Missing the wrong target

04 March 2009

The European Union was hoping that, with the arrival of the Obama administration in Washington DC, negotiations on a deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012 might become significantly easier. But the signals in the last few days on both sides of the Atlantic have made it clear that US support for the EU's climate change agenda will not be automatic. First, EU environment ministers met on March 2, and called for other developed countries to supplement the EU's agreed emissions reduction target of 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels with their own mid-term aims. EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said the 27-nation bloc wanted a "30 percent reduction from developed countries as a group." The EU has already said it will scale its target up to 30 percent if other industrialised countries take on similar burdens. But the US response will not have pleased Dimas. On March 3, Todd Stern, the US State Department's climate change envoy, said Dimas's demand for an overall developed nation cut in the region of 30 percent by 2020 was "beyond the realm of reasonable." Stern added that "insisting on a 25 to 40 percent cut below 1990 [levels] for the United States is a prescription not for progress but for stalemate" in international climate negotiations, due to conclude at Copenhagen in December. The 25 to 40 percent figure comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the team of scientists looking at options to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of global warming. The communiqué issued by EU environment ministers on March 2 also referred to this figure, adding that reductions achieved by 2020 should ultimately contribute to a long-term goal of a 80 to 95 percent emissions cut on behalf of developed countries by 2050 (relative to 1990 levels). Dimas said the US should come forward with a 2020 target, and this "should be consistent" with the long-term goal. But according to draft plans put forward by the Obama administration, the US may only commit to reduce its emissions by 2020 to 1990 levels, which would be equivalent to an approximately 14 percent reduction relative to 2005. However the negotiations play out, it is clear that the broad objectives risk being lost amid the range of different climate policy initiatives that will be adopted, and which are likely to be hedged around with opt-outs and exemptions. The EU has already demonstrated how this can happen. In agreeing on a climate package in December last year, for example, EU governments allowed scope for countries to use large volumes of offset credits bought in from developing countries, when calculating their emission reductions. This will mean EU countries will have to make less effort at home -- the minimum 20 percent reduction promised by 2020 will not really be a 20 percent EU reduction. Lack of clarity over the overall goal is also evident elsewhere in the EU environment ministers communiqué of March 2. It states the EU goal of keeping "the increase in global mean surface temperatures... below two degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels, which in turn requires that global greenhouse gas emissions peak by 2020 at the latest and be reduced by at least 50 percent as compared with 1990 levels by 2050." The ministers cite the IPCC as providing the backing for this analysis, but the most recent pronouncements from IPCC scientists have shown that the top-level targets clung onto by politicians are out of date. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, an IPCC vice-chairman, said in September 2008 that even an 80 to 95 percent emissions cut by developed countries by 2050 would only limit the temperature rise to 2.0 to 2.4 degrees Celsius -- in other words, above the level at which policymakers claim the worst impacts of climate change can be avoided. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachuari said in February that 2015 was the key year at which global emissions should peak. Thereafter, they should drop rapidly -- but even then, the temperature increase will be two degrees Celsius, Pachauri said. The European Commission -- the EU's executive body -- says it is keeping the door open to planning for ambitious emission reductions. In a statement, the Commission said that any post-Kyoto agreement should be "kept under review to match the scientifc evolution." However it will be the governments of EU member states -- as well as the Obama administration -- that set out the policy framework at Copenhagen. So far there is little evidence that they will update their targets to take into account the latest scientific advice on global warming. By Stephen Gardner.

 

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