Copenhagen: No Binding Targets as Beijing Hits 4 million Cars

While we’ve been enjoying beautifully clear skies for the past few days in Beijing, it’s been a sad few days for the global environment, with the Copenhagen talks drawing to a close with a weak non-binding deal and lots of finger pointing. As if to symbolize the apparent futility of global negotiations on holding back climate change, Beijing’s car fleet officially hit 4 million over the weekend.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper carried some of the most extensive coverage and analysis of the Copenhagen talks, including an account of the drama-filled final day.

Negotiations continued throughout last Thursday night and into Friday (December 17 &18), until a proposal was finally put to the plenary session of all delegate nations shortly before midnight last Friday. Many smaller nations were furious, and felt they were being strong-armed into a deal by the developed world. Venezuela’s representative raised a bloodied fist in an attempt to garner attention, while the Sudanese compared the proposed accord to the Holocaust. Overall, the plenary session was an inspiring display of measured diplomacy and maturity.

In the end the accord was passed, which depending on who you believe represents a "significant and positive" step (China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi) or a deal that isn’t strong, just or even real (Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica).

In short, no targets were set for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there was a promise to provide developing nations with $30 billion to cope with climate change. Unfortunately, no details were provided about where this money will actually come from.

You can access a pdf of the full accord here. Alternatively, the Guardian has provided a neat summary of what the talks did and didn’t achieve, which we’ve reproduced at the end of this post.

Following the chaotic final day of negotiations, everyone flew home and began blaming everyone else for the disappointing outcome. UK climate secretary Ed Miliband accused “China, Sudan, Bolivia and other leftwing Latin American countries of trying to hijack the UN climate summit.” China, on the other hand, “lauded the Copenhagen Accord, hailing it an agreement based on arduous negotiation and the ‘sufficient, transparent and smooth’ communication with other countries.”

Greenpeace China’s Ailun Yang posted an interesting and balanced piece over the weekend about China’s role in the talks, noting that while the PRC has been made something of a scapegoat by Western leaders, the nation’s diplomatic performance left much to be desired.

Meanwhile, back in Beijing, as predicted last week Beijing’s car fleet officially 4 million over the weekend, with the Global Times declaring this morning: “You can't miss them. They're everywhere. And as of this past weekend, there are more than 4 million of them on Beijing roads.”

To mark the occasion, Dr Richard did a post this morning on Beijing’s ongoing air pollution issues, reproducing a detailed article by Will Chickering, the chief Emergency Medicine doctor at United Family Hospital, on how to best protect your kids from the worst effects of the capital’s less than pure air.

Dr Richard also provides a link to an unusually critical piece in China Daily from earlier this month, discussing the ways in which “the Chinese [air monitoring] system creates an unfairly low index compared with other countries.” You can read the China Daily article here.

So, happy Christmas from an ever-warming globe.

Copenhagen Accord – Summary from The Guardian

What it Achieved
-Acceptance by most nations that global temperature rises must be kept under 2C.
-Promise to give poorer nations up to $30bn to cope with climate change.
-A goal of $100bn a year for poorer nations by 2020, for adapting to global warming and clean technology.
-Funding to enable forest nations to protect trees from loggers and farmers.
-Preserves Kyoto protocol, which places binding responsibility on rich nations.

What it Did Not Achieve
-No targets whatsoever for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
-Hitting the deadline for a legally binding treaty, as set out in Bali in 2007.
-No future deadline set for the legally binding deal to cut carbon emissions.
-No guarantee or information on where the climate funds will come from.