Climate change summit: aim for the top

Global emissions need to start to fall within the next five years or so, and each delay makes failure costlier and harder to avoid

Editorial
The Guardian, Friday 25 November 2011 17.41 EST

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The will to act on climate change is out of political energy, running on empty. The problem is (relatively) distant, complex and intractable. The solution is costly, immediate, and the gains uncertain. It is the kind of slow-burn crisis that democratic politicians only tackle under sustained popular pressure and right now western voters have other things on their minds. Here, the government that promised to be the greenest ever is allowing emission-cutting policies to appear an indulgent hangover from a more prosperous age. Starting on Monday, when the 17th climate change conference opens in Durban, Africa has the opportunity to remind the rest of us why inaction is not an option.

Expectations for the summit have already been managed down so far that the debate now appears to be whether it is better to disagree on what to do, or to agree to do nothing. Although the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, insists that he has not given up on reaching a deal that could be implemented from 2016, the EU's climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, sounds much less positive. She insists nothing is possible unless everyone signs up, and not on the old north-south terms of the expiring Kyoto agreement which she argues no longer reflects reality. In the world in 1998, when the Kyoto deal was struck, the developed countries were required to cut emissions while the developing countries – with much lower emissions – were only required to adopt mitigating measures. Now the Europeans point to the rise of China, Russia and India up the emissions scale – even the per capita emission figures are beginning to reflect economic growth – and want the less developed countries to move beyond mitigation and start to cut emissions. China – nationally now topping the emissions chart, but actually dropping down the table of emissions per capita – argues instead for a new version of Kyoto. But even if progress were possible here, President Barack Obama, a year away from an election, cannot face down the Republican-controlled Congress where they think climate activists are a sect dedicated to destroying the American way of life.

Reduced to numbers, the minimum target should be a date for peak emissions. Most of the world's governments have already agreed that, to avoid disaster, the global temperature rise must be limited to 2ºC. To have an even chance of success, global emissions will need to start to fall within the next five years or so. Each year of delay makes failure more expensive and harder to avoid. This is another stand-off between the strong and the vulnerable, and there is talk of an Occupy Durban. It needs an objective. Then the talking can really begin.