Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and President Obama talk during a meeting at the United Nations Climate Change Conference at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen on Friday, Dec. 18, 2009
The United Nations climate talks that seemed headed for sure disaster were saved from utter collapse late Friday night, Dec. 18, in Copenhagen, after leaders from the U.S., India, Brazil, South Africa and China came to a "meaningful agreement" to combat global warming. The deal contained no specifics on emissions cuts, but it did commit the countries to look to keep global warming at 2�C or less and to promise $30 billion in climate finance by 2012. It also created a framework for international transparency on climate actions for developed and developing nations alike. It's far from perfect — and a long way from what environmentalists were hoping from the Copenhagen summit just a few months ago — but it is a start. "For the first time, all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to combat climate change," said President Obama, visibly tired after a long day of emergency negotiations in Copenhagen. "This is a consensus that will serve as the foundation for global action against climate change for years to come."
But while the five countries who reached the agreement may be satisfied, the deal is far from finalized. Most African nations and the small island states have not confirmed that they will agree to its outlines. Environmental groups are split, with more liberal organizations like Greenpeace denouncing it and more mainstream groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council welcoming it as a first step. Indeed, almost immediately there was harsh condemnation. In a hastily called press conference on the steps of the media center, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, Sudan's U.N. Ambassador and the head of the G-77 negotiating bloc of developing countries, lambasted the agreement and vowed to fight it. "The deal remains just an idea," he said. "Obama acting the way he did definitely established that there's no difference between him and the Bush tradition."
The summit may yet hold a final plenary session , where the countries will vote the agreement up and down — and because the U.N. works by consensus, everyone would have to sign on, although some countries can express reservations. That consensus, however, may be reached because the European Union, though voicing disappointment at the scaled-down ambitions of the deal, said it was supportive.
Obama seemed to anticipate this mixed reception in his remarks after the agreement was struck by the five countries. He emphasized that even though new analyses have shown that existing carbon pledges by developed and developing nations are far too weak to head off severe warming, this deal is only meant to be the beginning. "The actions that we are going to set, we know that they will not by themselves be sufficient to get to where we need to get by 2050," Obama said. "That's why this is going to be a first step."
As part of the accord, developed and developing countries would list their national actions and mechanisms for addressing climate change, then provide information on those actions — and how well they're carried out — through "national communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines," according to an Administration official. That last point was particularly important for the U.S.: the Chinese were resistant to coming under international attention, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had called transparency a "deal breaker" yesterday. Though the details of exactly how the monitoring will be carried out remain unclear — like much in the agreement — it seems to have fit Obama's requirements. "Transparency, mitigation and finance form the basis of the common approach the U.S. and other partners have embraced here in Copenhagen," he said before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington.
When Obama arrived in Copenhagen on Friday morning, Ministers and some heads of state had been up much of the night attempting to craft a workable agreement without success. Obama's day was spent being shuttled from meeting to high-level meeting with major developed and developing economies. At one meeting, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao stood up Obama, and by some reports the President had to finesse his way into a meeting among Chinese, Indian and Brazilian officials, where the agreement was finally struck. The deal, "if not what we expected, may be a way of salvaging something and pave the way to another meeting or series of meetings to get the full result of this proceeding," said Sergio Serra, Brazil's chief climate negotiator. In fact, the accord drops the expected goal of setting a deadline to achieve a true international treaty by the end of 2010; its details will most likely require months or years of further negotiation.
Obama was quick to note that the deal was not legally binding for anyone — neither developing nations like China, nor the U.S. Each country will list its climate actions in an appendix to the document; then, there will be international analysis and reporting similar to what happens under the World Trade Organization. But there will be no legal penalties if countries fail to achieve their targets. "We'll receive a sense of what each country is doing," said Obama. That way the signatories will know "we are in this together, and we will know who is emitting and who is not."
For some, there was a sense of relief and excitement that, after two weeks of stalled talks and a day of frustration and cancelled meetings, something was achieved. Fans of the deal focused on its potential to kick-start clean-energy investment. It may also speed the adoption of cap-and-trade legislation by the U.S. Senate, which is seen as key to establishing a more ambitious global treaty. But for activists and many delegates in Copenhagen, the deal fell far short of what science demands to combat global warming. Many countries are already irritated that they were left out of the last-minute negotiations. "This is a declaration that small and poor countries don't matter, that international civil society doesn't matter, and that serious limits on carbon don't matter," said Bill McKibben, the head of the environmental activist group 350.org. "The President has wrecked the U.N., and he's wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming."
Even if it passes a final plenary vote, the deal will still need to be voted on by the wider U.N. — and with the way the troubled negotiations have gone so far, that's no sure thing. In the end, the compromise was pure Obama: pragmatic, with a little bit for everyone to like and dislike. "This progress did not come easy, and we know that this progress alone is not enough," he said. "One of the things I've felt very strongly over the years is that the hard stuff inspires not paralysis but going ahead and making the best of the situation you are in and then continuing to try to make progress." After two hard weeks, some will argue, it's better than nothing.
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