Copenhagen climate summit ends in bitter disagreements

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Copenhagen climate summit ends in bitter disagreements
By Patrick Martin
19 December 2009

The United Nations-sponsored global climate summit in Copenhagen
staggered toward a finish Friday night, with representatives of the
major world powers hoping to salvage a brief statement of principles,
without a single binding commitment, before bringing the two-week
conference to an end.

US President Barack Obama told a midnight press conference that a
“meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” had been reached in
last-minute talks between the US, China, India, Brazil and South
Africa, but he announced he was leaving before final agreement on a
text, citing a winter storm bearing down on Washington, DC.

Obama admitted that there was a “fundamental deadlock in perspectives”
between the major industrialized countries such as the US, Japan and
Western Europe, and the poorer countries of Asia, Africa and Latin
America. But he claimed that the conference “will help us begin to
meet our responsibilities to leave our children and grandchildren a
cleaner planet.”

The agreement between the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa is
limited to lip service to the goal of reducing emissions of greenhouse
gases by 2050. It reportedly drops any reference to a 2010 deadline
for a legally binding climate accord, which had been the centerpiece
of earlier drafts, in favor of a pledge to continue discussions when
the conference reconvenes in Mexico City next year, and to make
progress by 2016.

While a draft communiqué reportedly proposes several numerical goals,
such as an 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050, compared to a
baseline of 1990, these are merely aspirational, with no actual
targets for specific countries or groups of countries, and no concrete
mechanisms for either verification or enforcement. The target of
limiting the rise in world temperatures to 2 degrees Centigrade has
been widely condemned by environmental activists and scientists,
because it means the effective desertification of much of Africa. Even
this “limit” is expressed only as a wish, an acknowledgement of the
scientific consensus, and not translated into specific policies to
achieve that goal.

While claiming progress, Obama emphasized, in a bow to his right-wing
critics at home, that the United States “will not be legally bound by
anything that took place here today.” And he admitted that whatever
resolution was ultimately adopted by the conference delegates would
not be a sufficient response to the crisis of global warming.

Extraordinarily, not a single European country or the European Union
itself was represented in the private talks, although Denmark, the
host country, is an EU member, and EU officials played a prominent
role in the public functions of the conference. Given the enormous
role of the EU countries in world economic activity, and the emission
of greenhouse gases, their exclusion demonstrates that the agreement
Obama hailed is virtually meaningless.

The Copenhagen conference had already begun to break up before the
closed-door five-party meeting concluded. Russian President Dmitri
Medvedev had already left to return home, and Japanese Prime Minister
Yukio Hatoyama was on his way to the airport.

The hectic meetings and maneuvers of the conference’s final day
demonstrated two incontrovertible facts of 21st century world
politics: the intensifying struggle among all the world’s capitalist
states, whose conflicting economic interests make any unified response
to the threat of global warming impossible; and the declining power of
American imperialism in particular, which was unable to impose its
will at Copenhagen.

It was not for lack of trying. After Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton dangled a $100 billion bribe in front of the poor countries,
seeking to woo them away from their alliance with China, India, Brazil
and other rapidly developing powers, Obama followed up on Friday
morning with a speech that showed the “bad cop” side of American bullying.

He spoke for barely ten minutes, in a hectoring tone and evincing
obvious frustration with China, India and many of the 130 poor
countries united in the so-called G-77, who were insisting that the
industrialized countries take full responsibility for the pollution
crisis by agreeing to binding emissions cuts at home and providing
financial aid for the conversion of Third World industries to more
energy-efficient technology.

One press account described him as adopting “the tone of an impatient
professor whose students had blown a term paper deadline.” The British
newspaper Guardian wrote: “A visibly angry Obama told world leaders
that it was past time for them to come to an agreement… But Obama did
not offer any new pledges of action—either in increased emissions cuts
or clarity on America’s contributions to a climate fund for poor
countries.”

Obama’s speech angered many of the delegates, who gave it a decidedly
cool reception.

Both before and after Obama’s speech, the conference featured an
exchange of snubs and hostile comments between the US and China. Soon
after he arrived aboard Air Force One, according to the New York
Times, “Obama went into an unscheduled meeting with a high-level group
of leaders representing some 20 countries and organizations. Wen
Jiabao, the prime minister of China, elected not to attend that
meeting, instead sending the vice foreign minister, He Yafei, a snub
that left both American and European officials seething.”

Chinese officials were outraged in turn over the tone and content of
Obama’s speech. Telling the conference that the time had come to “act”
and not just “talk,” he essentially laid down the US position,
including the controversial demand that China and other countries
agree to the monitoring of their carbon reduction commitments, and
demanded that the conference adopt it.

He ridiculed the opposition of China—although he did not name the
country—to any form of international verification of its compliance
with emission-reduction goals. China regards such US proposals as
tantamount to demanding a reduction in the country’s rate of economic
growth, which Beijing regards as a threat to domestic stability.

When Wen Jiabao took the podium to deliver a speech on behalf of the
Chinese delegation, he denounced the industrialized countries for
failing to live up to the promises made at the 1997 Kyoto conference,
whose official protocol was drafted by the Clinton administration but
never submitted to Congress for ratification. “It is important to
honor the commitments already made and take real action,” he said, in
a speech characterized as “defiant” in press accounts.

A final incident reportedly took place Friday evening, when Chinese,
Indian and Brazilian leaders were in a private meeting and Obama
barged in, declaring that he didn’t want them negotiating in secret.
The South African representative also joined these talks, which led to
the agreement on a draft “accord” to be submitted to the whole
conference for ratification.

Environmental groups condemned Obama’s speech. Global warming activist
Bill McKibben of 350.org called it a “take it or leave it” ultimatum.
Friends of the Earth issued a statement saying, “Obama has deeply
disappointed not only those listening to his speech at the UN talks,
he has disappointed the whole world.”

A spokesman for the World Development Movement said, “He showed no
awareness of the inequality and injustice of climate change. If
America has really made its choice, it is a choice that condemns
hundreds of millions of people to climate change disaster.”

In a column in the Guardian Friday, environmentalist George Monbiot
made an apt comparison in describing the mercenary approach of the
representatives of the major industrialized powers. Referring to the
late 19th century colonial carve-up of Africa, he wrote: “This is a
scramble for the atmosphere comparable in style and intent to the
scramble for Africa. At no point has the injustice at the heart of
multilateralism been addressed or even acknowledged: the interests of
states and the interests of the world’s people are not the same. Often
they are diametrically opposed. In this case, most rich and rapidly
developing states have sought through these talks to seize as great a
chunk of the atmosphere for themselves as they can—to grab bigger
rights to pollute than their competitors.”

It is profoundly true that “the interests of states and the interests
of the world’s people” are opposed. The nation-state system cannot,
however, be separated from capitalism, which developed alongside and
is wedded to the nation-state system.

The danger of irreparable environmental damage to the earth and its
people can be combated only through a struggle to put an end to both
capitalism and the nation-system, and establish a democratic and
scientifically planned—that is, socialist—world economy.

http://wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/cope-d19.shtml

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