If more evidence were needed that the UK's current climate policy is pointless (which it surely isn't - see the above and this other Discussion), it's provided by this interesting article. It sets out clearly, and in my view reasonably, why China believes it has taken on its share - indeed, in its view, more than its share - of the climate change burden.

However, the article also demonstrates that (and why) China cannot undertake to reduce its GHG emissions - at least not for a long time. And, if China won't, now will India and other major emerging economies. And, if they won't, the US won't. Therefore, for the UK to even attempt to reduce its emissions (little more than 1% of the global total) is absurd and pointless. Simple really.

There are several stories around today about how government representatives made major changes to the IPCC WG III SPM - to ensure that nothing was published that might jeopardise their UNFCCC negotiating positions. This by Harvard Professor Robert Stavins is particularly interesting: LINK. Two extracts:

Several of the CLAs present with me in Berlin commented that given the nature and outcome of the week, the resulting document should probably be called the Summary by Policymakers, rather than the Summary for Policymakers.

… nearly all delegates in the meeting demonstrated the same perspective and approach, namely that any text that was considered inconsistent with their interests and positions in multilateral negotiations was treated as unacceptable.

Here's an extract from another interesting article:

The problem … is that some nations, including China and Saudi Arabia, opposed including text and graphs that linked emissions to income levels. Saudi Arabia, which is in the high-income category, opposed mention of that category, for instance. And China, which is categorized as upper-middle income, opposed including figures that highlighted the skyrocketing emissions from developing nations.

For three of the 5 days of the talks, diplomats from dozens of countries haggled with lead scientists over the issue. In the end, five figures and whole blocks of text were removed from the summary.

Part of the material removed comprised some graphs showing for example that growth in GHG emissions since the 1970s mostly came from developing countries and that developed countries are now responsible for less than half all GHG emissions since the Industrial Revolution. The graphs are still in the Technical Summary and can be found here: LINK. (Go to page 13.)

An odd way to treat a "scientific" report - and yet further confirmation that little of real substance is likely to be agreed in Paris next year. Yet Britain soldiers on with its absurd policies as if it were part of a coordinated international endeavour.

Under "Blog" BH refers to a long and excellent article by Nigel Lawson in Standpoint magazine. Much of it is directly relevant to this Discussion. Here, for example, are some extracts from the concluding paragraphs:

... what moves me most is that the policies invoked in its name are grossly immoral. We have, in the UK, devised the most blatant transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich ... I refer to our system of heavily subsidising wealthy landlords to have wind farms on their land, so that the poor can be supplied with one of the most expensive forms of electricity known to man.

This is also, of course, inflicting increasing damage on the British economy, to no useful purpose whatever ...

However, the greatest immorality of all concerns the masses in the developing world. It is excellent that, in so many parts of the developing world — the so-called emerging economies — economic growth is now firmly on the march, as they belatedly put in place the sort of economic policy framework that brought prosperity to the Western world. Inevitably, they already account for, and will increasingly account for, the lion's share of global carbon emissions.

But, despite their success, there are still hundreds of millions of people in these countries in dire poverty, suffering all the ills that this brings, in terms of malnutrition, preventable disease, and premature death. Asking these countries to abandon the cheapest available sources of energy is, at the very least, asking them to delay the conquest of malnutrition, to perpetuate the incidence of preventable disease, and to increase the numbers of premature deaths. [My emphases.]

However, although we may ask them to abandon fossil fuels, the good news for those millions is that their governments have no intention of complying.

This Discussion item is based on my view that it's time to stop bickering about the science and to focus instead on how best to deal with the reality that the world's biggest CO2 emitters are not going to agree in 2015 to the significant and urgent emission reductions that we're repeatedly told are necessary. My position is that, for the UK, there’s no longer any point in a policy that prioritises emission mitigation and that policy should be changed to a focus on the overall strengthening of the economy, energy supply and infrastructure and on long-term adaptation to whatever climate change may occur.

In my opening post, I supported my argument that a comprehensive 2015 deal was impossible by referring back to the 1992 UNFCCC agreement that 'developing' economies should be exempted from the obligations thought necessary for ‘developed’ economies, noting how, once established, the concept couldn’t be changed and how that lead to the total defeat of the West at Copenhagen in 2009. I noted how, since then, the Copenhagen victors have refused to accept binding commitments to emission reduction and how Canada, Russia, Japan and probably Australia are now moving away from commitment - meaning that economies responsible for about 75% of global CO2 emissions are most unlikely to agree to reduction. I added that, as the US (responsible for about 14% of emissions) will not agree to unilateral reduction, essentially only the EU (a mere 10%) is left.

It's a scenario that's confirmed by this report today about national proposals for next year's climate 'deal'. It echoes my observations. For example:

China has adopted its default position that the legal roles of developed and developing countries should remain systematically differentiated, as in the 1992 Climate Change Convention treaty ... “The 2015 agreement shall be based and built on the structure and provisions of the Convention … the differentiation between developed and developing country Parties, with developed country Parties taking the lead.”

The United States has emphasised that it will not accept a deal which rigidly differentiates between the obligations of rapidly emerging and industrialised economies. “We would not support a bifurcated approach to the new agreement, particularly one based on groupings that may have made sense in 1992 but that are clearly not rational or workable in the post‐2020 era.”

The formal division of responsibilities between emerging and industrialised economies is the main flashpoint: it is written through developing country proposals, and flatly rejected by the United States and Russia.... The split is also fundamental to the technical detail, since it concerns the carbon emissions commitments of individual countries.

The report refers to many other seemingly insurmountable difficulties. But the key point is that the 22 year old bifurcation is as firm as ever. Unless that changes - and there's no evidence whatever that it might - a deal is impossible.

Surely it's time to face up to that reality?

Tiananmen Square – and global warming

Today is the 25th anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square demonstrations for democratic reform, and the subsequent brutal massacre of hundreds of protestors. According to a BBC report this morning, security personnel have swamped the Square and dozens of activists have been detained. It was a major event in China’s history, described by writer Paul French as, “the most pivotal moment in modern China’s history”. It severely damaged China’s international reputation – damage that continues to this day. Unsurprisingly, the anniversary has attracted critical Western government statements and adverse press coverage.

But few, I believe, realise that it’s an event that led directly to today’s levels of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to the seemingly intractable complexity of today’s climate change negotiations. I’ll explain why.

The events of 1989 caused the Chinese leadership to take urgent action to preserve and consolidate its power and deflect moves to political liberalisation. It did so by putting a hugely increased emphasis on economic reform, focused on growth and materialism and the defence of national interests against the West – Western conspiracies and neo-imperialist ambitions, legacies of past crimes against China, being blamed for fomenting the 1989 unrest. And it’s a policy that’s largely worked: hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty and a huge and increasingly wealthy middle class has been created. Few of these people are interested in democratic reform. But pressure for democratisation is still there in the background – kept in check solely by continued economic growth and increased wealth. And China’s continued economic growth has depended and still depends almost entirely on burning fossil fuels, resulting in massive GHG emissions: now nearly 30 percent of the global total. Keeping pressure for democratisation in check is vital if the government is to maintain its grip on China’s vast population. The government has no intention of relaxing that grip.

That’s why China will not agree to reduce its emissions – and why negotiations for a global reduction deal, characterised as a Western conspiracy to restrict developing countries’ economic development, are doomed. And that's a major reason why UK (1.2 percent of global emissions) GHG reduction policies are pathetic and pointless.

In my opening post on this thread I said:

... the dream of a binding global deal in Paris in 2015 is shattered: CO2 emissions will continue their inexorable rise. [Therefore] the only rational response [for Britain] is to stop bickering about the science and to focus on politics and policies. The object should be to determine our optimum course in a world where we are rapidly losing influence, where emissions will rise and where our trying to prevent that from happening is pointless.

I wrote that in March, just after a UN-sponsored negotiation in Bonn had ended having made no substantive progress. Well, another such negotiation ended on Sunday (the last before Ban Ki-moon's leaders' summit in September). So has there been any real progress this time? It would seem not: see this, this and this, noting the comments.

More here.

Paul / jones:

Doubtless the story you've highlighted is most interesting. But it's irrelevant to the topic of this Discussion thread (international politics and policies - not science). See my posts (just above yours Paul) at 12:28 PM on Jun 18 and at 3:47 PM on Jul 3.

I suggest you move your exchange to "Unthreaded" or start a new Discussion about polar ice. Thanks.

Sorry about the duplication, Richard - just seen your post. Thanks.

BTW: you might be interested in the comments here.

Although many BH regulars may dislike his insistence that "Global warming is real" (but "not the end of the world"), this paper by Bjorn Lomborg (Testimony for a US Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety hearing on Tuesday) confirms my contention that the UK's current climate policies (as well as pointless because of the serial and continuing failure of international negotiations) is ineffective and harmful - particularly impacting the poor. An extract:

The burdens from these climate policies fall overwhelmingly on the world’s poor. This is because rich people can easily afford to pay more for their energy, whereas the poor will be struggling. It is surprising to hear that well meaning and economically comfortable greens often suggest that gasoline prices should be doubled or electricity exclusively sourced from high cost green sources. ... this is cruelly hypocritical. The rich world generates just 0.76% of its energy from solar and wind, far from meeting even minimal demand. In fact, Germany will build ten new coal fired power plants over the next two years to keep its own lights on.

And on fracking:

Despite some legitimate concerns about safety, it is hard to overstate the overwhelming benefits. Fracking has caused gas prices to drop dramatically and changed the US electricity generation from 50% coal and 20% gas to about 40% coal and 30% gas.

This means that the US has reduced its annual CO₂ emissions by about 300Mt CO₂ in 2012. This is about twice the total reduction over the past twenty years of the Kyoto Protocol from the rest of the world, including the European Union. At the same time, the EU climate policy will cost about $280 billion per year, whereas the US fracking is estimated to increase US GDP by $283 billion per year.

Worth reading.

I hadn't seen the Knappenberger article - so thanks Paul for providing the link. The main difference from my approach is obviously his focus on US domestic issues. A more substantial difference is that he says little about the potential damage likely to be caused by climate policies to the US economy and people (arguably it is less than seems probable for the UK) - focusing more on political damage. But the key similarity is his observation that, in view of international reality, US actions ('leadership') will not make global emission reduction any more likely. In other words, they're pointless. Here's an extract:

... current-generation renewable energy technologies are simply incapable of meeting the enormous energy needs of developing countries like China and India. If “climate change” ranks low among priorities in the United States, imagine how popular carbon reduction policies will be in countries with large populations with little to no access to electricity at all. So ... any resulting agreements to mitigate climate will undoubtedly be unsuccessful, both politically and technologically.