THREE STRIKES AGAINST COPENHAGEN; WILLIAM HAWKINS
Exclusive: Three Strikes against a Copenhagen Agreement
William R. Hawkins
On December 10th, the Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China held a press briefing on Premier Wen Jaibao’s attendance at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which started December 7th. Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya presided at the press briefing. He stressed that to make the Copenhagen conference a success “we must adhere to the UNFCCC [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] and its Kyoto Protocol, stick to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and follow the Bali roadmap mandate.†He then laid out Beijing’s three expectations on the conference:
First, clearly define the substantial quantified emissions reduction targets of developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period and ensure those developed countries which have yet not ratified the Kyoto Protocol undertake comparable reduction commitments;
Second, make effective mechanism arrangement to make sure developed countries faithfully fulfill their commitments to providing developing countries with fund, technology transfer and capacity building support;
Third, make clear that developing countries, with technology, fund and capacity building support from developed ones, take appropriate adaptation and mitigation actions in line with their own national conditions under the framework of sustainable development.
The Chinese interpretation of these points has made it impossible for the United States to find an outcome in Copenhagen that both protects American interests and satisfies Beijing. The two rival powers are at odds over fundamental principles.
President Barack Obama finds himself in the same position as President George W. Bush. The U.S. President is again facing a largely hostile UN where China has the backing of the BASIC alliance of Brazil, South Africa, India and the G77 bloc of developing nations (chaired by China’s ally Sudan), while trying to lead the developed countries, many of whom are wavering under the burden of “Western guilt†spread by left-wing intellectuals.
The UN language about “common but differentiated responsibilities” means that the developed countries must be subject to mandated green house gases (GHG) emission reductions, while the developing countries remain free to pursue economic growth without constraints. It is a recipe for putting the Western economies at a competitive disadvantage compared to those in the East, leading inevitably to a change in the global balance of power.
The U.S. has been demanding that the developing countries also accept targets for the control their GHG along with international monitoring to assure adherence on the same basis as the G77 has been demanding of the Western states. But this has been rejected out of hand as a violation of the Kyoto precedent. On the first day of the Copenhagen conference, the G77 orchestrated a walk out to protest any deviation from the two-track Kyoto framework. On December 16th, Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh stated, “BASIC countries are basic reality. We will resist in an united manner any manipulation, any attempt to hijack the mandate of Kyoto Protocol or to give a new meaning to it or to weaken UNFCCC/ Kyoto or Bali Action Plan.â€
The Bali Action Plan or “Roadmap†was adopted in December 2007 at the UNFCCC meeting in Bali, Indonesia. It requires developed lands like the United States to have “quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives,†while the developing states are allowed to temper any such actions within “the context of sustainable development, supported and enabled by technology, financing and capacity-building†paid for by foreign aid from the West.
It is not just the double standard that is unacceptable, but the sheer magnitude of the restrictions the BASIC bloc wants to impose on the U.S. and other developed nations. The demand has been for a 40 percent reduction in GHG emission by 2020 from the base year of 1990. The “cap and trade†legislation passed by the U.S. House that is pending in the Senate calls for a 17 percent reduction from a base year of 2005, a much lower target. Yet, even this legislative goal is widely considered ruinous to the economy as it would nearly double energy costs and cripple industrial production. The best American and European negotiators have been able to obtain in Copenhagen is a target range of 25 to 40 percent, still an unacceptable burden for economies weakened by a recession and massive trade deficits.
China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency ran a story December 14th presenting Beijing’s argument that “Obama’s 17-percent target is less than 4 percent emissions cut below 1990 levels, much lower than the 40 percent cut from 1990 levels by 2020 demanded by developing countries. In fact, the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions continued to grow even though the country has long completed its industrialization. According to statistics from UNFCCC, the U.S. emissions grew by 16 percent from 1990 through 2005.†A hypocritical argument given that at the June UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, Germany, Chinese officials acknowledged that their country’s emissions would continue to rise in future years as China’s economy expanded.
The State Department’s Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern has been rebuffed time and again in his efforts to negotiate a compromise with Beijing. He went public with his frustration at a Copenhagen news conference December 9th, “there’s no way to solve this problem by giving the major developing countries a pass.” He then said, “We can’t have agreement that doesn’t have a real commitment by China. Right now China is the biggest emitter in the world.â€
But it was Stern’s rejection of the Chinese demand for “capital and technology transfer†that provoked the strongest response. “I don’t envision public funds, certainly not from the United States, going to China,” Stern said, adding. “I actually completely reject the notion of a debt or reparations or anything of the like.”
PRC Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Jiang Yu responded the next day, “According to the UNFCCC, developed countries have the obligation to provide funding to developing countries on mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Funding is one of the key factors that decide whether the Conference is successful. It’s an unshirkable legal responsibility for developed countries to provide funding to developing countries.â€
At his press conference December 10th, China’s Special Representative for Climate Change Negotiations Yu Qingtai talked of “the legal obligation of developed countries of taking the lead in reducing emissions and providing developing countries with capital and technology support†and called on the developing countries to “carefully reflect on their historical responsibility.†Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei went further, calling Stern “extremely irresponsible.†It has become common at the UN to claim that if there is a global warming problem (and China is in the camp of the skeptics), it has been caused solely by those countries that developed first. They owe a “climate debt†to the rest of the world, and must now step back to allow others to rise.
In attempting to make a moral case for the international redistribution of wealth, China has called on support from the left-wing groups that have been holding protestors outside the UN conference in the name of “climate justice.†Xinhua reported that “Greenpeace China’s press officer Wang Xiaojun elaborated that He’s words were a clear signal to industrialized nations that the United States and the European Union should no longer blame China while they refuse to honor their own obligations, which is offering appropriate funding to emerging economies.†China Daily, another government media outlet, quoted Vibe Jensen, a member of South Africa-based Actionaid, as saying, “Rich countries have failed to provide financing to poor and vulnerable countries. We believe it is not aid but their debt to poor countries in the amount of $200 billion.”
These statements from members of the international left are in line with Beijing’s claim at the December 15th Foreign Ministry press conference that the main reason the Copenhagen talks have stalled “is that the developed countries have moved backward on the key issues of mitigation, funding and technology. On the one hand, they try to deny the principles of the UNFCCC, abandon the Kyoto Protocol and deviate from the authorization of the Bali Roadmap. On the other hand, they have put forth a plethora of unreasonable requests to the developing nations.â€
The Greenpeace China and Actionaid examples show how supposedly radical groups posing as outsiders, are in practice fronting for the interests of their home countries. In contrast, Greenpeace USA has placed the blame for stalled UN talks squarely on the United States and has sided with the demands of the developing nations. Whereas activists in other countries remain patriotic nationalists, in the West they have turned “globalist†meaning they are anti-nationalist. They fit Gilbert & Sullivan’s description of “The idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone, every century but this and every country but his own.”
Without acknowledging the fact, the Obama administration has been following the Bush administration in demanding any new agreement apply to all on equal terms. President Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol, and Stern said December 9th, “We are certainly not going to become part of the Kyoto Protocol.†Whether this has been a bluff on Obama’s part will be revealed this week, as it is clear that the BASIC bloc will not back down.
Indeed, the PRC Foreign Ministry claims that in a December 14th telephone conversation between Premier Wen Jaibao and host Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the Danish leader assured the Chinese leader, “The achievement of the Copenhagen conference should be built on the ‘Bali Roadmap’ and the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities.’” If accurate, the conference cannot produce an agreement, proclamation, or framework for future talks that is acceptable to the United States unless President Obama completely folds his cards and abandons core American interests.
On Friday, the world will know whether the United States is still willing to protect its vital interests as an independent power, or will submit to the demands of its rivals who want to bring the country down in the name of a UN majority and liberal world opinion.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues. He is a former economics professor and Republican Congressional staff member.
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