76 / Who dunnit?
Copenhagen was a disaster. Who is responsible? Many blame Obama. But the truth is that China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful ''deal'' so Western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. Read this article, it is as compelling as any crime novel. (Don't miss the comments and the update at the bottom.)
How China gutted Copenhagen and
avoided the blame
SMH, Mark Lynas, 2009 December 26
(Guardian News & Media)
Brutal power politics made sure the climate
conference was crushed and the red dragon's future as an economic superpower
was secure. Mark Lynas reports from the inside.
Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed.
But the truth about what happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and
inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is that China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Brack Obama and insisted on an awful 'deal' so Western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? I was in the room and saw it happen.
China's strategy was simple: block the open
negotiations for two weeks and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it
look as if the West had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough,
the aid agencies, civil society movement and environmental groups all took the
bait.
The failure was ''the inevitable result of rich
countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming
responsibility'', said Christian Aid. ''Rich countries have bullied developing
nations,'' fumed Friends of the Earth International.
All very predictable, but the opposite of the
truth. I saw Obama fighting to salvage a deal, and the Chinese delegate saying
no, over and over again. One columnist approvingly quoted the Sudanese
delegate, Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, who denounced the Copenhagen Accord
as ''a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic
dominance of a few countries''.
But Sudan behaved at the talks as a puppet of
China. It was a perfect stitch-up. China gutted the deal behind the scenes and
then left its proxies to savage it in public.
Here is what actually went on late last Friday
night as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama
was at the table for several hours, sitting between the British Prime Minister,
Gordon Brown, and the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish Prime
Minister was chairman of the meeting, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon,
Secretary-General of the United Nations. Probably only about 50 or 60 people,
including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to a delegation
whose head of state was present for most of the time.
I was profoundly shocked. The Chinese Premier,
Wen Jiabao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a
second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama.
The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication:
several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were
forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls
to his ''superiors''.
To those who would blame Obama and rich
countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted
that industrialised country targets - previously agreed as an 80 per cent cut
by 2050 - be taken out of the deal. ''Why can't we even mention our own
targets?'' demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Kevin Rudd was annoyed enough to
bang his microphone. Brazil's representative, too, pointed out the illogicality
of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this
unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel
threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why - because
China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen
accord's lack of ambition.
China, backed at times by India, then proceeded
to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global
emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2 degrees, was replaced by
woolly language suggesting emissions peak ''as soon as possible''. The
long-term target - of global 50 per cent cuts by 2050 - was also excised. No
one else, except, perhaps, India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this. Had the Chinese
been absent, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had
environmentalists popping champagne corks.
So how did China pull off this coup? First, it
was in an extremely strong negotiating position. China didn't need a deal. As
the foreign minister of a developing country said to me: ''The Athenians had
nothing to offer to the Spartans.'' On the other hand, Western leaders in
particular - but also presidents Lula da Silva of Brazil, Jacob Zuma of South
Africa, Felipe Calderon of Mexico and many others - were desperate for a
positive outcome. Obama needed a strong deal perhaps more than anyone. The US
had confirmed a $US100 billion ($114 billion) offer to developing countries to
help them adapt, put serious cuts on the table for the first time (17 per cent
below 2005 levels by 2020) and was obviously prepared to up its offer.
Above all, Obama needed to be able to show to
the US Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation
framework, so conservative senators could not argue that US carbon cuts would
further advantage Chinese industry. With midterm elections looming, Obama and
his staff knew Copenhagen probably would be their only chance to go to climate
change talks with a strong mandate.
This further strengthened China's negotiating
hand, as did the complete lack of civil society political pressure on China or
India. It's an iron rule that campaign groups never blame developing countries
for failure. The Indians, in particular, are past masters at
co-opting the language of equity (''equal rights to the atmosphere'') in the
service of planetary suicide - and leftish commentators are hoist with their
own petard.
With the deal gutted, the heads of state session
concluded with a final battle as the Chinese delegate insisted on removing the
1.5 degrees target so beloved of the small island states and low-lying nations
who have most to lose from rising seas. President Mohamed Nasheed of the
Maldives, supported by Brown, fought valiantly to save this crucial number.
''How can you ask my country to go extinct?'' demanded Nasheed. The Chinese
delegate feigned great offence - and the number stayed, but surrounded by
language that makes it all but meaningless. The deed was done.
So what is China's game? Why did China, in the
words of a British analyst who spent hours in heads-of-state meetings, ''not
only reject targets for itself, but also refuse to allow any other country to
take on binding targets''? The analyst's answer: China wants to weaken climate
regulation now ''in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be
more ambitious in a few years' time''.
This does not mean China is not serious about
global warming. It is strong in the wind and solar industries. But the
country's growth, and growing global political and economic dominance, is based
largely on cheap coal. China knows it is becoming an uncontested superpower;
indeed, its newfound muscular confidence was on striking display in Copenhagen.
Its coal-based economy doubles every decade, and its power increases
commensurately. Its leadership will not alter this magic formula unless it
absolutely must.
Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad
deal; it illustrated a profound shift in geopolitics. This is fast becoming
China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral
environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a
hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action. I'm more despondent than I
have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation
of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power
politics, fell back and drained away.
Guardian News & Media
Comments : SMH, letters today, Monday Dec 28
What an extraordinary right-wing outburst by
Mark Lynas. For 200 years, the under-privileged countries have looked on powerless
while the West polluted its way to an unnecessarily high standard of living.
Now China is playing catch-up, there is shock, horror that they are daring to
emulate the West.
The leading villains in the so-called global
warming affair are China and the US. In 2007, the US emitted the equivalent of
7.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and China 7.1 billion - 27-country Europe
is a long way behind at 5.0, and the rest almost don't count.
China at least has an excuse in that its people
want to enjoy our lifestyle. The US has no excuse other than a continuation of
its greed and selfishness. Why pick on China because, for once, the US has not
got its way, meaning it hasn't got everyone else to pay for its selfishness?
David Greatorex Sydney
The article by Mark Lynas must be of great
concern to observers throughout the world about the experience of their
respective leaderships.
Governments and large international companies
spend millions of dollars each year training their staff in negotiating and
so-called disarmament skills to equip them for situations just like the
Copenhagen conference. Yet they failed to have a strategy in place to counter
the Chinese tactics, which would have been meticulously planned to destroy the
conference and to avoid the blame.
The heads of state meeting should not have been
allowed to start unless the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, was present. While the
outcome would not have been acceptable to the world, China could not have
avoided the blame. It would have destroyed its credibility and ability to play
humbug at future meetings.
D'Arcy Hardy North
Turramurra
Those in this country who poke at China should
consider the following: Australia is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter per
capita; our major source of power is coal, the most polluting fuel source; we
export zillions of tonnes of coal to China, encouraging them to copy us.
People who live in glass houses should not throw
stones.
Sydney Mitchell Erina
Peter Rosier (Letters, December 26-27) says the
arguments of China and India for allowing the Copenhagen talks to fail do not
stack up.
What about our own arguments? We are happy to
ship coal to China and India but imply they should not be allowed to pollute
any more because we in the West have already done a darn fine job of it.
Let their masses live in poverty. Why should we
fund clean technology for them? We would rather keep selling them dirty coal
than clean uranium for their energy.
For 150 years, the West, including Australia,
has saturated our planet with greenhouse emissions, and in the process
immeasurably and radically lifted the standard of living of its citizens.
Suddenly it has woken up to its environmental vandalism and now demands that
everyone else makes big sacrifices.
Breathtaking hypocrisy? Yes. Combine it with
unbelievable self-righteousness, an inability to appreciate the arguments of
the other side and a disinclination to acknowledge or redress problems created
by the developed world and we have the real reason Copenhagen failed.
All such attempts are doomed until the developed
world does some serious introspection and coughs up the money and technology to
transform the polluting processes they pioneered and exported to developing
countries.
Some spine and leadership in setting ambitious
targets of our own would not go astray - not populist spiel such as "no
more and no less" than others.
Darshak Mehta Mosman
Update : 2009 December 31
Obama
blamed for Copenhagen flaws as China writes its version
LONDON: Britain's
former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has defended China's role in the
Copenhagen climate change summit, saying the blame for its flawed outcome must
lie with the US and its President, Barack Obama.
Mr Prescott
helped negotiate the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and was in Copenhagen acting as an
informal bridge between the Chinese delegation and others.
Mr Prescott
fears privately that the Chinese will walk away from the talks if they continue
to be singled out for blame.
In a letter
to The Guardian, Mr Prescott criticises the US
climate change special envoy, Todd Stern, who ''said at Copenhagen emissions
weren't about 'morality or politics', they were 'just maths', with China
projected to emit 60 per cent more CO2 than the US by 2030''.
In his
letter, Mr Prescott claims that Mr Stern's arguments ''ignored the more
transparent measure of pollution per capita, which shows the US emits 20 tonnes
per person every year, compared to China's six tonnes, while America's GDP per
person is almost eight times greater than the Chinese''.
He also
attacks Mr Obama for suggesting there had been a period of ''two decades of
talking and no action. That might have been true in America, which refused to
sign up to Kyoto, but not in the case of China or Europe, who [sic] followed a
lot of that protocol's policies. Indeed, Obama's offer of a 17 per cent cut is
wholly dependent on congressional approval and will still be less than Kyoto
targets.''
Mr Prescott
is the climate change convener for the Council of Europe, with the role of
exploring how to keep the talks on the road.
China itself
defended its ''crucial role'' in saving the Copenhagen conference from failure,
according to the state media's first blow-by-blow rebuttal of European claims
that China wrecked a climate deal.
In a florid
account of the Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao's, 60 hours in Copenhagen, the Xinhua
news agency said the premier staved off the ''unrealistic and unfair demands''
of Britain, Germany and Japan.
The account
avoids mention of how and why China killed attempts to impose 2050 targets for
reducing emissions. Beijing has consistently rejected such long-term goals,
which it sees as a threat to its economic growth.
It also
fails to address claims that China torpedoed the inclusion of a 1.5 degrees
maximum global temperature rise requested by small island states.
Guardian
News & Media