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  • India lashes out at climate stance

     

    The Indian Environment Minister had just pulled out of a crucial meeting with Australia’s Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, aimed at breaking the deadlock in the climate talks.

    Senator Wong said she did not know why Mr Ramesh pulled out of the crucial meeting. “You will have to ask him,” she said.

    Mr Ramesh told the Herald he had not “pulled out” but said he was unfortunately “too busy” to hold the meeting with Senator Wong and spend three hours co-chairing a meeting with her.

    “Penny Wong remains a good friend of mine, a very valued colleague,” he said, but he made it clear he would not be co-operating in a session with her to try to break the deadlock even after a request from the Danish head of the United Nations conference, Connie Hedegaard.

    Australia is heavily backing efforts by its allies, the United States, Japan and Europe, to force China, India and the developing nations to sign an agreement to curb their emissions that will lead to a legal treaty on climate change.

    At the same time, the wealthy nations have stalled talks on ambitious cuts in emissions by them under the Kyoto Protocol until there is progress from China and India on the new agreement.

    In an effort to bring both sides together Ms Hedegaard asked Senator Wong and Mr Ramesh to find a way for the big developing countries – China, India and Brazil – to reduce their emissions and lock those efforts into a new treaty.

    With that effort under question, it is unclear how the fraught negotiations will proceed.

    As 120 world leaders arrive in Copenhagen to sign a deal on climate change, concerns are growing that only a weak outcome is likely.

    On Monday the G77 group of developing nations backed by China, India and Brazil walked out of a side set of talks to show their anger at a decision by rich countries to stall discussion of their emissions cuts under the Kyoto Protocol, the legal treaty that binds them at present.

    In what Oxfam labelled a tit-for-tat exercise, Australia’s negotiators then shut down the talks on emission cuts for rich countries.

    In the rancour that followed, Ms Hedegaard worked out a compromise, allotting a pairing of developed and developing nations to discuss the key issues.

    But after Senator Wong and Mr Ramesh were slotted to discuss the most thorny issue of the developing country emissions reductions, the pairing broke down. Senator Wong said it was “regrettable that there are some who are willing to fight about process rather than negotiate about substance when what is asked of us requires so much more”.

    With Australia and its allies coming under intense attack over claims they want to “kill” the Kyoto Protocol, Senator Wong attempted to offer lukewarm support for it.

    “I wanted to make very clear there is a lot in the Kyoto Protocol which is good; there is a lot that we need to build on.

    “But if we are going to tackle climate change we need to do much more. We need to do what is in the Kyoto Protocol and we need to go further.”

    The UN’s senior climate official, Yvo de Boer, and Ms Hedegaard repeated that the Kyoto Protocol and the new agreement had to be discussed and included in any agreement from Copenhagen on Friday.

    The chief negotiator of the G77, Lumumba Di-Aping, from Sudan, said the developing countries had “won” the debate on keeping the Kyoto Protocol alive.

    But members of environment groups now believe the prospects are shrinking that rich nations will come up with an ambitious set of targets to cut their emissions by between 25 per cent and 40 per cent by 2020, leaving political leaders to pull off a compromise by signing a weak agreement at the end of this week.

    Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace said: “What we have here is a crime scene set up for leaders to solve.”

  • Poor nations threaten climate showdown at Copenhagen summit

     

     

     

    The Copenhagen climate talks hit trouble tonight as a number of African countries indicated their leaders would refuse to take part in the final summit unless significant progress was made in the next three days.

    The showdown between rich and poor countries came as ministers began arriving in Copenhagen to take over negotiations. However, negotiators failed to reach agreement in key areas such as emission cuts, long-term finance and when poor countries should start to reduce emissions.

    More than 110 heads of state, mainly from developing countries, are due to begin arriving on Thursday for an intense 24 hours of final negotiations. Delegates hope for a deal on Friday that will ensure temperatures do not rise by more than 2C, and that hundreds of billions of pounds is pledged to help poor countries adapt to climate change. But tonight it appeared that many did not want to risk being pressured into signing an agreement they believe would be against their national interests.

    “The industrialised countries want to hammer out a large part of the deal on the last day, when the heads of state arrive,” one senior African negotiator told the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. “It’s a ploy to slip through provisions that are not amenable to developing country efforts. It’s playing dirty.”

    One added: “It is as serious a situation as it ever has been. It is more than probable many heads of state will not come if the negotiations are not complete. Why should a head of state come to sign an agreement that is basically a non-agreement?”

    High level Chinese and Indian representatives indicated they would be in Copenhagen, but they made clear they wanted key points agreed before they arrive. They also appear desperate to avoid a situation where western leaders jet in and steamroller the main points on the last day of the conference.

    Su Wei, China‘s top climate negotiator, said he hoped there would be no outstanding issues by the time his country’s premier, Wen Jiabao, arrived. “I hope the only question we will leave for leaders is how to pronounce Copenhagen.”

    Indian representatives also said their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, would come to the summit, but emphasised the urgency of having negotiators produce a text in advance.

    Jairam Ramesh, India‘s environment minister, said: “We are saying that heads of state should not be negotiating a draft text. We must have a draft text already finalised. The heads of state should come to leave their imprint on the deal.”

    The UK’s climate secretary, Ed Miliband, conceded there was some way to go before a workable deal was reached. “We’re now getting close to midnight in this negotiation and we need to act like it. That means more urgency to solve problems, not just identify them.”

    One key point of contention is the US and EU insistence that emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil agree to peak their emissions by 2020. Developing countries argue that this would lock them into poverty.

    Analysts say such hard driving tactics are typical of negotiations, but they resonate even more at the climate change talks, which are based on the idea that all 192 countries sign off on any agreement.

    “This is a consensus process,” said Janos Pastor, who heads Ban Ki-Moon’s climate change team. “If they are really meaning that they are going to boycott, and if they are going to do that, it’s serious. It would be a pity if a conflict meant that we don’t reach an agreement.”

    Rob Bradley from the World Resource Institute, said: “Nobody wants to have their prime minister arrive and then inform them they did not strike a deal to talk about. I can certainly imagine that some of those thinking that a deal is going to look bad for them are going to try to persuade their prime ministers from coming.”

  • Copenhagen negotiator accuses Rudd of lying

    Copenhagen negotiator accuses Rudd of lying

    Emma Alberici in Copenhagen and reporters, ABC December 16, 2009, 7:56

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    The chief negotiator for China and the small African nations at Copenhagen has accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of lying to the Australian people about his position on climate change.

    Lumumba Di-Aping represents China and the G77 group of small countries in the Copenhagen talks.

    He had high expectations of Mr Rudd, who flew in to the Danish capital this morning, but claims that throughout the negotiations the Australian Government has not matched its actions with its rhetoric.

    “The message Kevin Rudd is giving to his people, his citizens, is a fabrication, it’s fiction,” he said.

    “It does not relate to the facts because his actions are climate change scepticism in action.

    “All that Australia has done so far is simply not good enough.

    “It’s puzzling in the sense that here is a Prime Minister who actually won the elections because of his commitment to climate change,” he added.

    “He was the only Prime Minister who came and clearly said we have to do something, we have to join Kyoto protocol and all the rest.

    “And within a very short period of time he changes his mind, changes his position, he starts acting as if he has been converted into climate change scepticism. All what Australia has done so far is simply not good enough.

    The G77 and China claim that the talks have broken down, degenerating into a fight between the developed and the developing world.

    Mr Di-Aping accused Mr Rudd of trying to gain a strategic economic advantage by siding with the United States and the European Union at Copenhagen.

    “Australia is committed to killing Kyoto,” he said.

    “All the actions of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is basically a move away and a killing of Kyoto Protocol.”

    He says the talks have reached a deadlock because the developed world is not committed to helping poor countries in their efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.

    Meanwhile, world leaders have begun arriving at the Copenhagen summit as efforts continue to salvage the talks.

    Full ministerial sessions have begun, amid fears too little progress has been made so far.

    ‘Come a long way’</h3>;

     

    UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says rich and poor nations should stop blaming each other for their differences and bring new and more ambitious proposals to the table.

    Speaking at the opening of the plenary session, Mr Ban urged the delegates to compromise to overcome problems encountered so far.

    “We have come a long way. Let us not falter in the home stretch,” he said.

    “Our goal is to lay the foundation for a legally binding climate treaty as early as possible in 2010.

    “We do not have another year to deliberate – nature does not negotiate with us.”

    Earlier, a senior UN official warned that negotiations were progressing too slowly and that there was still an enormous amount of work to be done.

    Observers say there are still deep divisions between rich and poor nations, which highlighted by the Americans saying they do not expect to offer any further cuts in their carbon emissions.

    Developing countries have meanwhile accused industrialised nations of going back on their commitment to fight climate change.

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy, US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have held a 50-minute joint telephone call to discuss progress at UN climate talks in Denmark.

    A French statement says the four leaders covered the main areas that are currently being negotiated at the conference in Copenhagen, but provided no details on their discussions.

    In Copenhagen, Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger told delegates that leaders and ministers will not be able to find a solution on their own.

    “They need to co-operation (sic) the activists, the scientists, the universities,” he said.

    “They need the individuals whose vision and determination create movements. So ladies and gentlemen, let us regain our momentum, let us regain our purpose, let us regain our hope.”

     

  • Archbishop of Canterbury says fear hinders climate change battle

     

    “We are afraid because we don’t know how we can survive without the comforts of our existing lifestyle. We are afraid that new policies will be unpopular with a national electorate. We are afraid that younger and more vigorous economies will take advantage of us – or we are afraid that older, historically dominant economies will use the excuse of ecological responsibility to deny us our proper and just development.”

    Yesterday church bells in Denmark and other countries rang 350 times to represent the figure many scientists believe is a safe level of carbon dioxide in the air: 350 parts per million.

    Joining Williams at Copenhagen’s Lutheran cathedral was Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and religious leaders from Tuvalu, Zambia, Mexico and Greenland. Williams, who led the ecumenical service, said a paralysing sense of fear and selfishness would deny future generations a “stable, productive and balanced world to live in” and instead give them a world of “utterly chaotic and disruptive change, of devastation and desertification, of biological impoverishment and degradation.”

    There was even a sense that people were not frightened enough by this apocalyptic vision and cautioned against this approach, saying it would “drive out one sickness with another.”

    “It can make us feel that the problem is too great and we may as well pull up the bedclothes and wait for disaster. It can tempt us to blaming one another or waiting for someone else to make the first move,” he added.

    But humans were not “doomed to carry on in a downward spiral of the greedy, addictive, loveless behaviour” that had brought mankind to this crisis and he urged people to scrutinise their lifestyles and policies and how these demonstrated care for creation. Hecalled on people to consider what a sustainable and healthy relationship with the world would look like.

    His message for conference delegates centred on trusting each other in a world of limited resources. “How shall we build international institutions that make sure that resources get where they are needed – that ‘green taxes’ will deliver more security for the disadvantaged, that transitions in economic patterns will not weigh most heavily on those least equipped to cope?”

    Williams has had a busy few week: railing against the UK government for its religious illiteracy, condemning proposed anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda, grappling with fresh dissent in the Anglican Communion and travelling to the landmark environment summit.In an interview with Channel 4 News last Saturday Williams warned that there were no “quick solutions” to global warming and said that there was a finite amount that individuals could do to make a difference.

    He said: “I don’t think there are any quick solutions, any absolutes here, but I think these are the sorts of issues about energy use particularly, whether it’s travel or domestically, that have to be really up in front of our minds.”

    Foreign holidays were not an “easy call, frankly” while he decreed that everyone should use public transport as much as possible while at the very least enquire about ecologically sustainable travel.

    He said that high-energy consuming vehicles in a city where there were alternatives were an irresponsible way of dealing with the crisis.

    “We use a hybrid car for that reason as my official car in London. I’m also coming back from Copenhagen by train on this occasion rather than flying,” he added.

  • Offshore Wind Makes Sense for China

     

    Offshore wind particularly makes sense for the provinces on the Eastern coastal region, from Guangdong to Shandong, which have the highest population densities. They have tremendous offshore wind resources which, in cases such as Guangdong and Fujian, are among the best in China. These cities are also where the bulk of China’s manufacturing capability is to be found.  By developing offshore wind farms close to the coastal regions where electricity demand is highest, China can avoid the headache of having to create a series of long distance transmission lines to bring onshore wind power from the far North and the West of the country, where most onshore wind facilities are based.

    Offshore wind does involve high initial investment costs, and this has no doubt been a factor hindering development of China’s offshore capacity. But the long-term advantages of offshore — minimal running costs, longer-lasting turbines, higher and steadier volumes — outweigh the short-term disadvantages.

    The role of China’s government to drive forward offshore wind power is crucial. Proper government incentives are needed to overcome the higher investment costs associated with offshore wind. China’s government recognizes this and has taken steps to push forward the commercialization of offshore wind energy. China successfully installed its first offshore wind farm earlier this year, in the East China Sea near Shanghai. It is expected to become operational in May 2010. There are many other proposed projects, based off the coast of Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong Provinces.

    However, there are large gaps in China’s offshore wind power expertise. While the pace of the market’s growth has been impressive, Chinese firms are still playing catch-up in terms of advanced offshore manufacturing and engineering. To realize China’s full offshore wind potential, technology transfer from developed countries with experience in offshore wind is vital.

    As a world leader in offshore wind energy, Scotland is a ready partner for China in developing its offshore capacity. Scottish firms such as SgurrEnergy are already actively involved in providing consultancy services to Chinese firms.  In fact, SgurrEnergy has been appointed by the EU-China Energy & Environment Programme to advise on the potential for China to exploit its offshore wind resource, and it will also work in partnership with the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) to assess whether it is economically viable to construct offshore wind farms along a 10,000-kilometre stretch of coastline from Fujian to Shandong.  

    Scottish companies SeaEnergy Renewables, one of the only companies in the world with deepwater offshore wind experience, and Crown Estates, focused on the lesser of the U.K.’s deep waters, will be visiting with the Scottish delegation to the China Wind Power 2009 exposition to enhance their growing collaborative relationship with the Chinese government and Chinese wind power manufacturers.  We believe that continued cross-border co-operation such as this will create many opportunities for mutual gain. 

    Most Chinese MW-class wind turbine generator (WTG) manufacturers also remain at R&D or prototype stage. Similarly, many local component manufacturers and service providers are not yet fully capable of meeting the sector’s needs. China’s wind farm developers, meanwhile, have limited practical knowledge or experience of offshore wind farms.

    There are great opportunities for experienced firms to work with China to build its capabilities in WTG system design and manufacturing, offshore power transmission, offshore wind measurement, wind farm design, installation engineering, access solutions as well as maintenance and services. With larger machines comes the need for better-designed substructures capable of coping with the forces involved in such giant wind turbines. Scotland has led the way in this field and applied such substructures not only to large wind turbines such as REpower’s 5-MW turbines but also in the deepest water yet reached by offshore wind. This is a jacket structure technology from the oil and gas industry, an industry in which Scotland has a long and distinguished heritage, applied to offshore wind. 

    Scotland now possesses some 25 percent of Europe’s wind resources and is a recognised world leader in offshore wind. We boast a vast supply base of innovative small and medium size companies who are pivotal in turning emerging technologies into commercial opportunities and securing business gains through technological advantages. Scottish companies are researching a new hydraulic transmission system for turbines, innovative blade manufacturing techniques, operations and maintenance of crane systems and application of various techniques to process gas and oil and operate deep-sea wind power plants.

    As well as tapping into the sector’s latest innovations, China also has the chance to learn from the past mistakes of more experienced countries. For example, it will be tempting for China to start building wind farms in tidal flats or very shallow water, but the lessons learned in the UK’s offshore wind market should be heeded and the problems associated with such sites avoided. To build wind farms offshore one needs a proper water depth for full-time access during the construction period and to avoid later problems for operations and maintenance activity.

    China’s government has been active in developing the country’s offshore wind capacity. However, there are some restrictions to foreign investment and trade in China’s offshore wind sector that will need to be addressed if China is to fully benefit from the knowledge transfer it requires.  Once those are addressed, we see great potential for collaboration between China and Scotland in renewable energy technology transfer, and are working to support Scottish firms in establishing links with their Chinese counterparts to make the most of these opportunities. We are confident that China’s government will continue to strike the right balance between nurturing the domestic offshore wind industry and allowing foreign firms to play a role in developing China’s offshore wind capacity.

    Frank Boyland is Director, Asia for Scottish Development International, a Scottish government organization tasked with promoting international trade for Scottish firms and inward investment to Scotland.  Mr. Boyland is responsible for further enhancing Scotland’s strong trade and investment links with the Asia Pacific region, overseeing operations across SDI’s ten offices in China, Japan, India, Korea, Singapore, and Australia.  Mr. Boyland’s background is in electronic engineering and he has over 22 years experience within the semi-conductor industry, including strategic posts for Chartered Semiconductor in Singapore and National Semiconductor UK in Scotland. Mr. Boyland was educated at James Watt College in Greenock, Scotland where he completed an HNC Electrical & Electronic Engineering as well as an HNC in Marketing, Economics and Advertising.

  • This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity

     

    The summit’s premise is that the age of heroism is over. We have entered the age of accommodation. No longer may we live without restraint. No longer may we swing our fists regardless of whose nose might be in the way. In everything we do we must now be mindful of the lives of others, cautious, constrained, meticulous. We may no longer live in the moment, as if there were no tomorrow.

    This is a meeting about chemicals: the greenhouse gases insulating the atmosphere. But it is also a battle between two world views. The angry men who seek to derail this agreement, and all such limits on their self-fulfilment, have understood this better than we have. A new movement, most visible in North America and Australia, but now apparent everywhere, demands to trample on the lives of others as if this were a human right. It will not be constrained by taxes, gun laws, regulations, health and safety, especially by environmental restraints. It knows that fossil fuels have granted the universal ape amplification beyond its Palaeolithic dreams. For a moment, a marvellous, frontier moment, they allowed us to live in blissful mindlessness.

    The angry men know that this golden age has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings.

    I fear this chorus of bullies, but I also sympathise. I lead a mostly peaceful life, but my dreams are haunted by giant aurochs. All those of us whose blood still races are forced to sublimate, to fantasise. In daydreams and video games we find the lives that ecological limits and other people’s interests forbid us to live.

    Humanity is no longer split between conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives, though both sides are informed by the older politics. Today the battle lines are drawn between expanders and restrainers; those who believe that there should be no impediments and those who believe that we must live within limits. The vicious battles we have seen so far between greens and climate change deniers, road safety campaigners and speed freaks, real grassroots groups and corporate-sponsored astroturfers are just the beginning. This war will become much uglier as people kick against the limits that decency demands.

    So here we are, in the land of Beowulf’s heroics, lost in a fog of acronyms and euphemisms, parentheses and exemptions, the deathly diplomacy required to accommodate everyone’s demands. There is no space for heroism here; all passion and power breaks against the needs of others. This is how it should be, though every neurone revolts against it.

    Although the delegates are waking up to the scale of their responsibility, I still believe they will sell us out. Everyone wants his last adventure. Hardly anyone among the official parties can accept the implications of living within our means, of living with tomorrow in mind. There will, they tell themselves, always be another frontier, another means to escape our constraints, to dump our dissatisfactions on other places and other people. Hanging over everything discussed here is the theme that dare not speak its name, always present but never mentioned. Economic growth is the magic formula which allows our conflicts to remain unresolved.

    While economies grow, social justice is unnecessary, as lives can be improved without redistribution. While economies grow, people need not confront their elites. While economies grow, we can keep buying our way out of trouble. But, like the bankers, we stave off trouble today only by multiplying it tomorrow. Through economic growth we are borrowing time at punitive rates of interest. It ensures that any cuts agreed at Copenhagen will eventually be outstripped. Even if we manage to prevent climate breakdown, growth means that it’s only a matter of time before we hit a new constraint, which demands a new global response: oil, water, phosphate, soil. We will lurch from crisis to existential crisis unless we address the underlying cause: perpetual growth cannot be accommodated on a finite planet.

    For all their earnest self-restraint, the negotiators in the plastic city are still not serious, even about climate change. There’s another great unmentionable here: supply. Most of the nation states tussling at Copenhagen have two fossil fuel policies. One is to minimise demand, by encouraging us to reduce our consumption. The other is to maximise supply, by encouraging companies to extract as much from the ground as they can.

     

    We know, from the papers published in Nature in April, that we can use a maximum of 60% of current reserves of coal, oil and gas if the average global temperature is not to rise by more than two degrees. We can burn much less if, as many poorer countries now insist, we seek to prevent the temperature from rising by more than 1.5C. We know that capture and storage will dispose of just a small fraction of the carbon in these fuels. There are two obvious conclusions: governments must decide which existing reserves of fossil fuel are to be left in the ground, and they must introduce a global moratorium on prospecting for new reserves. Neither of these proposals has even been mooted for discussion.

    But somehow this first great global battle between expanders and restrainers must be won and then the battles that lie beyond it – rising consumption, corporate power, economic growth – must begin. If governments don’t show some resolve on climate change, the expanders will seize on the restrainers’ weakness. They will attack – using the same tactics of denial, obfuscation and appeals to self-interest – the other measures that protect people from each other, or which prevent the world’s ecosystems from being destroyed. There is no end to this fight, no line these people will not cross. They too are aware that this a battle to redefine humanity, and they wish to redefine it as a species even more rapacious than it is today.