We can succeed at Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico – former UN man has a plan
9/9/2010 Guardian Erstwhile UNFCCC chief Yvo de Boer explains how to overcome the obstacles preventing a global climate deal from
being signed.The priority for the next big UN climate change meeting in Cancún, Mexico, is to set out exactly what a global climate deal would mean in practice, according to the man who was until July the head of the UN’s climate body, the UNFCCC.
Yvo de Boer’s prescription sounds rather a modest goal to me, but is perhaps a
sign of how far ambition has fallen since the feverish days ahead of the
Copenhagen climate change summit in December 2009.
But it would, de Boer says, overcome the obstacle that is preventing a global
deal being signed – the countries simply don’t know what they are signing up
for.
They don’t know what to expect in terms of the “rules and tools” that will
govern measures to cut carbon emissions, to adapt to global warming and to pay
for it all.
De Boer, now looking far more relaxed in his new role with accounting giant KPMG
than he was in the fraught days of Copenhagen and Bali, remains adamant that
Copenhagen was a success, but does acknowledge that views on that differ very
widely.
Indeed they do: Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure was our
headline.
He also says that lots of the political momentum that was there in the runup to
Copenhagen, attended by 130 or so world leaders, is still there. I think we can
agree de Boer is an optimist, to say the very least.
He remains, as befits his new business-oriented job, certain that a global cap
and trade scheme – a “market-based mechanism” – is the ultimate solution to
cutting greenhouse gas emissions and limiting global warming.
And it is here that a glimpse of anxiety can be seen: “I just hope they hurry up
and define what exactly those market-based mechanisms will mean, as they will
need to continue after 2012 [when the current Kyoto agreement ends] … 2012 is
getting frighteningly close.”
The US has abandoned efforts to introduce a cap and trade scheme and even de
Boer thinks it is unlikely that Barack Obama will be able to try again before
the next presidential election.
He also used some colourful language when addressing the lobbying by certain
fossil fuel interests. If I was a more ruthless kind of journalist, I could tell
you de Boer said fossil fuel companies were living in the stone age. I’m not,
but the full quote is still fun.
“I do not think oil, gas and coal companies are evil. They are selling
products that we as consumers want. The question is how to balance that with
the needs of the environment. There will always be winners and losers [during
change]. When the massive economic transformation from the stone age to the
bronze age took place, I am sure that stone spearhead makers were pretty
upset.”
Go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/sep/08/yvo-de-boer-global-climate-deal