Developing Nations Assert that Wealthy Nations Are Resigned to More Risky Climate Changes

Advocates for developing countries are pushing back hard against a consensus in some quarters that a new global climate change agreement need not avert catastrophic warming.

In comments to ClimateWire, several officials said they are concerned about what they perceive as a growing sense of resignation among U.S. analysts that countries will fail to be ambitious in slashing greenhouse gas emissions under a new agreement.

One activist declared that it would be an "act of war" if nations -- especially wealthy industrialized countries -- do not meet the levels of cuts scientists agree is needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change.  Others said aiming for anything lower than averting a 2-degree-Celsius rise in temperatures over preindustrial levels -- the "guard rail" of tolerable climate change -- willfully ignores the threats posed to billions of the world's poorest people.

"From the simple perspective of the Philippines, one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, failing to meet the 2-degrees target is condemning countries like mine to a dreadful future," said Naderev Saño, the Philippines' lead climate negotiator in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change talks.

Saño said the December 2015 meeting in Paris, where leaders have vowed to sign a powerful new global agreement in which all countries make contributions to cutting emissions after 2020, is the "last chance" for an ambitious deal that helps the poorest and most threatened countries.

"A Paris agreement that fails to avert the climate crisis will be reckoned as our generation's failure to confront this challenge head-on," he said.  "An agreement that does not include the biggest emitters in the world is a sick joke, and one that we will never take with any grain of humor."

A setup for 'failure'?

The demand for a global agreement that drastically scales back emissions clashes with what others -- particularly U.S. analysts -- say is unrealistic and perhaps not even the most important element of a new agreement.  It also sets up a potential battle leading up to Paris between developed and developing countries over a critical piece of the new agreement.

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million (ppm) last year for the first time in human history, according to measurements from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.  In order to keep global temperature rise consistent with the 2-degree goal, they must stay below 450 ppm.  But a study this summer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that based on targets countries are likely to deliver for Paris, concentrations would actually rise to 530 to 580 ppm.

Developing Nations Assert that Wealthy Nations Are Resigned to More Risky Climate Changes