Paris UN Climate Conference 2015: Summit To Miss Friday Deadline

Fairfax - Tom Arup and Peter Hannam, Paris


Climate summit: 'this is doable'. Amid protests in Paris, UN's Ban Ki-Moon says he is optimistic there will be a strong deal at the Climate summit as deadline looms.

Work on an historic climate deal that for the first time would require all countries to play a role in curbing greenhouse gas emissions will continue through the weekend after organisers conceded the summit would not meet its Friday night deadline.
Climate change negotiators from nearly 200 countries had worked through the night Australian time as they tried to secure an agreement. Some had not slept for 48 hours.

French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius arrives to talk to the media. The French have released a draft text of a climate deal.

The French hosts of the Paris climate change summit had launched an ambitious move on Thursday to accelerate the talks towards a final agreement, releasing a new draft version of a global deal that aimed to force through resolutions to major disputes.
Speaking before heading into all night meetings, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the negotiations remained in a delicate position, and there was still a lot of work to do.
"I think that the text is about 80 per cent there," Ms Bishop said.

Participants at the climate conference. Photo: AP

"There are still a number of options that could go either way. But this is more positive than some were expecting."
The latest draft text is relatively free of brackets, which are used to reflect areas of dispute. The previous version of the agreement had 361. It is now down to 50, with 13 options remaining.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius​ said it was time for countries to show the "necessary responsibility" to find common ground.. "I think, dear friends, that we will make it," he said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (right), with White House senior advisor Brian Deese (left) and US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern (centre).

The biggest outstanding issues are how emissions are monitored and tracked in different countries, funding for poorer nations to adapt and cut greenhouse gas pollution, and whether the rich will pay the vulnerable to help them recover from irreparable damage caused by climate change.
But the text does propose compromises on how often emissions targets should be reviewed and the long-term goals of the agreement.
It includes a reference to keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees, which had been pushed hard by the countries most affected by climate change – particularly, low-lying island states. It sits in the text alongside the more commonly recognised goal of below two degrees.

A poster demanding that warming be limited to 1.5 degrees, held up during a protest by activists at the Paris climate talks. Photo: AP

Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum welcomed the inclusion of the 1.5 degrees target. "With this, I would be able to go home and tell my people that our chance for survival is not lost," he said.
Ms Bishop on Thursday night chaired a meeting of a group of non-European industrialised nations called the Umbrella Group, including the US, Canada and Japan. She said the bloc wanted to secure an agreement that was ambitious, ensured proper transparency and five-yearly reviews of emissions targets.
She said there were still outstanding issues, in particular climate funding for poorer nations and how the difference between developed and developing countries was reflected in the agreement.
Climate Institute deputy chief executive Erwin Jackson said the world was on the cusp of getting the best possible outcome from Paris. He said the biggest political issues still need to be resolved including transparency, finance and loss and damage.
"Things could still go awry," Mr Jackson said.
From Wednesday afternoon, ministers and negotiators had worked through night and day hunting for compromise.
Less formal meetings were carried out in a "indaba" format – a Zulu-style meeting where all present get a turn to speak.
Mr Fabius described the meetings as the "indaba of solutions".
The summit was due to close at 6pm on Friday in Paris, but news agency Agence France-Presse quoted an official saying a final draft of the text would not be released until Saturday local time.
Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna tweeted after attending all-night meetings: "It's a wrap. Negotiations continue tomorrow (aka today). Final text expected Saturday morning."
An initial draft of the text was generally considered to be less ambitious than hoped, but the second version released late on Thursday night had been strengthened. Some countries that had signalled wariness about stronger goals, including India, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, were expected to object to parts of it.
A senior African delegate described the second draft as "a pretty good attempt". Another African delegate said there key things still to be sorted out, but "there are a lot of elements which are great".
Nathaniel​ Keohane, a campaigner with the US Environmental Defence Fund, said there had been "striking progress" towards a consensus in the past week, particularly on establishing the long-term goal. He said key divisions remained on the relative roles of developed and developing nations.
The issue of how to set-up a review system that could lead to countries making stronger commitments over time also appeared to have been resolved, with an initial stocktake of how global emissions are tracking in 2019, leading to the first reviews of targets in 2020. Parties would review their targets every five years.
"It's a bet that when we come around in 2019, technology will have changed enough that you'll have pressure for more ambition," Me Keohane said.
The Turnbull government's pledge is for a 26-28 per cent reduction in Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. The government plans to review the target in 2017.

Links

• Can we keep warming to 1.5C?
• Small states struggle to keep up
• Talks turn to Zulu-stye meetings
• UN climate conference: full coverage

Climate Change Before The Court

Nature Geoscience - James Thornton & Howard Covington

In the absence of an enforceable set of commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, concerned citizens may want to supplement international agreements on climate change. We suggest that litigation could have an important role to play.
Many avenues exist for bringing behaviour that drives climate change before the courts. Options include the exploration of fiduciary duties of company officers and directors, as well as those of pension fund trustees. Cases that seek to block state aid to carbon-intensive projects and cases to reform energy markets are also anticipated. The holy grail of climate-related litigation, however, is a determination of liability that some entity, such as an energy corporation or a coal power plant, is responsible to a claimant for climate change damage.
This theory of action falls into the area of tort law, which is concerned with providing remedies for provable harms. Success in such an action revolves around proving causality between someone's actions or negligence and a given damage. These cases will therefore depend in large part on the science that demonstrates this causality. We argue that, if science and the law join forces, there is a good chance of achieving court orders for the restriction of greenhouse gas emissions in the not-too-distant future.

Two aspects of causation
A claimant in such a case of damage from climate change will have to convince the court of two distinct aspects of causation.

© WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE

/ ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

First, the court will have to accept that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change. Here, a 2015 case from the Netherlands is very helpful. In the Urgenda case the court made a detailed examination of the science, by reviewing the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and determined that it had to accept the IPCC conclusions as fact. The court then found that the Dutch government has a duty of care to its citizens to minimize the risk of climate change, and accordingly ordered the government to write a plan to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions beyond the government's current commitment to do so. The government has appealed the decision. As far as we are aware, this is the first time that a court has declared anthropogenic climate change to be beyond dispute.
The second aspect of causation that the court will have to accept is more complicated to prove. The claimant needs to convince the court that anthropogenic emissions are the cause of the particular climate event that the claimant alleges to have caused a specific harm.
To understand the challenges of winning such a case, consider two hypothetical cases that are simple to claim but difficult to prove. In the first case, a woman claims that her mother's death was caused by an extreme heatwave in Australia, which in turn was caused by climate change. In the second case, a man claims property damage from a storm surge along the coast of Devon.
Assume we can get past the first causation hurdle: that an English or Australian court would agree with the Urgenda ruling that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere cause, or at least contribute to, climate change.
Then we have to identify a defendant. Say it is a coal burning utility. Its emissions, according to our assumption above, contribute to climate change. Under tort law, the crucial question then is whether the utility has a duty of care to the claimant. This duty of care depends on what a reasonable person would have thought in the position of the defendant. We would need to decide at what point in time the knowledge that they were contributing to climate change and its damages should be imputed to the utility. Assume that we can convince the court that 2007, the date of the first IPCC report that found a 90%-or-higher confidence level for human-induced warming, is the point in time at which a reasonable person should have known.
The second aspect of causation evaluates whether this defendant caused this harm to this claimant. In the case of climate change, a defendant or group of defendants contributed to the harm in a way that can potentially be quantified with reasonable certainty; however, they were not the only contributors.

Epidemiology analogues
To have a clear example of how a court might approach this issue, let us look at the English courts. We will examine the closest useful parallel to climate change provided by the jurisprudence of this court system: how epidemiological evidence has been used in health cases. In these cases there is a clear harm, but difficulty in showing that the harm was caused by a specific defendant.
Let us start with a relatively simple case from the point of view of damage attribution. In XYZ versus Schering Health Care, the claimants argued that oral contraceptives that they had been prescribed caused them to suffer from deep vein thrombosis. The trial court considered extensive epidemiological evidence. Though it was troubled by the conflicts in the testimony, the court came to a numerical conclusion on risk. It decided that the contraceptives in question increased the risk by 1.7 times. The court determined that this was not enough for the claimants to win. An increase in risk of at least two times would, however, have been enough.
Simply stated, the English courts appear comfortable holding a defendant liable in health cases if the defendant's products or actions have more than doubled the risk of a medical condition.
A more complicated case, with multiple potential defendants whose individual contributions are uncertain, involves asbestos. Malignant mesothelioma is caused by asbestos fibres. In Fairchild versus Glenhaven Funeral Services Ltd, the House of Lords carved out an exception to the 'risk-doubling' rule. Malignant mesothelioma is not dose-related, and may be caused by a single fibre of asbestos lodging in the lung. A claimant may have worked for multiple companies who exposed him but will never be able to prove where he inhaled the deadly fibre. The Court therefore decided to hold the employers joint and severally liable and allow apportionment of the damages among them.
In a more recent UK Supreme Court case, Lord Mance's observations on epidemiological evidence indicate a generally cautious approach: “That epidemiological evidence used with proper caution, can be admissible and relevant in conjunction with specific evidence related to the individual circumstances and parties is, however, common ground and clearly right... Whether, and if so when, epidemiological evidence can by itself prove a case is a question best considered not in the abstract but in a particular case, when and if that question arises. If it can, I would hope and expect that this would only occur in the rarest of cases.”
In the latest Supreme Court case looking at epidemiological evidence, the Court decided not to extend the Fairchild exception to the risk-doubling rule beyond mesothelioma cases. In Ministry of Defence versus AB and others, the Court reviewed claims by men who had served in the British Armed Forces, and who argued that exposure to fallout from nuclear testing had increased the risk of illnesses they suffered. The claimants argued that the radiation materially increased the risk of their diseases, but the Court declined to extend the Fairchild exemption to their medical conditions.

The case for climate litigation
With those waymarks of the English courts' views on statistical evidence to guide us, let us look at what the science of climate attribution can say about causation.
Storm surges and heatwaves are the events that the science is most comfortable in attributing to anthropogenic change. The interesting point from the forensic perspective is how surprisingly the odds have shifted in recent years.
For example, the record-breaking seasonal temperatures seen during the 2003 and 2012 heatwaves in Europe would have been at least a 1 in 1,000 years event in background climate conditions without anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, but are now about a 1 in 5 years event. However, is this huge statistical shift enough to convince a court?
In the heatwave case, the risk of the event that gives rise to the harm far more than doubled, an increase in risk that the court was comfortable with in the contraceptives case. However, in the latter there was a single defendant responsible for the harm. Even though the total probability for a heatwave has much more than doubled with climate change, it is a large group of actors who are responsible. None of them individually has come close to doubling the risk.
The multiple contributors to the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and their consequent damage makes the heatwave case somewhat more comparable to the mesothelioma case where the claimant has multiple employers who may all have contributed to the harm. They were all liable.
But assume climate scientists were able to say that a given event was almost certainly caused by anthropogenic causes, as argued by James Hansen and others. With something like certainty as to cause, the court then only has to apportion what it sees as actual liability, not decide whether a defendant has made a sufficient contribution to an increased odds of harm.
Say you could show that Exxon Mobile is responsible for 3.2% of total anthropogenic climate change2. In either of our two example cases, the heatwave death or storm surge property damage, should the court simply apportion 3.2% of the damages to Exxon Mobile?
This solution has the appeal of simplicity. Exxon could counter that it would be unfair to make it pay damages without a similar calculation and percentage contribution from all other emitters. This theory would require a calculation of the contribution by, for example, every person driving a car, and would quickly make the case unworkable. Whether or not Exxon would succeed with this tactic would depend on the court's rules about co-defendants and its willingness to bring them in.
Even assuming Exxon lost that argument, it is not straightforward to determine what remedy rightly follows.
At the Adjudicating the Future symposium in London, supreme court judges and scholars from around the world discussed this issue of remedy. The notion emerged that even if everything lines up, courts may be reluctant to penalize Exxon, or other key carbon emitters, with monetary outlay for existing climate damages. Not because they are not liable but because the liability could become extremely large. Here Exxon's argument would be that if it were liable for 3.2% of the damage in a single heatwave or storm surge to one claimant, it will be similarly liable to all future claimants for all climate damages. With total damages from climate change that could reach somewhere between 2% and 20% of GDP per annum, even Exxon's deep pockets would feel the pinch. Jurists at the conference felt, however, that a reasonable approach would be to ask for a future-facing, not backward-looking, remedy.
Returning to our hypothetical Australian heatwave case, this could look as follows. Assume that a court agreed that the damage was caused by anthropogenic climate change, and the defendant, a coal-burning electricity producer in Australia, was — among other parties — liable for contributing to the harm. The claimant then follows the strategy the jurists were comfortable with, and does not ask for monetary damages. Instead, in a public-spirited and forward-looking manner, the relief requested is for the utility to restrict their greenhouse gas emissions by some large margin, driving future climate benefits. The interesting question is then whether a court would grant this relief.
Courts are in business to provide relief for proven harms, and tort law is the programme that delivers these results. It is hard to imagine that courts will fail to provide any relief for damages caused by climate change. The challenge will lie in presenting a harm that appeals to the sensibility of the court, causally connecting it via compelling science to the conduct of one or more defendants who could have done things differently once the dangers of climate change were known, and asking for a remedy that seems reasonable.

What can scientists do?
Keep developing credible and robust climate attribution science; see how you might be able to confidently argue that a particular event was (almost certainly) caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases; and be prepared to testify as an expert witness in a case.

References

• Urgenda v The Netherlands C/09/456689/HA ZA 13–1396 (The Hague District Court, 2015)
• Goldenberg, S. Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions. The Guardian (20 November 2013)
• XYZ and others v Schering Health Care and others EWHC 1420 (QB) (England & Wales High Court, 2002)
• Fairchild v Glenhaven Funeral Services Ltd and others UKHL 22 (UK House of Lords, 2002)
• Sienkiewicz v Greif (UK) Ltd UKSC 10 (UK Supreme Court, 2011)
• Ministry of Defence v AB and others UKSC 9 (UK Supreme Court, 2012)
• Christidis, N., Jones, G.S. & Stott, P.A. Nature Clim. Change 5, 46–50 (2015)
• Hansen, J., Sato, M. & Ruedy, R. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, E2415–E2423 (2012)
• Hadjiyianni, I. & Minas, S. 'Adjudicating the Future' symposium puts focus on courts in climate response. King's College London (2015)
• Carey, J. Calculating the true cost of global climate change Environment 360 (6 January 2011)

COP21: 'Fireworks' Expected As New Climate Text Published

BBC - Matt McGrath

The publication of the latest text could be a significant moment at COP21

A critical "clean" draft text has been published at UN climate talks here in Paris after delays.
This new version, 29 pages long, marks the first time the French presidency of the meeting has pulled together an outline of a deal.
The new draft has significantly reduced the options on many of the key questions after days of negotiations.
One observer warned that there could be "fireworks" if countries are unhappy with the compromises proposed.
Last Saturday, negotiators from 195 countries agreed on a weighty 48-page document, the summation of four years of talks that began in Durban in 2011.
That document was handed to the French president of COP21, Laurent Fabius.
Over the past few days he has asked pairs of ministers from around the world to try to advance aspects of the document.
Today marks the first time when the French will present their version of the progress that has been made.
They have included a smaller number of options on some of the most contentious issues.
According to Mr Fabius, the key difficulties have been identified.
"The focus is now on open questions that still need to be settled at a political level," he told the negotiators.
On the key issue of what the overall purpose of the document should be, there are now three options:

• The first says that temperature rises should be kept below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels
• The third option says they should be kept below 1.5 degrees
• But option two, the one which would seem to be the obvious compromise at present, says temperatures should be kept well below 2 degrees C while scaling up efforts to limit the rise to below 1.5, while recognising that in some parts of the world there are high risks projected even for warming at that level.

Tied in with the question of temperature is the issue of moving away from fossil fuels.
This collective long term goal has many of the key elements in square brackets indicating areas of disagreement.
The options here range from cutting carbon emissions 40-70% below 2010 levels or 70-95%, or to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end or after the middle of the century.
The term "decarbonisation" is still in the text, in brackets. Many green campaigners will be pleased with that although countries like Saudi Arabia will find that term hard to take.

'Risky business'
Observers were unsure as to how the parties would react to the new text.
"This is the first time the French fingerprints will be on the process, and that's a risky business," said Dr Diarmuid Torney from Dublin City University, who is an observer at these talks.
"We saw [this] earlier this year at a previous climate meeting in Bonn when the co-chairs tried to come up with a shorter text and the response from parties was to re-insert all their favourite parts back into the text. There could be fireworks."
Mr Fabius said that the remaining difficulties centred on differentiation, finance and the level of ambition.
Richer countries want a greater number of developing nations to take on responsibilities to cut emissions and to contribute to climate finance initiatives. They argue that the world has changed since 1992 when the UN climate convention was signed.
The developing countries don't see it that way.

Negotiators were facing a long session at COP21 after the publication of the latest text

"The world has not really changed in terms of the kind of poverty and in terms of the number of people who are suffering," said Meena Raman from the Third World Network.
"The developed countries are hell bent on changing this principle so we can expect a big fight."
Despite the significant gaps on critical issues, the talks were boosted yesterday by the announcement of an alliance between the European Union and 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.
The partners are backing a legally binding deal that will be reviewed every five years.
This coalition of developed and developing countries is seen as an important step in securing an overall agreement.
"It isn't really about a single coalition working to a single set of aims, it's about countries working out that they have a range of different things they are trying to achieve and they need to work with different partners to achieve that," said Ruth Davis from Greenpeace.

Australia Wins 'Fossil Of The Day' For Julie Bishop's Coal Speech At Paris Climate Talks

The Guardian - Lenore Taylor

Australia has finally won the “fossil of the day” award – bestowed each day by young climate activists at big international climate summits.
Australia traditionally wins the award early and often, but the Paris talks had reached their 10th day before Australia got the gong – accepted, in sorrow and to loud boos, by Greens leader Richard Di Natale.

Richard Di Natale, right, accepts the ‘Fossil of the Day’ award from comedian Dan Ilic. Australia was given the mock award by young activists for a speech by Julie Bishop in which she said “coal will remain critical to promoting prosperity”. Photograph: Supplied

The award, shared with Argentina, recognised a speech by foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop to an Indonesian side event on Tuesday in which she said “coal will remain critical to promoting prosperity, growing economies and alleviating hunger for years to come.”
Bishop also said the world was undergoing a “profound upheaval” as it transitioned to a low carbon economy and that a strong Paris agreement was an important signal for “efficient long term investment”, but the award focused just on the coal remarks.
“In France you say ‘let them eat cake’, but in Australia we say ‘let them eat coal’,” said comedian Dan Ilic, who presented the award on behalf of the Climate Action Network.
He said Australia had backed a target to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees at the Paris summit, but “still supports the construction of the largest coal mine in the southern hemisphere, right on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.”
Jaden Harris of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition said: “the Australian government is all talk, no action. Australia is dragging its feet here in Paris, desperately spruiking the fossil fuels of the past, whilst we miss out on the opportunities from clean energy.”
“It just no longer makes sense to construct new coal projects, this train won’t be turning around. Turnbull needs to match his innovation rhetoric with reality and embrace the clean energy jobs of the future,” he said.
Saudi Arabia, widely seen as playing a blocking role in the talks, has won the award most days so far.

Link

• Australia warns against stripping Paris climate agreement of ambition

Paris UN Climate Conference 2015: Australian Government Suddenly Backs Carbon Markets

Fairfax - Tom Arup

After a brutal six-year war on carbon markets, is this the Coalition softening its position?
Eyebrows were raised after the Turnbull government shifted its stance overnight when Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop signed up to a New Zealand-led declaration at the Paris climate summit backing the use of international carbon markets in tackling climate change.

A participant puts posters on the mini red Eiffel Tower as NGO representatives staged a sit-in protest closed to the plenary session to denounce the first draft COP21 Climate Conference agreement, and put pressure to reach an international agreement to limit global warming, during the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris, France, Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2015. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

It could pave the way for it to start using international carbon permits to help meet Australia's emissions targets - and perhaps alter its direct action climate scheme. Ms Bishop insisted on Wednesday that any domestic policy changes would not be considered until a review in 2017.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott shunned the use of international carbon permits, once saying that: "money that shouldn't be going offshore into dodgy carbon farms in Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan".
But in a speech on Wednesday, Ms Bishop said: "We recognise that international carbon markets are a key part of the global effort to reduce emissions".

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop has signed Australia up to a declaration supporting international carbon markets. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

The New Zealand-led deceleration, which is not binding, is yet to be released but is understood to focus on working out rules for how international carbon markets will operate after 2020, when a Paris agreement would come into effect.
"It is a declaration that recognises the role that carbon markets may well play post-2020," Ms Bishop said.
Ms Bishop said carbon markets could provide flexibility for companies and countries in meeting commitments. However, as currently designed, Australian business would have little reason to buy international permits under direct action.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull addresses the conference last week. Photo: AP

The Turnbull government will consider domestic use of international carbon permits as part of a 2017 review of the direct action climate policy, which could be turned into a form of emissions trading called "baseline and credit" - if the Coalition leadership was so inclined.
Lewis Tyndall, from the land carbon company GreenCollar, told an Australian event on the sidelines of the Paris conference that Environment Minister Greg Hunt had described parts of the direct action scheme as "baseline and credit system" at an private event in the French capital last Friday.
While the focus on the direct action scheme has been on taxpayers paying farmers and business to cut emissions, the scheme also includes "safeguards" that aim to set a limits on greenhouse gas pollution from major emitters.
These safeguards have been derided as toothless by a number of policy experts. Consultancy firm RepuTex found that, as designed, the safeguards would allow heavy polluting businesses to increase their emissions because the baselines were set too high and companies had been allowed numerous ways to avoid penalties if they broke the rules.
Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler, who is also in Paris, said Labor preferred a "cap and trade" emissions scheme - what the Gillard government's carbon tax would have turned into this year if it survived.
"Even if you disagree with us on that, the safeguards mechanism is not designed in a way that will have any rigour, any discipline on the emissions profile of the 140 largest polluters," Mr Butler said.
"So you need someway to cap emissions as broadly across the economy as possible."

Links

• Australia: 'serious concerns' about draft text
• Australia wins 'fossil of the day'
• 'Loss and damage' controversy blazes
• Paris climate conference: Full coverage

Paris UN Climate Conference 2015: Australia Has 'Serious Concerns' About Climate Draft

Fairfax - Peter Hannam & Tom Arup in Paris

Paris climate summit: deal creeps closer: After 11 days of negotiations at the climate summit in Paris, a slimmer but still-troubled draft of a global climate agreement is released.

Australia has "serious concerns" about the latest draft version of a climate change agreement being hammered out in Paris, and has told the conference it is "deeply disappointed" that some areas have been weakened in a bid to get deal.
The comments came as a "high ambition coalition" – thus far excluding Australia, but including the US, Europe and nearly 80 African and island nations - has emerged on the final days of the climate summit in a bid to deliver an ambitious global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The coalition emerged after the French hosts released a 29-page draft agreement that revealed that major areas of disagreements remained after nine days of negotiations.

Delegates enter the plenary hall at the climate conference in Paris.

Speaking on behalf of a collection of non-European industrialised countries known as "the umbrella group", Australian lead negotiator Peter Woolcott said: "We are deeply disappointed at the weakening of several provisions."
He said the group wanted an ambitious agreement that motivated all countries and did not bind them into historic static groupings - a reference to the long-term divide between developed and developing nations.
"We must avoid a situation where, in an effort to reach consensus, we strip the Paris outcome of its ability to be a genuine step change," Mr Woolcott said.
Meanwhile, the new high ambition coalition said it would push for the strongest deal possible.

Activists gather next to a mini Eiffel Tower after a sit-in protest to denounce a draft text released at the climate conference.

"We will not accept a minimalist or bare bones agreement," Tony De Brum, minister of foreign affairs for the Marshall Islands and chair of the group, said.
Mr De Brum said an ambitious treaty would include a goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees, have a clear pathway to a low-carbon future, five-yearly updates, a strong package of support for developing countries and aid of at least A$136 billion a year.
That Australia was not invited to be part of the so-called "coalition of ambition" was less a snub than a reflection that the US and EU were attempting to work with poor developing countries in a bid to breakdown the still lingering rich-poor divide.

US Secretary of State John Kerry speaking at the conference.

 As members of the coalition addressed the world's media inside a packed conference room, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop was meeting Australian journalists outside.
She had earlier chaired a meeting of a the umbrella group, and met with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on their behalf.
Mr Fabius identified the three political issues still to be worked out were climate funding for poorer nations, how differences in economic status were reflected in an agreement, and the overall ambition of what is trying to be achieved.
"I am still hopeful we are going to see an agreement where all countries, developed and developing, will play a role," Ms Bishop said.
"I think there is a very strong will for an agreement to conclude, and I think all parties are prepared to work throughout the night to ensure that will be achieved."
Some negotiators were preparing mattresses and extra provisions for what is expected to be marathon talks, likely to run past the Friday deadline.
Thomas Spencer, who heads the climate program at the French-based Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, said he feared the emergence of a new coalition that did not include emerging giants China and India could paint those countries - both vitally important for a deal - into a corner.
Mr Spencer said all the options for an ambitious agreement were still in the text.
"I would say, procedurally, it is well positioned. If they had gone further it would have been too risky," Mr Spencer said.
"They [the French] harvested what was there and on some issues things are starting to be reasonably clear."
Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate program of the World Resources Institute, said "all the elements for a strong and equitable agreement are still in the latest, shorter draft", but between 10 and 15 issues were yet to be resolved.
US Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the US would double its annual A$555 million commitment to grant-based adaptation funds by 2020.
"It has been a major thing that developing countries have been asking for," Ms Morgan said.
But while progress edged forward on some fronts, they retreated on others. The EU criticised the omission from the draft of pollution from the shipping and air transport sectors - key industries that cross international boundaries.
"It is a step backwards," Miguel Arias Canete, the EU's commissioner for energy and climate change, said. "In Kyoto [Protocol], emissions from aviation and from ships were taken into account so...we will fight to recover it."

Australia On The Spot Over Adani Mine And Funding Of Attenborough Reef Series

The Guardian - Lenore Taylor

Scientist who features in BBC series says Australia’s positions on reef and coal are incompatible, but environment minister Greg Hunt fails to address contradiction at Paris screening

David Attenborough’s BBC series on the Great Barrier Reef has prompted awkward questions about coalmining for Australia’s environment minister, Greg Hunt. Photograph: Freddie Claire/BBC/Atlantic Productions/Freddie Claire

A leading scientist who features in David Attenborough's new series about the Great Barrier Reef has told the Australian government it cannot expand coal exports and continue to claim to be protecting the reef.
The government is planning a big tourism campaign to run at the same time as the new series screens around the world.
Biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg made the remarks to Guardian Australia as Tourism Australia "clarified" the purpose of its $1.5m in funding for the BBC project. It retracted public statements that the money was a no-strings contribution to the production of the three-part series and said it had now been informed the funds were used for a subsequent educational campaign.
Hoegh-Guldberg compered a panel discussion with Sir David, Sir Richard Branson, explorer and marine biologist Sylvia Earle and the director general of WWF-International Marco Lambertini at La Maison des Oceans in Paris on Saturday ahead of a special screening of the first episode of the series.
Australia's environment minister Greg Hunt firmly requested – some said demanded – a chance to speak after the screening because of Australia's financial contribution to the series, sources told Guardian Australia.
Hoegh-Guldberg, a professor and director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, cut off a question to the panel about the incompatibility of approving Adani's $16bn proposed coalmine in Queensland and protecting the reef, saying the minister would answer it in his remarks after the screening. Hunt did not address the question, but in answer to a similar question earlier at the Paris conference claimed rejecting the mine would have amounted to "neo-colonialism" by Australia. He did mention Australia's $140m "reef trust" to combat soil erosion, crown of thorns starfish and other threats.
In an interview with Guardian Australia, Hoegh-Guldberg said in his opinion opening the coalmine was incompatible with limiting global warming to 2C, or 1.5C in the longer term, goals considered necessary for the future of the reef.
"There's a disjunct between the agreement that we have to keep global warming below 2 degrees, and 1.5 degrees in the longer term, necessary for the healthy future of the reef, and opening the world's largest coalmine. Anyone would see that as strange and the government needs to face the fact that expanding our coal and gas exports is not consistent with the imperative of keeping 80% of fossil fuel reserves in the ground. We need to resolve that as a government and as a nation," he said. "We can't have it both ways."
A spokesman for Tourism Australia told Guardian Australia on Tuesday it had invested $1.5m to assist in the production of the series because it complemented a new campaign featuring Australia's "aquatic and coastal experiences".
He said Tourism Australia had no involvement in the editorial decision-making or script, but had taken "the opportunity to invest in a series with global reach that will shine a light on the Great Barrier Reef, one of the most popular attractions in Australia".
"The timing could not be better for us because our new tourism campaign is all about aquatic and coastal experiences," he said.
But Atlantic Productions, the company that made the series, said Tourism Australia was wrong.
"No Australian government funding went into the production of the BBC television series. Separately, Tourism Australia is assisting in the production of an educational IMAX 3D film about the Great Barrier Reef to be launched in 2017, with various outreach and educational projects which will also be launched later," a spokeswoman said.
"Neither Tourism Australia nor the Australian government had any input in or editorial control over the series" which had been "made under the normal strict editorial guidelines governing a BBC project," she said.
Tourism Australia's executive general manager of corporate affairs, Karen Halbert, then contacted Guardian Australia to say Atlantic Productions had "asked that we clarify our position with Atlantic on this project".
"Tourism Australia funded part of a multi-platform media project (which includes an IMAX 3D film as well as various outreach and educational projects) between Atlantic Productions and Tourism Australia aimed at inspiring greater interest in the world's largest coral reef system. We have been informed by Atlantic Productions that our investment has not been allocated into the production of the BBC television series," she said.
At the Paris screening, Hoegh-Guldberg asked Sir David what would happen if world leaders did not agree to limit warming to 1.5C because of the cost.
"The expense of not doing it is gigantic," the filmmaker said.
"Seventy per cent of all fish species are dependent on the coral reef at some stage in their lives. If we were to lose coral reefs, the biological and ecological destruction of life in the ocean would be enormous and for those people who live on the coast and depend on fish for their food it would be a major loss."
Queensland's environment minister, Steven Miles, has also said that "the greatest long-term threat to the Great Barrier Reef is climate change. If we are serious about protecting the Great Barrier Reef, we need the Australian government to stand up and do our bit to reduce carbon pollution and limit global warming."
The Australian government has backed the 1.5C goal in the new climate agreement, but its national greenhouse gas reduction target has been branded as "inadequate".
Climate change is addressed in the third episode of the BBC series, dealing with threats to the reef. Australia House in London recently hosted celebrities including the Duke of Edinburgh and chef Heston Blumenthal to a special screening of the episode.
Conservation groups have asked the federal court to overturn Hunt's approval of Adani's Carmichael mine because he did not take into account the impact on the reef of the greenhouse gases emitted when the coal is burned.
A recent report found the coal from the mine would create annual emissions similar to those from countries such as Malaysia and Austria, and more than New York City.

Links

• Coal from Carmichael mine 'will create more annual emissions than New York'
• World's oceans facing biggest coral die-off in history, scientists warn
• Australia approved coalmine because it isn't a 'neo-colonialist' power, Greg Hunt claims