The History of Climate Change Negotiations in 83 seconds

Victory here is to change a word, [...]]]>

Qatar and Doha at night

You would never know I am an urgent, existential issue threatening human civilisation at the U.N. climate summit here in the final week in Doha. It is more like a trade negotiation, where hard-fought agreement to change the word “shall” to “may” in a document is considered progress.

Victory here is to change a word, not the world.

Three years ago, more than 100,000 people marched through the streets of Copenhagen during COP15 shouting “System Change, Not Climate Change!” There is not even a whisper of that call here at COP18.

Outside the security barriers, the Qatari capital of Doha, one of the world’s most energy-profligate cities, ignores what’s going on inside COP18. There was a march on Saturday, the first ever in the city, apparently. Three hundred mainly young people marched asking Arab nations to lead in taking action to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Marchers were careful not to say “system change” in a country where a poet was jailed for life only two days before. He had written a poem deemed insulting to Qatar’s Emir, the ruler of this country built on gas and oil.

And yet “system change” is clearly what you need. Your global economy is based on fossil fuels that put more than 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere every year. It is this carbon pollution that makes me ever more powerful. And don’t forget your carbon footprint will be cooking the planet long after you are gone. What will your grandchildren and great-grandchildren think of the way you spent your life?

No one wants to leave this awful legacy. So why is there so little change? Coal, gas and oil companies represent the richest and most powerful industry ever. If they don’t want change, nothing will change. After 18 years of U.N. climate negotiations, humanity is still increasing CO2 emissions. In fact, emissions will reach yet another record high in 2012.

Nothing here at COP 18 will prevent 2013 from setting another record for CO2 emissions.

The U.N. climate negotiations may be the most complex and difficult ever attempted, but all that is being decided is who will do what, by when and who will pay. Everyone here knows the real problem is a “lack of political will”. Political will is not at COP 18, it resides in national capitals. And that’s where fossil fuel interests are most at home.

I am not a science problem, or a technical issue or even an economic challenge. My growing power is a failure of democracy. The interests of a few are trumping the welfare of the many – and the welfare of seven generations to come.

Outside, it’s actually winter and [...]]]>
Everyone is cold inside the giant Qatar National Convention Centre where the U.N. climate summit is in its fourth day. The fossil-fuel powered air conditioning is making people cold while they work to keep me, Global Warming, from roasting the planet.

Outside, it’s actually winter and rather pleasant, if a little dusty, in this skyscraper capital of Doha. Inside, delegates from 194 states plus the European Union are ignoring me and seem to think they are in a business meeting hammering out some kind of trade deal.

You cannot negotiate with me. I will not compromise or be reasonable. I will not wait for you to come up with a perfect “win-win” solution, if such a thing even exists. I simply respond to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The more CO2 that’s up there from burning fossil fuels and deforestation, the hotter the planet gets. That’s it.

Humanity ought to know by now that it has its finger on the planet’s thermostat. The simple decision here in Doha is whether to continue to dial that thermostat higher or turn it down. From what I’ve seen in the past few days, you are choosing to turn up the temperature a lot higher by failing to agree on how to turn the temperature down.

This seems an odd choice. A hotter planet will be particularly bad for humans and your civilisation. You are on your way to a world that is four degrees C hotter, which means temperatures over land will be four to 10C higher. Places where you now thrive will become uninhabitable. Billions will suffer, millions will die. This apocalyptic future you are creating is less than a lifetime away. And the road to four degrees C is unlikely to be a pleasant journey.

Apparently, for most countries, political and economic considerations trump survival. Many nations are saying here in Doha that they can do no more to reduce emissions beyond their current reduction targets. Those targets are so low that even meeting them invites a four degree C world.

I find it fascinating that youth delegates who will inherit this four degree world have so little say or influence here. They are sometimes able to make a direct plea with their government officials or perhaps to a minister for urgent action. Officials assure the youth (those between 18 and 30) that they take global warming and their futures very seriously and will do what they can.
But in meeting after meeting, those assurances are forgotten during the detailed negotiations over who will do what by when and who will pay.

Youth here are using words like “betrayal” but it’s not clear who is listening. For the first time ever, Arab youth from 15 nations have organised and come to tell their delegations that “yes, we do want urgent action on climate, and we want Arab nations to take the lead.” Those delegations were apparently shocked this week to learn young Arabs take global warming so seriously. Arab countries have been feeling my impacts with record high temperatures and flooding. No part of the world has been untouched even with only a 0.8C of warming.

In the next few days, we will see if Arab nations, or any other nation, takes a lead. Meanwhile, every day another 10 million tonnes of climate-heating CO2 is pumped into atmosphere. Time is not on your side.

I’m partial to that last one.

But since you created me, you can call me whatever [...]]]>

Photo Credit: Tom Mascardo / CC BY-ND 2.0

I’ve been getting a lot of press lately what with Hurricane Sandy and the U.N. climate summit in Doha, Qatar. Please allow me to introduce myself. You’ve been calling me “global warming” or “climate change” or even “climate weirding”.

I’m partial to that last one.

But since you created me, you can call me whatever you like. I am the result of burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, which have added 40 percent more carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere than there was a hundred or so years ago. That extra CO2 has made the entire planet, including the oceans, hotter.

The warming so far looks small at 0.8 degrees C, but the impacts have been huge, resulting in billions of dollars in damages and hundreds of thousands of deaths every year from extreme weather and loss of food production. [http://daraint.org/] The heating of the planet will be far greater – three or four times more – without the major cuts in CO2.

Something like 17,000 people from every nation on the planet have come to the big U.N. climate summit in Doha called COP 18 (Convention of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change). They are here to figure out how to keep me – global warming – from getting stronger and becoming ever more dangerous.

Everyone here knows what needs to be done: stop burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. The problem they have struggled with over the past 17 COPs is how to do it, who goes first, and how big the reductions should be. And that has become a very messy problem.

Some say it’s a “wicked” problem – unsolvable by normal means.

Most delegates work hard during these two-week annual COP meetings. Many meet in supplementary meetings three or four times a year. There have been successes. The European Union (EU) and its 27 member nations use less fossil fuels now. On paper, the EU has cut its CO2 emissions by 20 percent compared to those in 1990.

However, in reality they “exported” those emission cuts to China and other countries by getting them to manufacture the ever-increasing amounts of goods and services Europeans buy.

More than 25 percent of China’s emissions result from making goods they sell to other countries.

But all that matters to my increasing strength and power is the total amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere. It makes no difference where it comes from.

Two things to remember about CO2: First, it accumulates, piling up in the atmosphere and making me stronger. Second, CO2 stays up there for a hundred or more years. CO2 emitted today will still be trapping heat from the sun on Nov. 27, 2112.

Every year, the amounts of CO2 being added set a new record because it is always more than the year before. The one exception was the 2009 global recession. Emissions for 2009 were one percent less than 2008. However, in 2010 emissions jumped five percent over 2009, the biggest increase ever. Last year, global emissions increased three percent.

The folks here in Doha have their work cut out for them. If global emissions don’t begin to decline for good in the next three to five years, so much CO2 will pile up it is likely I will become extremely dangerous climate change.

After 17 years, will this COP be any different? The urgency and awareness has never been greater. Everyone knows what needs to be done, but who will be willing to do it?