Opinion Sur Joven

Technically called COP15 (Conference of the Parties #15), the convention held between more than 190 countries in the capital city of Denmark brings news, such as a new attitude of the United States towards climate change, as well as the urgent necessity to reach an agreement to stop the Earth temperature from rising more than two degrees.

Yes, it sounds unbelievable: the debate is not about preventing the planet’s temperature from rising, but containing a sudden increase to avoid the catastrophic consequences described by Mark Lynas in his famous documentary, “Six Degrees”. Said documentary describes how a two-degree increase triggers the risks of water shortage, hunger and malaria. The worst scenario would take place with a six-degree temperature rise by 2080, generating the death of almost every life in the sea; the release of methane in oceans would unleash uncontrollable global warming, so human population would radically decrease and about ninety percent of animal species would disappear.

To avoid the worst scenario, frantic negotiations are being held to reach generalized consensus to satisfy everyone over the next weeks. An enormous effort.

Two degrees is a lot

“The aim of preventing the planet’s average temperature from rising more than two degrees emerged from a recommendation of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and it seeks to avoid chain reactions that may worsen an already alarming situation”, says Miguel Molina to Opinión Sur Joven. He is a BBC journalist specialized in the environment.

In Molina’s opinion, the aim is reachable, though in exchange of something he considers to be an unprecedented collective effort. “It requires the political will of governments, and changes in the production methods of all industries and the consumption attitudes of all societies. But one of the obstacles is the economic factor, and some sectors deny the fact that the changes we’re suffering are caused by human action”, he argues, and exemplifies that resistance with the multinational company Exxon, which gives money to an organization to make it say global warming is natural.

Not exceeding the two-degree barrier is relevant not only in ecological terms, but also in political and social terms. Sudden climate changes lead to such an escalation that they end up putting massive pressure on economic systems and the infrastructure of States.

“Drought, for instance, does not only directly affect the farming sector, but it also reduces the profit margins of farmers, who at the same time pay fewer taxes, decreasing the State income. Even worse, in extreme circumstances droughts may force migration from the countryside to the city, which implies a larger amount of population to be served with the same amount of jobs, schools, hospitals, transportation, etcetera”, he explains.

During this month, a preparatory negotiation meeting will be held in Bonn (Germany); in October, another one will take place in Bangkok (Thailand), and in November it will be held in Barcelona (Spain). If everything goes well, the agreements on the reduction level of greenhouse effect emissions will be ready by December, before the Copenhagen conference.

Despite such a small number, the two-degree aim implies a big step. Especially considering that the world should release seventy per cent less gas so that by 2100 the emission levels be like today’s. Their growth has been so fast that, since 1990 until today, they’ve increased by fifty per cent, despite the Kyoto Protocol goals and the progressive changes in some productive processes that are now more eco-friendly.

Interests vs. Climate

Negotiations while heading to Copenhagen are basically about money. They’re deciding which country will spend more money (or lose more money, depending on the view) in the productive transformation, which implies reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and which of them must reduce them and to what level.

The battle is clearly divided in two sides: rich and developed countries, led by the US and the European Union, versus developing countries, led by China, India and Brazil. There are many groups as well that take joint positions to operate with their lobbies, partly due to political affinity, but mostly because of common interests.

This is the case of the small peninsular nations of the Pacific and the Indian oceans, which are unfortunately joined by the fear of disappearing under the water by the end of the 21st century. It is also the case of large oil-selling countries, which would not obtain any benefit out of the development of less carbon-intensive economies.

“The Copenhagen Conference should decide the steps to follow regarding the climate regime after 2012. And it should also discuss the commitments related to the Climate Change Convention. The key difference in this case is the participation of the US, absent in the Kyoto Protocol”, explains economist Osvaldo Girardin to Opinión Sur Joven. He is a researcher at Argentina’s CONICET [1], manages the Environment Program of Fundación Bariloche and is a member of the IPCC National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme.

“Talking about emissions means talking about consumption and production patterns, and about the long-run competitiveness of the different economies. It is not a coincidence that the European Union is willing to make reductions that the US, Japan and other countries such as Australia and Canada can’t make because their energetic matrixes and productive profiles are highly carbon-intensive”, he adds.

The interest struggle generates fierce disputes on issues that for others could be minor: What date will be set as a base to measure emission reduction? Some propose 1990 (the year the Kyoto Protocol was signed), others propose year 2000, and the US, 2005. What criteria will be taken into account to measure emissions? Developed countries say the amount of gas emission should be measured by country; China wants to measure emission per capita. If said interest is related to the fact that it’s the most populated country in the Earth, it’s pure coincidence.

“None of these summits have been easy to conduct. The real risk is that what happened in the COP6 (The Hague) in year 2000 occurs again; the COP president put such a high pressure on reaching an agreement that the summit ended up suspended and had to be resumed. We must not consider this conference as an end, but as a start”, Gerardin emphasizes.

Another pending issue has to do with the “international bunkers”. The term refers to the fuels used for international flights and both sea and river transport (passengers or cargo transport); its emissions, of very significant levels, still haven’t been assigned to any country. “Assignation criteria are being negotiated. At first we tend to think the industrialized countries are the responsible ones for most of these demands derived by transportation. However, no agreement has been reached yet regarding this matter”.

Even though reaching an agreement between 190 countries -with such heterogeneous interests and contexts- is very complicated, the world can’t miss this chance. And we can’t keep letting the world consume and produce the way it does either.

We could take advantage on our own of this new turning point -Copenhagen- to change those behaviors, which lead to excessive and exosomatic use of energy, that is, to using it beyond our necessities. This type of consumption, typical of the human species and the modern life, has worsened in time as life and our relation with the material world have become more complex.

Such a special opportunity, that is, the Conference in December, deserves rethinking these issues. And it is worth to mention that, as Molina said, “since all countries are a part of the problem, all of them are a part of the solution”. They shouldn’t be the only ones to debate this; what’s here at stake is too important for us to be indifferent.

Illustration: Lorena Saúl

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