The US and China met with India, Brazil, and South Africa today and hacked together a modest deal. This has yet to be approved by the 193 nations present, but it covers the G-2 which is the minimum to move forward.
The leaders called climate change “one of the greatest challenges of our time,” and duly pledged to hold the global temperature below 2 degrees (as recommended by the IPCC). That’s about where the good news ends.
The text is full of exceptions for so-called ‘developing nations‘ – a group that includes some of the world’s largest polluters, and rich industrialized nations like Singapore. (Haven’t statisticians like Hans Rosling should have vanquished this misrepresentation long ago?)
The only really meat of the agreement is that ‘developed countries’ have made a series of add-hoc pledges to reduce emissions to varying levels ranging from 5% (croatia) to 35% (norway). These pledges will be verified and reported but there is no mention of a legal mechanism or any sanctions of any sort. Developing countries are not held to any pledges whatsoever. In short, this is a non-deal.
Despite not contributing any verifiable reductions, the ‘developing’ countries have negotiated a boatload of climate mitigation funding from the EU, US, and Japan.
There are clearly some good-guys and bad guys emerging in the new climate politics. The Europeans are to be applauded for making both generous contributions and substantial emissions pledges, The teen-level reductions that the US has pledged are certainly an improvement over the Bush years. The real villains emerging in the climate sphere are India and China who are still belligerently stuck on the idea that polluting is their right. They are wrong. Let’s hope they clean up their approach by Cop16.
Download the text here:Climate Deal – Dec 18 [pdf]