The future of the Earth? |
By Stephen Leahy, IPS, May 25, 2012
UXBRIDGE, Cana - Climate-heating carbon emissions set a record high in
2011, in a 3.2 percent increase over the previous year, the International
Energy Agency reported this week. The main reason for this dangerous increase
is that governments are failing to implement policies to prevent catastrophic
increases of global temperatures.
A new report
released on the last days of international climate talks in Bonn, Germany this
week reveals that the planet is heading to a temperature rise of at least 3.5
degrees Celsius, and likely more, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), despite an international agreement to keep
global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius.
Not only are
pledges inadequate, but countries are unable to fulfill even those pledges, a
new CAT analysis shows. CAT is a joint project of Dutch energy consulting
organisation Ecofys, Germany's Climate Analytics, and the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research.
"When we
compared the emission reduction pledges of countries like Brazil, Mexico and
the U.S., we found they did not have the policies in place to meet those
pledges," said Niklas Höhne, director of energy and climate policy at
Ecofys.
Höhne told IPS that
they looked only at the policies of a few countries, but no country's policies
were enough to meet their targets.
While Mexico
introduced a solid new framework climate legislation, it has yet to implement
actual policies and measures to reach its pledge, the report found. At the
moment, Mexico is set to achieve only 12 percent of its pledged 30 percent
reduction from business-as-usual by 2020.
Brazil has an
ambitious target but a proposed new forest code, if adopted, could reverse this
trend. "Scientific analysis shows that the code could increase its
emissions gap substantially," the report said.
The United States
pins many of its hopes on having lower emissions by 2020 due mainly to effects
of the recessions and a shift from coal to gas driven by low gas prices.
Yet regulations on
coal-fired power plants and on fuel efficiency in vehicles would still leave
the United States "some 350 million tonnes of CO2 short of its already
inadequate pledge, a gap that is the size of half of Canada’s annual
emissions," the report found.
"We haven't
looked at Canada yet but it's pretty clear they do not have the policies they
need," Höhne added.
Climate talks
deadlocked
The Bonn climate
talks this week saw little appetite for increasing pledges. "No country
wants to move. This is not a positive trend," Höhne said.
"The Bonn
meeting underscores the deep divisions that remain between key countries on how
to meet the climate challenge," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and
policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"It’s clear we
have the technology, know-how, and ability to meet this challenge, but we’re
missing the political will, which was in short supply during these last two
weeks in Bonn," said Meyer in a statement from Bonn. Meyer has attended
nearly every climate negotiation since they began 18 years ago.
In fact,
commitments to reduce emissions have been deadlocked since the 2009 Copenhagen
Accord. Even if governments implemented the most stringent reductions they have
proposed, world emissions would still need to decline another 9 billion tonnes
by 2020 and every year after.
Meanwhile, 2011
emissions are one billion tonnes greater than 2010.
While a temperature
increase of 3.5 degrees Celsius may seem small, it would create conditions not
seen on the planet for 30 to 60 million years.
Most of the
increase in emissions last year is from increased coal use in China and India, according
to preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) released
Thursday. Developed countries, led by Europe and the United States, reduced
emissions by .6 percent collectively.
But don't blame
China, said IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol. China's enormous investment in
energy efficiency and green energy enabled the country to reduce its carbon
intensity - the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP - by 15 percent between
2005 and 2011.
Had these gains not
been made, China’s CO2 emissions in 2011 would have been higher by 1.5 billions
tonnes, Birol said in a statement.
With the U.N.
climate process deadlocked, action will have to come from the positive examples
of cities, regions and companies that have made the low-carbon transformation
and are reaping the economic and other benefits, said Höhne.
The Rio+20 Earth
Summit in June is an opportunity to showcase the successful examples of energy-
efficient California, for instance. Germany would be another good example, with
an ambitious clean energy plan driven by the head of state Angela Merkel, he
added.
Ultimately,
however, "more examples are needed and on a much bigger scale," Höhne
concluded.
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