perverse resilience

The best two pieces on the Copenhagen debacle I’ve read: Tan Copsey at Chinadialogue and Jonathan Watts, interviewed at Danwei:

China and the US, the world's two biggest emitters, came away happier as they can now continue emitting without legal constraints for a longer period of time, perhaps indefinitely.

All the “who’s to blame” stuff is a bit of a sideshow. Both China and the US got what each wanted, namely avoiding a formal treaty commitment to specific reductions in emissions. There’s an interesting parallel here with the way in which both countries tackled the financial crash. While most commentary focused on differences in policy, the aim in both cases was to get the status quo back. China focused its efforts mainly on building capacity against the day when export markets recover, while the US effort has been geared to maintaining “finance in command” of economic policy. Both China and the US seem dedicated to the notion that systems which fail must be restored, whether over the economy or the environment. Call it perverse resilience.

Comments

[Cian]

Well possibly, but what the US was demanding was pretty outrageous (and the way that they went about trying to get it). If the US agreed to what China (along with the G77) were demanding, equal emissions per person then China would have plenty of scope for increasing their emissions (particularly as they seem to be in the lead on developing affordable alternative technologies). What the US was demanding was pretty outrageous, whereas China (mainly due to western intransigence) was not being that unreasonable. China's per capita emissions aren't that high, its just there are a lot of Chinese. And given that much of it is for exports, the west hardly escapes culpability there.

My dad has a very good friend who was on one of the major countries delegations (and who has been involved from the beginning). I'm pretty certain he'll have sent a (not to be forwarded to anyone for fairly obvious reasons) email to my dad with his take on it. It will be interesting to see if he concurs with the increasingly hysterical and unhinged Mark Lynas.

[Cian]

On the other hand:
"Three European negotiators confirmed to me that Chinese negotiators not only blocked targets for themselves, but also a target proposed by Angela Merkel for developed nations to trim emissions by 80 percent by 2050."

The comment about strong arming is interesting though

[ajay]

The irony is, of course, that it's the Chinese (and the Indians) who will suffer most sorely from global warming. It's not me; I'm sitting here in a wealthy, damp, temperate Atlantic island. I'll be fine. I'm not the one who's going to have to work out what to do with six hundred million furious starving peasants once the Himalayan glaciers run dry and the Yangtze and the Yellow and the Ganges and the Indus become seasonal rivers.

[Phil]

We (or our children) may need to give up tea, coffee and cotton, and we're liable to get a bit chilly in winter. But fine FSVO fine.

[Cian]

Well there's the small matter of London (as well as a couple of other cities), infrastructure that will be at risk, quite a bit of our coastline and of course our grain belt.

[john b]

Not really, unless properly surprising (even by doomy predictions) things happen to sea levels.

[Cian]

The Dutch are planning for up to 1.1M. Which might not sound like a lot, but the problem is storm surges. Suddenly a lot of economically valuable places become quite vulnerable to flooding. London will be one of them, unless we (as we inevitably will) update the Thames barrier at huge expense. The Fens will also be vulnerable. As will a lot of houses in various areas.

[Cian]

Oh I should add, the Dutch plans are based upon us doing something about global warming. If CO2 increased more rapidly, I guess those predictions would be revised upwards by the Dutch.

[Alex]

Interesting analysis, doesn't seem to fit the content of the document; the US has signed on to accepting the Kyoto concept of developed state responsibility, after all. quite big news surely? And they notably didn't object to numerical goals being in the document.

Anyway, 99% of reporting on Copenhagen I've seen appears to have been prepared in advance, either completely (George Monbiot, this means you) or else like the 1914 mobilisation telegrams - just stamp the name of the country or countries in question into the spaces provided for "BLAME", "WINNER", "DRAMA QUEEN" etc and shouty interest group talking point into the QUOTE box. Kadunkadunkadunk. [ENTER]. Tuborgs all round.

Obviously this is a function of not letting the press into the plenary session, so there's bugger all to report for most of the week, but even so it's not an argument for filling pages with shit.

Frex, the "Danish text" that we were expected to condemn as being "imposed", yadda yadda, actually included numerical targets all round, significant transfer payments, and auditing. But the Grauniad didn't really report anything of the content, just dashed out to score the hack points for the leak...I'm in a Karl Kraus mood at the moment. Can we hit the press harder in 2010?