Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd touched down in snowy Copenhagen tonight, but the news awaiting him was anything but wonderful.
Only three days to go and the negotiations are moving as quickly as a grannie with a walking frame. The draft texts are still drowning in a sea of square brackets; some, such as the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) draft, actually expanded today rather than narrowed down as would be hoped. The most controversial issues — which developing countries deserve financial assistance to tackle climate change and how much should they get? Should the Kyoto Protocol continue or not? Should developing countries such as China and India have their emissions reductions monitored and verified by the international community? — are still being furiously debated.
No wonder the PM was talking down the hopes of a strong outcome in Copenhagen upon his arrival.
“There’s absolutely no guarantee of success,” he told reporters in a Copenhagen hotel.
“I just believe in telling it like it is.”
Rudd’s initial message was that he is here to fight for Australia’s national interest, and will not commit us to do more than the rest of the world.
Expect Rudd to take a somewhat more multilateral, we’re all in this together, angle when he speaks at the heads of state welcoming ceremony on Thursday morning Copenhagen time.
And while Australia won a standing ovation at the Bali 2007 COP13 for ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, Rudd won’t be expecting the same this time around. Two years on and he is now being slammed as a “Kyoto killer” by developing nations.
“The message Kevin Rudd is giving to his people, his citizens, is a fabrication, it’s fiction,” Lumumba Di-Aping, the fiery lead negotiator of the G77 and China, said tonight.
“It does not relate to the facts because his actions are climate change scepticism in action.”
“Australia is committed to killing Kyoto,” he said.
This is a claim that climate change minister Penny Wong has consistently denied, saying that Australia is open to the idea of either a “one track” or “two track” outcome at Copenhagen. The first would see one treaty replace Kyoto, while the latter would see Kyoto continue, complemented by a new treaty bringing in the US, China and other emerging economies.
Also, one of Rudd’s pet projects, carbon capture and storage (aka clean coal) was dealt a blow today when a UNFCCC body decided that it should not yet be included in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This means Australia, which has lobbied forcefully to have clean coal included in the CDM, will not be able to generate tradable carbon-offset credits by financing the construction of carbon capture and storage projects. It will have to invest in renewable energy projects instead.
Last, but perhaps not least, Rudd was beaten by nose by UK PM Gordon Brown to be the first foreign leader to arrive at the summit. About 20 leaders are expected to hit Copenhagen on Wednesday morning and another 120, including Barack Obama, before the conference ends.
I’m personally fairly happy CCS was excluded from the CDMs. The whole idea of selling coal and the technology to clean it up leaves a vaguely dirty feeling. Like selling heroin and syringes.
In time to come Howard’s reputation for porkies will be eclipsed by Kevin Rudd. Having talked its way into power on its green credentials, the Labor government failed to acquaint the community with the economic cost of a reduced carbon footprint ie a lower standard of living. Virtually every economic activity we do is underpinned by carbon-based fossil fuel and without it we be struggling to feed ourselves from our home vegetable gardens.
Now that Copenhagen is bringing these issues into sharp focus, Rudd’s duplicity in selling the country a solution that politically it can’t afford is now being exposed. Most of the environmental happy clappers who facilitated Rudd’s ascendancy in this matter are not prepared to sacrifice their standards of living on the basis of principle. Neither are the big corporate mates whose patronage are an essential component of political survival. How on earth can we effectively limit consumption of carbon-based fuel and in not expect our standard of living to fall to third world countries’ standards.
Now that ultimate reality is dawning, the government is backpedalling as hard as it can to look after its union mates and it’s big corporate donors as they would be the first to suffer as a consequence of effectively taxing high carbon use industries including coal, mining, transport, and ultimately food production and every other energy dependant commodity.
G 77 group is effectively stating that our “emperor” is naked, which has more than the fools and acolytes surrounding him are prepared to do. The G77 is exposing Emperor Rudd to the critical analysis that he does not get at home, and are not mincing their words. In contrast, the home audience has shown itself ready to be soft soaped so we can feel good about climate change but not do anything likely to significantly impact on our standard of living. On this basis we will continue supplying export markets with coal and underpinning our lifestyle with significant carbon-based fuel consumption whilst piously pontificating about our “green” credentials.
With some climate scientists now saying we may have to resort to CO2 capture from the atmosphere (let alone coal combustion), the CCS exclusion from the CDM is unfortunate. We may yet need that technology.
Australia’s international reputation will be well served by the burial of the Carbon Capture and Sequestration concept. However, environmentalists should not relax, because there are many more fraudulent “offset” schemes in the pipeline. If an emitter can claim an “offset” which makes CO2 vanish from thin air, it will be able to claim a right to emit that much CO2. The amount of money involved will mean that salesmanship will be intense.
If a scheme is touted as a real “offset”, we should scrutinise its capacity to reliably store that much CO2 for 10,000 years, in a place where such carbon would not otherwise be stored, and where it would damage nothing in that time. I hope concerned people will become vigilant about these criteria, because those criteria themselves will certainly come under attack by those who want to cheat the environment.
Mark @2.29pm. It’s called trees, grass, algae and perhaps bio-char and iron-seeding of oceans. CCS cannot ever compete with biology in sequestering carbon. Just look at the white cliffs of Dover –effectively what ocean-seeding would create in currently dead patches of the Pacific, this stuff would be solid calcium carbonates and as stable as those white cliffs and be in deep ocean so, unlike trees, not be likely to be exploited by anyone trying to cheat.