A new international climate change agreement must avert catastrophic global warming, and the only way to do that is with a legally binding treaty, European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard said Tuesday.
In an interview with ClimateWire, Hedegaard said the European Union will insist upon an ambitious deal in 2015 that is legally binding for all countries, even if that is at odds with the Obama administration's efforts to develop a more voluntary agreement that does not need to be approved by the U.S. Congress.
"Our own experience in Europe is, it helps when you have something binding and not just nice intentions. We also have this tradition in our international politics that it is not dangerous to have binding agreements. It's your assurance that if you make a deal with somebody else, you can be sure they are also delivering," Hedegaard said.
"We know, of course, that the Americans have problems in getting the policies and the international binding agreements agreed and adopted in their Congress," she said. "We all know there is a real issue there. But I think that we also need to hear more from the Americans, not only about what they cannot do ... but really need the Americans to reflect on how far they will be able to go."
Hedegaard's comments come as countries prepare for a U.N. climate change summit in New York on Sept. 23 that many hope will bring global attention to the new agreement. Countries have already agreed that the deal will be signed in Paris in December of 2015, go into effect in 2020 and for the first time demand action from all major greenhouse gas polluters.
But a host of issues remain unresolved. Among them: What level of action should be expected of wealthy, longtime polluters like the United States compared to emerging powers like China; how much money will rich countries deliver to help poor and vulnerable nations adapt to risks posed by climate change and to develop clean energy systems; what legal form will the agreement take; and how deeply will countries be prepared to curb their emissions in the years after 2020?
More at stake than American politics
Hedegaard said the last two issues are intimately connected. The targets in the Paris deal must, she insisted, be consistent with keeping the global temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, beyond which scientists predict catastrophic and irreversible changes. Averting the worst consequences of climate change, she argued, demands more than a voluntary approach in which countries contribute what they can and submit to reviews.
Hedegaard acknowledged that the U.S. proposal would allow the administration to avoid the need for approval in the Senate -- where there is almost zero chance of lawmakers ratifying a treaty. But, she said, the United States also can't leave other nations to the mercy of shifting American politics.
Europe Pushes Obama Admin to Move Beyond Voluntary Emissions Controls
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
- Estimates of the incremental emission effects of individual oil sands projects like the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline are sensitive to assumptions about the response of world markets and alternative transportation options.
- A recent Nature Climate Change paper by Erickson and Lazarus concludes that KXL may produce incremental emissions of 0-110 million tonnes of CO2 per year, but the article has provoked some controversy.
- Comments by industry leaders and the recent shelving of a new bitumen mining project suggest that the expansion of the oil sands may be more transportation constrained and more exposed to cost increases than is sometimes assumed.
- Looking at the longer-term commitment effects of new infrastructure on cumulative emissions supports the higher-end incremental estimates.
Keystone XL: Oil Markets and Emissions
The United Nations is warning of floods, storms and searing heat from Arizona to Zambia within four decades, as part of a series of imagined weather forecasts released on Monday for a campaign publicizing a UN climate summit.
"Miami South Beach is under water," one forecaster says in a first edition of "weather reports from the future", a series set in 2050 and produced by companies including Japan's NHK, the US Weather Channel and ARD in Germany.
The UN World Meteorological Organization, which invited well-known television presenters to make videos to be issued before the summit on 23 September, said the scenarios were imaginary but realistic for a warming world.
A Zambian forecaster, for instance, describes a severe heatwave and an American presenter says: "The mega-droughtin Arizona has claimed another casualty."
Some, however, show extreme change. One Bulgarian presenter shows a red map with temperatures of 50C (122F) – far above the temperature record for the country of 45.2C (113F) recorded in 1916.
Video: UN Predicts Climate Hell in 2050 With Imagined Weather Forecasts
A lack of available water could crimp energy development in many of the nations with the most abundant shale oil and shale gas resources, a new study predicts.
Forty percent of the world’s countries with the largest shale oil and shale gas resources have arid conditions or steep competition for water, according to the World Resources Institute report, Global Shale Gas Development: Water Availability & Business Risk.
“Water risk is one of the most important, but underappreciated challenges when it comes to shale gas development,” said Andrew Steer, president and CEO of WRI. “With 386 million people living on land above shale plays, governments and business face critical choices about how to manager their energy and water needs. This analysis should serve as a wake-up call for countries seeking to develop shale gas. Energy development and responsible water management must go hand in hand.”
Because hydraulic fracturing to stimulate oil and gas production is becoming so widespread and uses large quantities of water, there is likely to be stiff competition from other water users such as agriculture. The report found that in two-fifths of shale energy plays, agriculture is the largest user of available water.
The WRI report comes on the heels of a similar study of such water competition in the U.S. That report by CERES found that nearly half of about 25,000 operating oil and gas wells were located in areas of higher water stress.
Lack of Water Could Limit Oil and Gas Development in Energy-Rich Nations
