:: Editorial

Climate: US has to act, not just preach

Sept.24 : If the day-long climate summit convened in New York by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier this week was intended to impart political impetus to the big event in Copenhagen in December, where the world’s rich and poor nations are due to deliberate under UN auspices a strategy to beat back the ill-effects of climate change, it is had not to register a sense of disappointment. There was considerable anticipation that the star of the show, US President Barack Obama, arguably the world’s leading public diplomat, would bring to the proceedings specific commitments on behalf of his country. But this was not to be. Mr Obama spoke fine words to pledge himself to arresting climate change but he fell short of enunciating targets for the United States of America. He is apparently completely unsure about the extent of international commitments that the US Senate would in the end be prepared to accept. This was pretty much the situation at Kyoto in 1997, where the Clinton administration expressed the right sentiments but was unable to get the Senate to endorse these. If three months before Copenhagen, the world’s most powerful economy is unable to accept specific responsibilities, it is hard to see the Copenhagen summit making any breakthrough. By agreeing to cut its CO2 emissions by 25 per cent of 1990 levels, it is Japan — among the developed countries — that gave out the clearest signal of acknowledging the dangers the world faces on account of climate dislocations. On current indications, it is possible that the European Union could also be persuaded to accept the level of emission cuts that Japan has indicated. It is to be hoped that the Japanese and the EU positions would be reflected at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh this week. The Bric — which include India and China — must exert every sinew at G-20 to discourage the United States from pushing the idea of a common G-20 goal for an emissions cut. The G-20 is a body of developed countries and the leading emerging economies. The latter, unlike the former, simply cannot be subjected to an emissions cap. This has not been agreed to internationally, and a move in that direction is certain to be strongly resisted.

Of course, without accepting such a cap, countries like India and China have indicated that they would seek to make their contribution to mitigating the effects of climate change through positive measures such as a much larger use than hitherto of renewable sources of energy such as solar or nuclear power in their economic systems, creation of forest carbon sinks, and the use of green technology. India’s minister of state for environment Jairam Ramesh made it a point to emphasise to the media that India would seek to be a "dealmaker" in Copenhagen, not a "dealbreaker". Chinese President Hu Jintao, although not obliged to accept emissions caps, noted that his country was prepared to cut emissions by 15 per cent of its 2005 levels. The positions of these two countries, which are similar, should go some way in reassuring the advanced economies that the economically more significant developing countries are not avoiding being a part of the solution, although they did not create the problem. In the end, it will be a pity if the effort fails in Copenhagen because the United States refuses to accept an intermediate cut by 2020 of approximately 25 per cent of its carbon emission level of 1990.