UN climate talks see 'delayer countries' throw away the 2C goal

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/01/cop17-delayer-countries-2c-goal

When psychologists identified the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance – the ability to believe two contradictory things at the same time – they might have been describing the world of international climate change negotiations.

Only this month, two authoritative international agencies have pointed out that the world has only a few years left in which to begin taking sufficient action to combat dangerous global warming. The United Nations Environment Programme's Bridging the Emissions Gap report shows that, even if all countries implement their emissions targets for 2020 to their maximum extent, total emissions in that year will still exceed the level required to hold global warming to the UN's 2C goal. Further action is needed now, it pointed out, if this emissions gap is to be closed. At the same time, the International Energy Agency warned that the world has only five years seriously to start replacing fossil fuels by low carbon energy and energy efficiency. Failure to make the required investment by 2017 would "lock in" high future emissions to such an extent that the 2C goal would become unattainable.

Yet at the UN climate talks in Durban, delegates are arguing about whether a new round of negotiations should not even begin until 2015, and not come into effect until after 2020. Some countries appear to be throwing the 2C goal away even as they rhetorically reaffirm it.

The positions being taken on this give the lie to the lazy view that climate talks are always a matter of developed versus developing countries. On the one side of this argument are the countries most vulnerable to climate change – the small islands and least developed nations – and the European Union. These want negotiations on a new legal agreement to begin next year, to conclude in 2015, and to enter into force as early as possible thereafter (the EU has said no later than 2020). On the other side, advocating that no new negotiations should start until after 2015 at the earliest, is an unlikely alliance of the usual developed country laggards – the US, Canada, Russia and Japan – and two of the largest emerging economies, China and India.

[Nihil]

1. Excellent post but too late to recommend it ...

> The positions being taken on this give the lie to the lazy view that climate
> talks are always a matter of developed versus developing countries.
> On the one side of this argument are the countries most vulnerable to climate
> change – the small islands and least developed nations – and the European Union.
> These want negotiations on a new legal agreement to begin next year, to conclude
> in 2015, and to enter into force as early as possible thereafter (the EU has said
> no later than 2020).
> On the other side, advocating that no new negotiations should start until after
> 2015 at the earliest, is an unlikely alliance of the usual developed country
> laggards – the US, Canada, Russia and Japan – and two of the largest emerging
> economies, China and India.

Future palaeontologists & geologists will be mildly bemused by the unknown yet global
extinction event that occurred at this time for the simple reason that there is no
way to capture "fuck-witted short-term profit goals" in the fossil record ...

:banghead: