Paris climate deal: cold comfort for action
Three years after Paris world leaders meet this weekend in Poland to talk climate change. But the hard decisions look set to be avoided.
When world leaders rose to applaud their efforts to deal with climate change in Paris in December 2015, they kicked the details of how it would be done down the road for later.
Three years on, later has arrived in the colder, less-romantic and coal-fired city of Katowice, Poland, where the urgency of the challenge has been amplified in a new UN climate change report but the political momentum for action weakened to a point of near exhaustion.
The US, a key driver of the Paris Agreement, is planning to withdraw. France, a key driver in Paris, has been choked with protest in recent days in a popular revolt sparked by rising diesel fuel prices. Further riots are planned, despite the government saying there would be a new measure to make the “ecological transition” more equitable.
Already, most countries are falling well short of pledges made in Paris to cut emissions which are themselves well below what scientists have said is necessary to keep future temperature rises below even the less-ambitious target of 2C.
The pact on finance that binds the developed and developing world together in taking action under the Paris Agreement is strained.
And old arguments about the different responsibilities of developed and developing nations have risen back to the surface and threaten to derail talks in Poland.
Above all this, the Katowice gathering, which is due to start on Sunday, is billed as the most important Conference of the Parties since Paris and the moment the Paris Agreement will be brought to life.
To do so, world leaders must concur on the Paris Agreement rule book of how countries will set and measure their ambitions to cut greenhouse gas emissions across time.
Success in Poland will kick off a series of rolling five-year reviews in which countries are supposed to progressively increase the actions they will take.
The sticking points include how the rules will apply to everyone, whether developed or developing countries, and how vast sums of money will be transferred from developed to developing countries to assist the transition.
“To adopt implementing guidelines this year, negotiators must navigate sensitive and potentially divisive challenges, including how to reflect differences in national circumstances while driving climate progress by all,” the global research organisation World Resources Institute says.
“Reflecting these differences while maintaining the ‘Paris spirit’ of solidarity, trust and ambition will be difficult.”
For Australia, the upcoming talks in Poland coincide with fierce debate about the cost and practicality of meeting even the existing target of 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Bipartisan agreement on the target or the way to meet it has not been possible and looks set to be a key battleground in the federal election, due next year.
Scott Morrison has said that Australia will not withdraw from the Paris Agreement and would meet the current pledge “in a canter”.
Australia will not be required to recommit to the Paris Agreement in Poland but all countries are on notice that they will be expected to lift their post-2020 climate change targets by as early as a special UN climate conference called for September next year.
To date, the Prime Minister has made reducing electricity prices a much higher-order priority for his government. Energy remains the focus of domestic climate policy at this stage.
Internationally, Australia is likely to come under most pressure for its decision to stop funding for the Green Climate Fund.
The GCF was supposed to be the start of what will become $100 billion a year in climate financing from developed to developing countries from 2020. But the fund has suffered a crisis of confidence, failing to raise the money pledged, and with donor and recipient countries at loggerheads over how what funds have been raised should be managed.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade tells The Australian that the Green Climate Fund replenishment is a separate process from the COP24 meeting in Poland.
“Australia will not participate in negotiations for the replenishment of the Green Climate Fund,” a DFAT spokesperson says. “Australia is not compelled to make further contributions to the fund. All contributions are voluntary.”
But climate finance is considered a key element of the talks in Katowice, and climate groups say failure to agree on how funds will be supplied in the future could derail progress on the rule book.
Australia has not pulled out of the GCF entirely. It will remain a member of the Green Climate Fund board and receive information and reporting on the replenishment process.
Overall, DFAT says the Australian government is committed to the Paris Agreement and its emissions reduction targets.
“Participation in the agreement is in our national interest, in the interests of the Indo-Pacific region, and of the international community as a whole,” the DFAT spokesperson says.
A spokesman for Environment Minister Melissa Price said it had not yet been decided who would represent Australia at the Katowice meeting.
The federal opposition and climate groups are clear on what they expect out of Poland.
Emboldened by election results in Malcolm Turnbull’s former seat of Wentworth, where independent Kerryn Phelps won the formerly safe Liberal seat, and in Victoria, where climate change and energy were claimed as significant campaign issues, Labor is keen to exploit perceived divisions within the Coalition.
Last week, Labor put forward an energy policy that dramatically increases spending to achieve a 50 per cent renewable energy target unless the government is prepared to restart negotiations for a national energy guarantee, a policy that ultimately cost the former prime minister his job.
Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler tells The Australian the COP24 meeting agenda is full of important issues for Australia and the world.
“Two crucial topics to be addressed for Australia include progress on international carbon offset markets under the Paris accords, and progress towards a just transition for workers and communities affected by the global energy transition under way,” Butler says.
On the rule book, he says: “It’s going to be hard work in the current international environment, and it is difficult to see that the current government is up to it.”
Butler says the Morrison government’s commitment to the Paris Accords appears to be “nothing but rhetorical”.
Labor remains committed to the Green Climate Fund. “We are a substantial power with much at stake and much to contribute if we are to have a fund that is equitable and effective,” Butler says. But he says compulsion will not work. “What we need to do is to help construct a fund that nations want to contribute to in their own interests.”
Australian Conservation Fund chief executive Kelly O’Shanassy says Australia should be forced to contribute to global climate change finance.
“It’s a matter of international justice that wealthy countries should help poor countries with mitigation, adaptation and economic development,” O’Shanassy says. “While the Morrison government’s announcement of a $2bn infrastructure bank for the Pacific, along with increased diplomatic links, shows a commitment to the region, there’s no mention of the critical assistance needed to help our neighbours build their resilience to climate change or provide our fair share of climate finance.
“For Australia to be a leader, we should make a generous early commitment to ongoing climate finance, with a particular focus on support for our Pacific Island neighbours.”
The ACF says Australia may be embarrassed in Poland when assessed on its climate change actions compared with its commitments. “Australia may face diplomatic and trade impacts if our federal government refuses to do our fair share to limit global warming,” O’Shanassy says.
The Climate Council says the lack of credible climate or energy policy from the federal government will be an embarrassment at the international meetings.
“We need to accelerate the transition to renewables, storage technologies and other climate solutions,” a Climate Council spokeswoman says.
“It is therefore essential that the Katowice meeting sets us on course to enhance collective ambition and close the emissions gap.”
The council says Australia is not compelled to do anything on climate finance under the Paris Agreement.
“But Australia should, as a rich country, contribute to the fund to enable poorer countries to tackle climate change,” it says.
“Climate change is a threat multiplier, exacerbating other stresses like poverty, economic shocks and unstable institutions, making crises worse, particularly in poorer countries — with implications for Australia.”
Money and shared responsibility are at the heart of the UN’s climate process and the weak nature of what was actually agreed in Paris in December 2015 underscores how difficult the talks in Poland will be.
To provide momentum, the science of climate change has been invigorated with a report detailing the likely impact of the Paris Agreement’s more ambitious target of keeping global warming to 1.5C.
But questions about the role of natural variation in climate change, the quality of historic data, the accuracy of climate models and lack of physical evidence to match predictions have become more open.
The political cycle has shifted, too. Former US president Barack Obama drove the Paris process, which for the first time brought developed and developing countries to the table through a non-binding agreement based on voluntary actions and compromise.
The world is a different place today.
Incumbent US President Donald Trump has put the Paris deal in the deep freeze as being against the best interests of the US.
The US is still active in UN climate negotiations and cannot officially leave the Paris Agreement until November next year but Trump has effectively turned off the funding tap.
China is facing a trade war with the US and has been caught retreating from promises to cut back on coal power and potentially cheating on an earlier global agreement to halt the production of ozone-depleting chemicals.
The reign of climate-champion German chancellor Angela Merkel is at an end and an anti-Paris strongman, Jair Bolsonaro, has been elected president in Brazil.
Bolsonaro previously has praised Trump’s plan to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. He now says Brazil will stay in as long as it does not affect Brazilian control over the Andes Mountains, the Amazon and Atlantic Ocean, all of which are critical to global ambitions to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Bolsonaro plans to merge Brazil’s environment and agriculture ministries and open the Amazon to mining, agriculture and construction.
Trump’s withdrawal, China’s actions and Brazil’s change in direction are seen as evidence of a fracture in the global co-operation that reached a zenith in Paris.
“Brazil’s election result and Germany’s leadership vacuum are the latest signs of the alliance that forged the Paris Agreement in 2015 drifting apart,” is the view of pro-action website Climate Home News.
To underscore the point, only 16 countries out of the 197 that signed the Paris Agreement have defined national climate action plan ambitions enough to meet their pledges, according to a policy brief released by Britain’s Grantham Institute. The 16 countries are: Algeria, Canada, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, FYR Macedonia, Malaysia, Montenegro, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Samoa, Singapore and Tonga.
In a joint statement, the report authors say: “Our analysis reveals that countries are being slow to reproduce their NDC (nationally determined contributions) commitments as targets in national laws and policies.”
But the difficult political reality of taking action was again demonstrated in the US mid-term elections this month, which showed voters remain keenly aware of the potential cost.
Two measures to price carbon and cut emissions were roundly rejected by voters in the US states where they were put. Washington state had proposed a carbon emissions fee and revenue allocation initiative known as Initiative 1631.
The measure would have imposed a $US15 ($20.70) fee on each metric tonne of carbon emissions, rising by $2 a year until the state’s 2035 emissions target was met. A set 35 per cent of money raised from the fee would have been returned to low-income communities.
It would have been the first fee of its kind in the US and received heavyweight backing, including from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, but got less than 44 per cent of the vote. A coalition of environmental groups mobilised to support the initiative with big financial backing, including from Gates. Industry responded with its own campaign, reportedly costing $US31 million to oppose it.
Likewise, in Arizona, millions of dollars were spent arguing over Proposition 127, a move to force the state’s electricity companies to acquire 50 per cent of electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar by 2030.
Voters overwhelmingly rejected the idea, which might have some interesting lessons for the present political contest in Australia.
“Arizona voters have spoken loud and clear, overwhelmingly rejecting Proposition 127,” Arizonans for Affordable Energy spokesman Matthew Benson said after the vote.
“Much will be written and said in the coming days about why Prop 127 was defeated, but it’s really pretty simple. Arizonans support clean energy, but not costly, politically driven mandates. Arizonans support solar power and renewable technology, but not at the expense of an affordable, reliable energy supply. Arizonans prefer to choose our own energy future rather than have it dictated to us by out-of-state special interests.”
Poland, a coal centre of Europe, may well bring a dose of political reality to the climate change talks this weekend. Without a rule book, the Paris Agreement is merely a statement of intent. Already, there are signs that the hard decisions may once again be kicked further down the road for later.