Big Nations Don’t Get Climate Change or Deal

SEE FT VIDEO: www.ft.com/indepth/g8-summit

SEE BBC VIDEO: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8142825.stm

Leaders of the world’s 16 biggest polluting countries last Thursday night failed to agree on targets and funding to cut greenhouse gases, setting the stage for recriminations between rich and poor nations.

A sombre Barack Obama, US president, who chaired the meeting of the Major Economies Forum in Italy, said he acknowledged that progress would not be easy and that it would be “no small task” to bridge the differences.

The MEF countries, which produce 80 per cent of global emissions, agreed that the world should not heat up more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels. But India and China resisted a push from the G8 developed nations to set a target of reducing emissions by an overall average of 50 per cent by 2050.

Leaders must “fight the temptation towards cynicism”, Mr Obama said, calling climate change the defining challenge of his generation and acknowledging that the US had a much higher per capita carbon footprint.

“No one nation is responsible. No one nation can address it alone,” he said, noting that he had to “wrestle” politically with the issue in the US and that a global recession made it harder for all countries to get on board.

However, Ed Miliband, UK secretary of state for energy and climate, told the Financial Times that a pledge by developed nations to limit global warming to less than 2ºC “significantly increases the chances of success at Copenhagen”.

NGOs and environmental activists were dismayed at the outcome, calling it a missed opportunity that risked undermining the UN conference in Copenhagen in December, which must set a climate change programme to replace the Kyoto framework expiring in 2012.

“The blame lies squarely with the G8,” said Anantha Guruswamy of Greenpeace. “The blame game will start. The EU and others are blaming India and China and then there will be a harsh pushback.”

While the G8 club of rich nations agreed on Wednesday in what Mr Obama described as a “historic consensus” to cut their emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, they failed to set near-term goals. They also refused to commit themselves to the huge funding required – estimated by experts at some $150bn (€107bn, £92bn) a year – to help developing countries adapt to climate change and cut their own emissions. Mr Obama only said that the MEF had agreed to a “substantial increase” in contributions to poor countries.

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, who will chair the Copenhagen meeting, was quoted as saying the G8 summit had “missed a unique opportunity”.

China in particular wanted assurances from the G8 that intellectual property rights would be relaxed so it could benefit from new technologies to take a lead in clean energy markets.

Joanne Green, head of policy for the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, said the 2ºC limit agreed by MEF was “forward movement but it is woefully inadequate compared to what is needed”.

Climatico, a network of climate change experts, said that, to limit temperature rises to 2ºC, emissions needed to peak in the next 10-15 years. It said the US Senate was the best hope for breaking the impasse by giving Mr Obama a strong cap-and-trade bill.

SOURCE FINANCIAL TIMES/BBC
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