With demonstrators being arrested every day and non-traditional media, plus some mainstream media, being kept out of discussions, the climate change talks in Copenhagen are teetering on the precipice of outright failure. While some progress has been made, even the arrival of the chiefs of more than 100 governments Friday, including President Barack Obama, seems unlikely to accomplish in less than 24 hours what hasn't been achieved in two weeks of talks or the months of preparation for them.
Meanwhile, long-time environmental advocate Bill McKibben revealed in a Daily Kos diary Thursday afternoon, and traditional media subsequently have reported, leaked documents from the United Nations call into serious question governments' claims that they are aiming for carbon dioxide cuts that would hold average global temperatures to a rise of 2°C over the next century. Instead, the cuts could allow a temperature rise of 3°C or 4°C, with more than 550 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That's well above the 350 ppm scientists believe is a (relatively) safe level.
The document assesses the legally binding emissions-reduction pledges of the 36 countries that are signatories to Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol, as well as voluntary actions of some non-Annex I Parties. It was leaked to the TckTckTck climate change advocacy alliance and posted on-line.
The document was drafted by the UN secretariat running the Copenhagen summit and is dated 11pm on Tuesday night. It is marked "do not distribute" and "initial draft". It shows a gap of up to 4.2 gigatonnes of carbon emissions between the present pledges and the required 2020 level of 44Gt, which is required to stay below a 2C rise. No higher offers have since been made.
"Unless the remaining gap of around 1.9-4.2Gt is closed and Annexe 1 parties [rich countries] commit themselves to strong action before and after 2020, global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 parts per million, with the related temperature rise around 3C," it says. It does not specify a time when 3C would be reached but it is likely to be 2050.
The analysis is based on the 2009 World Energy Outlook report from the International Energy Agency.
C'mon, just 1°? What's the big deal?
According to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change [pdf], 2° is bad enough, but 3° would mean 170 million additional people afflicted by coastal flooding and 550 million suffering from hunger. That's equivalent to the entire population of North America and Central America, plus Venezuela and Colombia.
Forestalling this possibility would require pledges to make far deeper cuts in carbon emissions than have so far been elicited at the conference, which ends tomorrow.
The head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, said earlier in the week that even with a 1.5°C rise, problems could be immense.
"Some of the most vulnerable regions in the world will be worst affected. These will be the largest countries in the developing world. They have little infrastructure that might protect them from climate change. The tragedy of the situation is that those countries that have not at all contributed to the problem of climate change will be the ones most affected," he said.
"Some parts of the world, which even with a 1.5C rise, will suffer great hardship and lose their ability to lead a decent and stable form of existence. If we are going to be concerned about these communities, then maybe 1.5C is what we should be targeting. But if we can find means by which those communities can be helped to withstand the impact of climate change with substantial flow of finances, then maybe one can go to 2C."
McKibben, the founder of 350.org, which advocates for keeping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 350 ppm, told the Guardian: "In one sense this is no secret – we've been saying it for months. But it is powerful to have the UN confirming its own insincerity."
In his Daily Kos diary, McKibben pointed out that what the leaked document reveals isn't exactly news as far as what governments have proposed. They "don't even come close to meeting their own goals," he said. "Outside parties have demonstrated this for weeks - Climate Interactive's model yields a temperature increase nearer 4 degrees." That would come from a CO2 level of 770 ppm. For the record, that kind of increase, according to the Stern Review, could, among other things, put 300 million additional people at risk of coastal flooding, reduce agricultural yields in Africa by 35% and cause even more massive die-offs of species already dying at unprecedented rates.
Mike MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute in Washington, D.C., thinks even that may not tell the whole story. In the Daily Kos Climate Change Reality blogathon this past weekend, MacCracken pointed out in his Sunday diary before these documents were leaked:
Unfortunately, even the most optimistic of IPCC’s emissions scenarios result in the CO2 concentration rising to more than 500 ppmv (and effectively even higher due to the warming contributions of increases in the concentrations of other [greenhouse gases]). Less ambitious efforts to control emissions are projected to lead to a CO2 concentration of 700–1000 ppmv. As a result, returning atmospheric composition to a state compatible with the present climate will essentially require going to very near zero emissions for CO2 and other long-lived gases, with much of the reduction achieved by 2050 and the rest by 2100.
In a blog post - How Føcked Are We? - at the on-line environment magazine Grist, McKibben wrote: "[T]his entire conference is an elaborate sham, where the organizers have known all along that they’re heading for a very different world than the one they’re supposedly creating. It’s intellectual dishonesty of a very high order, and with very high consequences."
But Clinton-era Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Tim Wirth, Senator John Kerry and the White House all agree that a føcked agreement coming out of Copenhagen is better than none.
