One more from New Energy Finance Day 10 - It's a question of "all or nothing" now
http://www.newenergyfinance.com/Copenhagen/blog/13/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Copenhagen+Blog+Alert+-+Day+10 Today at 08:51 by Guy Turner “We are here today to write a different future.” With these words UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon welcomed the high-level politicians to the Bella Centre on Tuesday night while, at the same time, just a few rooms away, delegates in working groups and informal consultations were literally re-writing the crucial texts to be sent forward into the Conference Plenary. The draft reports prepared by the Chairs of both negotiation tracks aiming to summarise the results of last week’s discussion triggered a vast inflow of complaints and requests for corrections. Parties question specific details as well as fundamental approaches. The texts were supposed to be handed over to the ministers for debate on Wednesday morning, however, after a long night of heated debates that seemed unlikely to happen. Zammit Cutajar, Chair of the Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), called the progress made disappointing, and Ashe, Chair of the Working Group on further commitments under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP), expressed his frustration that the working group’s report is in “no shape” yet to be presented to the ministers. In the absence of finalised reports and due to uncertainty about how to proceed, sessions in the Plenary were once again suspended in the afternoon. Requests from the US have significantly stalled progress in the final session of the AWG-LCA on early Wednesday morning. Following suggestions from the US, the text proposed by the Chair was watered down to a degree that comes close to meaninglessness. Regarding mitigation commitments for developed countries, the US requested bracketing numbers referring to aggregate range of emission reductions and moreover asked for putting in a further option labelled “x”, which basically translates into whatever individual parties’ pledges add up to. Regarding developing country mitigation efforts, the US also opted for bracketing the entire paragraph, and inserting an additional option as a placeholder for whatever alternatives parties might come up with. These changes emphasise once more that the US has no intention to participate in a global agreement with a structure that is similar to the Kyoto Protocol. What the US want is a bottom-up architecture that enables it to pledge its domestic targets at the international level but does not oblige them to take any step beyond that. Ironically, Senator John Kerry told journalists later the day that the passing of serious US climate legislation in 2010 will in turn require progress being made at the UN level. So who stands in whose way here? To up the ante in the final “make-or-break” phase of the talks Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen took over the COP presidency from Connie Hedegaard on Wednesday morning. He has consulted with different groups during the afternoon to produce a new compromise proposal for agreement which can serve as the basis for the high-level talks, however, Yvo de Boer confirmed in a press conference later at night, that it is not clear whether a new Danish text has actually ever been published. Rumours say that multiple draft texts are still in circulation. With no obvious common political vision it is looking increasingly likely that the outcome from the talks will merely be a long list of options. UK’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown as well as German Chancellor Merkel have acknowledged that no agreement might be achieved by Friday. In this case, meeting the 2010-timeframe for signing a legally binding treaty would become almost impossible. Regarding the complexity of the consensus reaching process, AWG-LCA Chair Cutajar said yesterday that „nothing is decided until everything is decided.“ In terms of timing however, deciding nothing within the next 24 hours will decide everything. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
