The world has gathered in Qatar to try to reach a new climate pact for
2020. Despite years of talks, nations have disagreed on how to cut
harmful emissions. Can they strike a deal this time? CNN investigates.
FULL STORY
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ARAB VIEW
(CNN) -- On December 11, 1997, the world agreed that
climate change needed to be tackled. The grandly named United Nations
Framework on Climate Change adopted the Kyoto Protocol on that day, and
it was eventually ratified by 191 countries. Now it's about to expire
with a whimper.
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Trying to agree a Kyoto 2.0, as the planet simmers
November 26, 2012 -- Updated 1617 GMT (0017 HKT)
(File photo) Children walk on a footbridge over the polluted Cipinang river in Jakarta on November 13, 2012
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Nearly 200 delegations have gathered in Qatar to plan for a new international climate pact
- Developed, developing countries disagree over how to share burden of cutting emissions
- Earth is seeing crop failures, new weather patterns, record ice melt, acidifying oceans
- There's doubt that at the global level, emissions-cutting goals will be matched by deeds
Of the major industrial
powers, only the European Union is prepared to continue adhering to the
Kyoto pact's provisions on cutting greenhouse gases into 2013. Canada,
Russia and Japan have already said they won't. The United States never
ratified the agreement. So attention is turning to devising a "Kyoto
2.0."
This week, nearly 200
delegations have gathered in Qatar to plan for a new international
climate pact that would come into effect in 2020. But there are huge
disagreements between developed and developing countries over sharing
the burden.
The Kyoto agreement
envisaged binding cuts in emissions by the industrialized world -- but
not by rapidly industrializing countries like China and India. They are
now the largest and third-largest generator of carbon emissions,
respectively, and developing countries account for more than half the
world's emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.
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The global economic
slowdown has helped curb emissions in the developed world. But China and
the United States were together responsible for more than 40% of
emissions in 2009. U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide have risen by 10.5%
since 1990. And China is heavily reliant on coal -- the most
carbon-intensive of fossil fuels -- to drive its economic growth.
The stakes for the
environmental health of the globe and its citizens have gotten a lot
higher in the last 15 years, amid widespread crop failures in the
Northern Hemisphere, changing weather patterns, acidifying oceans and a
record ice melt in the Arctic Ocean. Right now, a Russian tanker
carrying liquefied natural gas is steaming through the Arctic on its way
to Japan -- the first such vessel ever to take the route, thanks to
thinner ice cover.
The last decade has seen nine of the hottest years on record. And in a new report, the World Bank
cites the "nearly unanimous" prediction by scientists that the globe
will warm by as much as 4 degrees Celsius this century. It expects the
consequences to include "the inundation of coastal cities; increasing
risks for food production potentially leading to higher malnutrition
rates; many dry regions becoming dryer, wet regions wetter."
"Recent extreme heat
waves such as in Russia in 2010 are likely to become the new normal. ...
Tropical South America, central Africa, and all tropical islands in the
Pacific are likely to regularly experience heat waves of unprecedented
magnitude and duration," according to the World Bank study.
The World Meteorological
Organization, a U.N. agency, reported last week that global carbon
dioxide emissions had risen by 50% since 1990. There's fresh evidence
that they are still rising, and an overwhelming majority of climate
scientists say the warming of the planet is accelerating, with
consequences we can't predict. Scientists describe this as the "cascade
of uncertainties."
The WMO calculates that
the volume of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has now reached 390.9
parts per million, roughly 40% higher than the level before the
Industrial Revolution. 375 billion tons of carbon have been released
into the atmosphere since 1750.
About half has been
absorbed by the oceans and the Earth's biosphere; the rest will remain
in the atmosphere for centuries, gradually cooking the planet.
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The latest data from the
WMO also shows that emissions of nitrous oxide are 20% higher than in
the preindustrial era, and are accelerating. That's a cause for concern
because nitrous oxide is much more "toxic" that carbon dioxide; its
impact on the climate is about 300 times greater. About 40% of the
nitrous oxide emitted is from human activity, according to WMO
estimates.
There are glimmers of
renewed interest in climate change. President Barack Obama, in his
victory speech on the night of the election, said he wanted to "pass on a
country that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming
planet."
The European Union has
already cut in its emissions by one-fifth, compared with 1990, and is
considering extending that to 30% by 2020.
A U.N. program is
encouraging small-scale projects that address warming at the local
level. One such project is in the sprawling Indian city of Ahmedabad,
where a fleet of buses running on compressed natural gas is reducing air
pollution. In a city of 7 million, one-fifth of commuters have jumped
off their motorcycles and scooters and onto the buses.
But there is already widespread doubt that at the global level, aspirations will be matched by deeds.
Three years ago, at the
abortive climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, rich countries promised
the poor they would raise $100 billion by 2020 to help them cope with
climate change. Budget pressures in developed countries make that target
look very distant now. Nongovernmental organizations like Oxfam are
lobbying for new taxes on the aviation and shipping industries to help
raise the money. They contrast the rapid recovery in the U.S. from the
effects of Hurricane Sandy with the disastrous consequences from the
same storm for Haiti, where up to 2 million people may face malnutrition
after crops were washed away.
The notion of shared
sacrifice is not one familiar to climate talks. China never tires of
pointing out that while it is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, its
emissions per capita are still far lower than those of the U.S. But
that may not be for long: Last year alone, they rose 9%.
The danger, according to
multiple scientific studies, is that without a redoubling of efforts to
curb emissions, the goal enshrined in Kyoto, Japan, of restraining
warming to 2 degrees Celsius this century, compared with the
preindustrial era, will soon be unattainable.
Right now, the goal of
limiting warming to 2 degrees by 2100 seems like a pipe dream. If
emissions continue their current path, the target will be breached
within two decades.
The European Environment
Agency says the average temperature on the continent in the last decade
was already 1.3 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level. The vast
majority of glaciers in Europe are retreating; river flows are
decreasing throughout Southern and Eastern Europe.
"By the late 21st
century, European plant species are projected to shift several hundred
kilometers to the north, forests are likely to contract in the south and
expand in the north, and about half of the mountain plant species may
face extinction," the EEA says.
Farmers in the U.S.
Midwest have just endured the worst drought in 50 years; the bread
baskets of Ukraine and Russia have similarly shriveled in the face of
intense heat.
Technologies exist that
will allow humanity to make a rapid dent on emissions. Renewable energy
accounts for double the amount of power it did just six years ago.
Carbon sinks deep underground can capture and store emissions from gas
flaring. Better vehicle emissions standards, reforestation and a
developed carbon trading market would all help.
There are all sorts of
green gestures at the 18th meeting of the United Nations Framework on
Climate Change in Qatar, one of the world's highest emitters of carbon
dioxide per capita. Examples are "paperless" documentation and buses run
on natural gas to ferry delegates to the conference center, which is
partly powered by solar panels. But the political will required of 194
delegations to bring the world closer to a new climate pact is yet to be
tested. Copy http://edition.cnn.com
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