.
But with global fossil-fuel emissions still rising each year, the planet is now quite likely to cross that temperature threshold within 35 years.
“The real test is what happens when countries go home,” said Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “All the decision text in the world doesn’t cut a molecule of carbon. You need action on the ground.”
In some countries, political obstacles to climate action are mounting.
For instance, at the Poland talks, several European Union officials pledged that the bloc would pursue stronger measures to cut emissions before 2020. But inside the union, discussions over a more ambitious climate target have dragged on, in part because Britain is distracted by Brexit; France is struggling with “Yellow Vests” protests; and Germany is grappling with its own difficulties in phasing out coal.
“We can’t ignore that there are a lot of headwinds,” said Laurence Tubiana, France’s former climate change envoy and a key architect of the Paris agreement.
Some experts at the talks argued that the march of cheaper, cleaner energy technologies would do far more to break the deadlock around climate policy than any complicated treaties could.
“Look at countries like China and India that are going ahead with renewables for their own reasons,” said Saleemul Huq, director of Bangladesh’s International Center for Climate Change and Development. “That’s what we need: for countries to move in that direction because it makes sense to them, not because they signed up for an agreement and they’re supposed to.”
Even some of the exhausted politicians in the thick of this week’s climate negotiations were ready to acknowledge the limits of diplomacy.
“Of course it’s important to have these rules, but a lot of the real action is happening by entrepreneurs; it’s happening by business people; it’s happening by the finance sector; by the money flowing; it’s happening at the city and state level,” said Catherine McKenna, Canada’s environment minister.
“Climate change is a complicated problem,” she said, “and it’s not going to be solved by national governments alone.”

Links

'Missed Opportunity': Australia's 'Difficult' Position In UN Climate Change Talks

Fairfax - Megan Gorrey

Australia's "constructive" role at the United Nations climate change talks in Poland was undermined by its continued support for fossil fuels at home, experts say.
The two week-long summit ended in the city of Katowice on Sunday with an agreement on a so-called rulebook to increase transparency of national emissions-reduction pledges made three years earlier at the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP21).

Delegates to the UN's COP24 climate summit in Katowice, Poland. Credit: AP

But negotiators from nearly 200 countries deferred other decisions, including how to raise aid for developing nations and standard accounting rules for carbon credits, until next year's conference in Chile or possibly later.
The guidelines set out how those countries will report and monitor national emissions pledges. Nations will also be under pressure to lift their goals by 2020 as current targets fall far short of the Paris agreement to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees.
The Polish climate package, agreed a day over schedule, coincided with Labor's national conference in Adelaide, where protesters urged Opposition Leader Bill Shorten to stop the Adani coal mine in Queensland.
Australia's role at Katowice included leading the so-called Umbrella block of nations although the country copped flak for its presence at a pro-coal event and staying silent on issues such as human rights and debate over a key science report on the impacts of 1.5 degrees of warming.

A protester is dragged off stage by security at Labor's national conference in Adelaide. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Economist Frank Jotzo from the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU, said the outcome of the overall negotiations showed the UN's climate efforts were "holding tight".
"The main goal was to agree on the rules from the Paris agreement, and that has been achieved."
Professor Jotzo said Australia appeared to have played a "constructive" role in negotiations.
He said the revised emissions targets outlined in the rulebook would be "an important point for Australia" going forward, particularly with next year's looming federal election.
"An important political decision will be whether [the government] puts forward a stronger target that 26 to 28 per cent [from 2005 levels by 2030], and if so, how strong and under what conditions.
"If there's a change in government at the next election, a Labor government would need to pay attention to the issue of a revised target fairly soon."
Mr Shorten reiterated on Sunday that an ALP government would lift the reduction target to 45 per cent.
Environment Minister Melissa Price did not respond to requests for comment. Ms Price last week reiterated the Morrison government's confidence Australia will meet its 2030 goal of cutting 2005-levels of carbon pollution by just over a quarter.
But independent MP Kerryn Phelps said Australia had "missed a great opportunity to stamp out a position as a global leader in renewable energy technologies".
"Australia has the technical capacity and the raw materials to be a world leader, but we appear to be aligning ourselves with countries that seem to want to continue their reliance on fossil fuels."
Her criticism was echoed by Simon Bradshaw, who was at the conference as climate change adviser for Oxfam Australia, which is a member of the Climate Action Network.
"Australia’s credibility in the talks has been hampered by our lack of action back home. As ever, there was strong concern over Australia’s rising emissions and the proposed Adani mine.
Dr Bradshaw said the government had further harmed its reputation by lining up next to the Trump administration at a side event promoting fossil fuels, and by continuing to push its coal agenda at home.
"While Australia played a fairly constructive role in some of the more technical aspects of the negotiations, it was squarely among those looking to lower the ambition of the outcome."

Links

The Guardian View On COP24: While Climate Talks Continue, There Is Hope

The Guardian - Editorial

The agreement struck in Poland is not strong enough, but the UN process is all we have

COP24 President Michal Kurtyka smiles after agreement is reached during the closing session in Poland. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters

The first thing to say about the compromise struck at climate talks in Poland at the weekend is that it came as a relief. Ever since President Trump’s announcement in 2017 that the US would withdraw from the Paris agreement, the question has been whether the UN process could continue to work. Much like the communique that came out of the recent G20, the agreement on a set of rules to implement promises made in Paris shows that while multilateralism has been damaged, it is not dead. Flawed and inadequate though it is, the process that has developed since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed in Rio in 1992 is still the best hope we have of staving off the most terrifying impacts of global warming.
The sticking point of carbon credits, with new demands from Brazil regarding the treatment of forests, was pushed back to next year. But the agreement on how governments will measure and report on emissions cuts is important. The dynamic that previously pitted developing against developed countries has significantly shifted.
Minds will now turn to the next deadline: 2020, when countries must demonstrate that they have met old targets and set new, much tougher ones. This round of talks, which the UK aims to host, is even more crucial following recent warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that current goals are nowhere near ambitious enough. While these set the planet on a course towards a 3C rise in temperatures, scientists believe even 1.5C would bring serious consequences. We have around 12 years in which to bring an unstable situation under control.
Drastic changes to the global economy are the only option, underpinned by a rapid shift to low and zero-carbon energy, along with adaptation and mitigation measures including new mechanisms to manage migration. The US’s refusal, in Poland, to embrace the IPCC’s findings, along with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, was wrong-headed and a hint of troubles ahead. Next year UN secretary general António Guterres will attempt to break the logjam when he hosts a climate summit with heads of state.
Once, the UK claimed a global leadership role on the environment, which was at least partly justified by the 2008 Climate Change Act. Political paralysis connected to Brexit is not the only reason why it now sits on the margins, while increasing cooperation between the EU and China is one of the more hopeful recent signs. The UK’s bid to host the 2020 summit should focus minds, not least on the contradictions of an energy policy that combines phasing out coal with the promotion of fracking. While the UN framework is essential, it cannot do the heavy lifting of cutting emissions, which will be done by nation states or not at all.
This month’s pledge by Danish shipping giant Maersk to be carbon neutral by 2050 was important. Businesses too have a responsibility to the societies in which they operate. But governments cannot wait for the private sector, let alone the energy companies on whose riches so much of the global economy rests. They, and the politicians who champion them, are the vested interests against whom the battle for the future must be fought. Some long-term investors are starting to recognise the risks. So are more and more people, as extreme weather linked to warmer temperatures becomes more frequent. Greta Thunberg, the 15-year-old Swedish activist who addressed the UN in Poland, was right to say “the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake”.

Links