By Bart King
If there was any doubt before, it’s clear now that international negotiations to craft a climate change treaty will fail without swift, strong leadership from the United States under incoming president Barack Obama.
On Friday, the climate change conference in Poznan, Poland will come to a close. These talks mark the midpoint of a two-year schedule of United Nations-led negotiations – it can be argued that the 189 nations involved are no closer to agreement now than they were a year ago. As earlier meetings in Germany and Ghana closed without significant progress, the task of creating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol by December 2009 has been even more daunting.
Developing countries continue to assert that rich nations must commit to ambitious targets for reducing heat-trapping emissions and provide funds and technologies to help poor nations adapt to global warming and develop clean energy sources.
Rich nations continue to look at one another and shuffle their feet, while the Bush administration sits in the corner like the kid whose parents forced him to attend the school dance.
The European Union has been the strongest voice over the last year, calling for emission cuts of 25-40% by 2020. But in recent weeks their solidarity crumbled in the face of economic downturn. EU leaders spent the last two weeks trying to salvage their own climate change agreement, leaving the international talks without progressive leadership.
U.N. Climate Change Secretary Yvo de Boer opened the meeting with guarded optimism, suggesting that global economics need not, and should not, affect the fight against climate change. His optimism was perhaps justified by the fact that China appears to be taking a more proactive role in recent weeks, proposing specific monetary figures that could be a starting point for discussions on funding to poor countries.
But as the conference progressed, the subtext of de Boer’s press briefings remained the same: despite making headway on smaller issues, industrialized nations have not responded to the call for tough emissions cuts.
And why should they? Without the United States on board, it’s a moot point. The Kyoto Protocol has failed to turn the tide on rising greenhouse gas emissions, in large part, because the U.S. was not behind it. The system was doomed from the start, without the driving force of the world’s largest economy, and now many participating nations face steep penalties for failing to meet their emissions targets.
Japan, which hosted the Kyoto signing, is scrambling to buy emissions credits abroad to make up for failing to cut emissions at home. And Canada’s conservative leadership, emboldened by Bush’s long-standing denial, simply decided not to play Kyoto anymore.
On Tuesday, de Boer affirmed that the two-year negotiating process would fail without concrete commitments to cut emissions from the U.S. and other industrialized nations.
So here we are, waiting for Obama to take office and wondering if he will have success in bringing the negotiations to an accord. While he declined to attend the Poznan conference, he has been unequivocal in stating that he will take international leadership on climate change, and he sent another message this week by meeting with climate-change crusader, former vice president Al Gore. Following the meeting Obama stated that the matter is of national security and "the time for denial is over."
This is likely to be Obama’s first true test of international diplomacy. The world is waiting for him to lead the dance, but he might not move as well as they would like. He says he wants to reduce U.S. emissions 14% – a return to 1990 levels – by 2020. But the average Kyoto target for industrialized nations was 7% below 1990 levels by 2012.
Will Obama be able to convince these countries to push ahead to 20%, 25% or even 30% on the promise that the U.S. will catch up down the road? I believe he can, if he takes to the rest of the world the same inspirational message he delivered during the election campaign: Disadvantaged people deserve the same opportunities as people of means. This spread-the-wealth message shouldn’t stop at the U.S. border, because the health of the planet and the health of its inhabitants are inseparable, whether they live in the U.S., Poland or Kenya.
The U.S. achieved its world status and standard of living by burning through massive amounts of fossil fuels, and developing nations are only following our example. We must now lead in a new direction. By agreeing to emissions cuts and funding goals, and holding true to those commitments, we earn the right to demand that developing nations do their part-that they end deforestation and reduce the intensity of their emissions until a time when clean technologies are cheap enough for them to cut overall emissions without sending their citizens back into pre-industrial existence.
The up-front cost might be high, but by putting our mighty economy to work within a framework that awards environmental responsibility and funds sustainable development around the world, we will require other industrialized nations to participate, thereby expanding new carbon markets for wealth creation and driving technological innovation.
Leadership is not justifying the path you are already on despite signs that you’re lost; it’s about convincing people to turn onto the right course, even if it’s up hill.
We are on the threshold of a major moment in U.S. and world history. We can pay to rebuild our global image as leaders of equality, or we can take the conservative approach, and sell our beachfront properties.
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Bart King is News Editor of SustainableBusiness.com. This column is available for syndication.
Contact bart@sustainablebusiness.com.
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