SOCIALIST UNITY

By Ken Livingstone

The palpable anger of the world’s poorer nations over the wholly inadequate ambition of western governments’ commitment to tackling climate change has probably been the strongest message to emerge from Copenhagen, as the UN climate change talks enter their final week. The poorest nations on Earth are already feeling the devastating effects of more extreme monsoons, droughts and loss of glacial water. Failure at Copenhagen will be tantamount to abandoning them.

With rich countries knowingly committing to less than half the emissions cuts needed and nowhere near the financial support required to deliver new renewable energy infrastructure in the global South, the Sudanese chair of the G77 group of developing countries Lumumba Di-Aping, called a 2C rise in temperature a “suicide pact” for Africa.

Important political progress has been made over the last two years - most notably the election by the world’s largest economy of a President who understands the scientific reality of climate change. But, as ‘The Copenhagen Diagnosis’, an excellent summary of global warming by a collection of leading climate scientists, points out: “Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning in 2008 were 40% higher than those in 1990 (the base year for the original Kyoto Treaty)”.

The UK’s leading climate research group, The Tyndall Centre, argues that to have as much as a 50:50 chance of avoiding an average two degree rise in the Earth’s temperature (the ‘tipping point’ after which global warming is thought to be irreversible and catastrophic) then emissions in the world’s richest nations have to start declining by 2012, and achieve at least a 60 per cent reduction in emissions from energy by 2020. The best that the United States could offer this month is to cut its emissions by four per cent by 2020. Europe has been playing a better role – pledging a twenty per cent cut by 2020. But even this is not enough.

A fair, ambitious and binding deal at Copenhagen is a prerequisite for the enormous effort that will be required across the globe to avert catastrophic climate change. But even Kyoto II will be meaningless without domestic commitment in the world’s richest countries. After the delegates head home on Saturday morning, the real task will be to show the political leadership needed to drive down emissions and seize the benefits of taking a low carbon efficient path to recovery from recession.

The outcomes of the Copenhagen talks will be among the issues discussed at the Progressive London conference on 30, January, 2010. Sessions include ”After Copenhagen - turning the tide on Climate Change”. Speakers at the conference include Eugenie Harvey - Director 10:10; Serge Lourie - Leader LB Richmond Upon Thames and Green Party Assembly Members Jenny Jones and Darren Johnson. 

Click here to register for the conference.

FROM PROGRESSIVE LONDON