[As nearly 200 nations struggle
over global climate negotiations, the world’s two biggest polluters sign an
agreement, but it was short on details.]
The pact between the world’s two
biggest polluters came as a surprise to the thousands of attendees gathered
here for a United Nations climate summit. China and the United States, rivals
that face growing tensions over trade, human rights and other issues, spoke as
allies in the fight to keep global warming to relatively safe levels.
“We both see the challenge of
climate change is existential and a severe one,” said Xie Zhenhua, China’s
climate change envoy. “As two major powers in the world, China and the United
States, we need to take our due responsibility and work together and work with
others in the spirit of cooperation to address climate change.”
John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy
for climate, followed the remarks from Mr. Xie with an assessment of his own.
“The U.S. and China have no shortage of differences,” said Mr. Kerry, a former
secretary of state with a long history of negotiating with the Chinese. “But on
climate, cooperation is the only way to get this job done.”
Still, the joint agreement was
short on specifics. It did not extract a new timetable from China under which
the country would ratchet down emissions, nor did China set a ceiling for how
high its carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would reach before they
started to fall. China agreed to “phase down” coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel,
starting in 2026, but did not specify by how much or over what period of time.
The announcement from China and the
United States came on the same day that summit organizers issued an initial draft of a new global agreement to fight
climate change that called on countries to “revisit and strengthen” by the end
of 2022 plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and to “accelerate the
phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.”
The language on coal and government
fossil fuel subsidies would be a first for a U.N. climate agreement if it stays
in the final version.
Yet many countries and
environmentalists said the rest of the document was still too vague on crucial
details like what sorts of financial aid richer nations should provide poorer
ones struggling with the costs of climate disasters and adaptation.
The draft “is not the decisive
language that this moment calls for,” said Aubrey Webson, chairman of the
Alliance of Small Island States, a group of countries that are among those most
threatened by climate change.
Scientists have said that nations
need to cut global emissions from fossil fuels roughly in half this decade to
keep average global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7
degrees Fahrenheit, compared with preindustrial levels. Beyond that threshold,
the risks of deadly heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and species
extinction grow considerably. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees
Celsius.
Negotiators here from nearly 200 countries
are likely to demand significant changes to the draft as the talks enter their
last, most difficult stretch. By tradition, a new global agreement requires
every party to sign on. If any one nation objects, talks can deadlock.
The British prime minister, Boris
Johnson, returned to Glasgow on Wednesday to urge countries to set aside
differences and strike a deal. “The world has heard leaders from every country
stand here and acknowledge the need for action,” he said. “And the world will
find it absolutely incomprehensible if we fail to deliver that.”
But persuading nations around the
world, many of which depend on fossil fuels for energy and have their own
internal politics and vested interests, to move in a new direction is a
herculean challenge.
Mr. Kerry said countries had no
choice but to work together. “This is not a discretionary thing,” he said.
“This is science, it’s math and physics that dictate the road we have to
travel. And we cannot reach our goal unless everyone works together.”
Several experts said the joint pact
between China and the United States fell short of a 2014 deal between the
United States and China to jointly curb emissions, which helped spur the Paris
climate agreement among nearly 200 nations a year later.
“While this is not a game changer
in the way the 2014 U.S.-China climate deal was, in many ways it’s just as much
of a step forward given the geopolitical state of the relationship,” said Thom
Woodroofe, a former climate diplomat and a fellow at the Asia Society Policy
Institute working on United States-China climate cooperation. “It means the
intense level of U.S.-China dialogue on climate can now begin to translate into
cooperation.”
The agreement won praise among
leaders and diplomats at the climate summit, who said they hoped it would
inject fresh energy into the global negotiations aimed at keeping global
temperatures from rising to dangerous levels. With just days remaining before
the summit ends, negotiators are working late into the night to try to hammer
out a global accord that, they hope, can satisfy every country — no easy
task.
Small island states like the
Maldives, which has been inhabited for thousands of years but is projected to
be swamped by rising seas within generations, want all countries to slash
emissions as fast as possible. Oil and coal producers like Russia and Australia aren’t
as eager to rapidly phase out fossil fuels. And large developing countries
like India
are holding out for financial help to shift to cleaner energy.
There are four major areas of
contention as negotiators try to reach a deal before the summit ends on Nov.
12.
Speeding Up Emission Cuts
Under the landmark Paris
climate agreement of 2015, every nation agreed that humanity should limit
global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above
preindustrial levels while “pursuing efforts” to hold warming to just 1.5
degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
To reach that target, each nation
agreed to submit its own plan to shift away from fossil fuels and to curb
deforestation, and to update those plans every five years. While everyone
agreed that the initial pledges put forward in Paris were insufficient, the
hope was that, over time, nations would ratchet up action and get closer to the
goal.
But there are a few big problems.
First, the ratcheting process has
been slow and uneven. Ahead of the Glasgow summit, most countries submitted
new pledges to curb their emissions between now and 2030. Some, like
the United States and European Union, vowed to make deeper cuts this decade.
But others, such as Australia, Brazil and Russia, barely strengthened their
short-term plans.
When analysts added up the
short-term pledges, they found that the world was likely on track to heat up
around 2.4 to 2.7 degrees Celsius this century. That’s an
improvement over Paris, but it would still increase the likelihood of climate
catastrophes that could exacerbate hunger, disease and conflict.
On top of that, many of the
countries most vulnerable to climate change, such as Ethiopia and Bhutan, want
the world to keep to the stricter target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or else they
will face unmanageable disasters.
“1.5 degrees is what we need to
survive,” Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, said last week. “Two degrees
is a death sentence for the people of Antigua and Barbuda, Maldives, Domenica,
Fiji, Kenya, Mozambique, Samoa and Barbados.”
How to speed up climate efforts
remains a source of debate.
Many vulnerable countries want countries to
come back to the United Nations annually with stronger plans until the world is
on track for 1.5 degrees Celsius. Currently, countries aren’t expected to
update their plans until 2025, which some fear could be too late.
But that proposal faces opposition
from fossil fuel producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia. And there’s not even
consensus that 1.5 degrees should be the official goal: The United States and
the European Union have supported focusing on that stricter target, but some
major emitters like China have balked.
Where’s the Money?
Money has long been a big sticking
point in the global fight against climate change, and tensions over
the topic have flared again in Glasgow.
President Biden and European leaders
have insisted that developing countries such as India, Indonesia or South
Africa need to accelerate their shift away from coal power and other fossil
fuels. But those countries counter that they lack the financial resources to do
so, and that rich countries have been stingy with aid.
A decade ago, the world’s
wealthiest economies pledged to mobilize $100 billion per year in climate
finance for poorer countries by 2020. But they have fallen short
by tens of billions of dollars annually.
At the same time, little climate
aid to date has gone to help poorer countries cope with the hazards of a hotter
planet, such as sea walls or early-warning systems for floods and droughts.
Vulnerable nations are warning that
they need far more help to survive. A group of African nations, along with
China, India and Indonesia, has asked for as much as $1.3 trillion a year after 2025, That
dwarfs anything that wealthy countries have been willing to propose so far.
‘Loss and Damage’
Even as vulnerable countries plead
for more climate aid, they have asked for separate compensation for climate
damages that they can’t adapt to. And they argue that wealthy nations like the
United States and the European Union, which are historically responsible for most of the extra greenhouse
gases now heating the atmosphere, should pay. This issue is known as
“loss and damage.”
“Lots of people are losing their
lives, they are losing their future, and someone has to be responsible, and
those people need to be compensated,” said A.K. Abdul Momen, the foreign
minister of Bangladesh.
Richer countries have, however,
historically resisted calls for a specific funding mechanism for loss and
damage, fearing that it could open the door to a flood of liability claims.
Only the government of Scotland has been willing to offer specific dollar
amounts, pledging $1.4 million last week for victims of climate
disasters.
Regulating Carbon Markets
One of the thorniest issues is how
to regulate the fast-growing global market for carbon offsets. The Paris
agreement urged clearer rules on this topic back in 2015, but negotiators have
been unable to agree on the extremely dense and technical subject.
Carbon offsets allow countries or
businesses to compensate for their own emissions by paying for mitigation
elsewhere. But it raises tricky questions about accounting, transparency and
verification.
Some climate advocates said they
would prefer negotiators to leave Glasgow without a resolution on these issues
rather than with weak rules.
“No point in accepting phony carbon
credits into the system, which would directly increase warming,” wrote Mohamed
Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a research institute in Kenya.
Developing countries have also
called for a percentage of proceeds from all carbon credit trades to be set
aside for an adaptation fund. But the European Union has criticized this idea, calling it a “mandatory
international tax.”