Air pollution in China and shale gas in the U.S. may change the political equation at U.N. climate talks, but Polish leadership could dull ambition

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The world’s two biggest climate polluters, China and the United States, may have new impetus to push toward a global deal to curb climate change at U.N. negotiations in Warsaw next month, experts told a conference in London on Monday.



Worsening air pollution - which led to the shutdown of Harbin, a city of 11 million, in northern China this week - is putting growing pressure on China’s leadership to curb dirty power plants and cut emissions, experts said, while the United States is finding progress on its emission reduction goals easier as it transitions from coal energy to shale gas.



As negotiators start hammering out a new 2015 deal to tackle climate change, “China is going to set the level of ambition of the agreement,” predicted Nick Mabey, the head of E3G, an independent London-based policy group that aims to accelerate a global transition to sustainable development.



But a daunting series of obstacles - from a lingering economic slowdown across many parts of the world to failure to build a widespread sense of urgency to act on climate change - means negotiators will struggle to find backing for an agreement that is both ambitious and quick enough to halt the worst impacts of global warming, climate experts said.



“We will get an agreement. But we must make sure it is a meaningful agreement,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told the conference at London's Chatham House thinktank on “delivering concrete climate change action”.



Right now, “the conversation is still not about the urgency” of action on climate change, she admitted.



Like Qatar last year, Poland’s leadership of the upcoming talks in Warsaw has raised questions about whether it can drive them forward at the speed required. Marcin Korolec, Poland’s minister of environment and upcoming president of the Warsaw talks, told the London gathering his aim is to make all the parties negotiating “feel safe and comfortable” as they face their responsibilities to act on climate change, and to come up with a deal that is “ratifiable” and will allow countries “freedom to continue their development agendas”.



While negotiators agree poorer countries must be able to carry on developing under any new climate agreement, most experts believe both rich and poor nations must shift fast to new lower-emission economies, and reaching a global deal will involve shifting many governments out of their comfort zone.



Poland, which still relies heavily on coal for its energy supply, also thinks business-led action on climate change is the most effective, and would prefer “carrots to sticks” to get companies to curb emissions, Korolec said.



Figueres, asked whether Poland could lead the U.N. talks well, noted that “the scale of ambition worldwide doesn’t have to come from any one particular party”.



“It’s no surprise the push for greater ambition comes from those governments and countries that are most vulnerable. That has been the case and will continue to be the case,” she said.



THE FUTURE WE DON'T WANT?



The UNFCCC head said the Warsaw negotiations will need to make significant progress on several key issues, including winning new emissions reduction commitments from richer nations under a second period of the Kyoto Protocol; making progress on the design and basic elements of a new 2015 climate agreement; considering a mechanism to compensate countries for “loss and damage” associated with climate impacts; and figuring out how to raise and distribute promised climate funding of $100 billion a year by 2020 to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate shifts and adopt cleaner development paths.



All of those points are a challenge for negotiators, with many recession-hit richer countries reluctant to make new financial pledges or agree to deeper emission cuts, even as many poorer states demand such changes before agreeing a new deal, experts said.



“Our problem is that (acting on) climate change doesn’t feel urgent” for many people around the world, E3G's Mabey said. But with losses from extreme weather hitting $110 billion in the United States alone last year after superstorm Sandy, drought, wildfires and other problems, “we’ve got to realize that this is what the future looks like,” he said.



Last year, each American household paid almost $800 for disaster relief to respond to those climate-related crises, said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate and energy programme for the World Resources Institute – and their children will likely pay much more.



“That’s the heart of what we need to bring into this debate right now – the future of our children,” she said.



Farhana Yamin, an international lawyer and associate fellow at Chatham House, suggested one way to spur action on climate change might be to stop talking about limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius – something that isn’t well understood and actually sounds appealing to some people – in favour of aiming for a net phaseout of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.



“It’s simple, it’s something we can all understand, it’s something we can see in our own lives,” she said. “All of us can take this idea forward.”



Similarly, building a new registry of emissions-cutting activities by businesses, cities, state and regional governments, civil society groups and others would showcase the “extraordinarily positive” progress that’s already being made, she said. It would also help determine if those efforts add up to sufficient ambition to tackle the climate problem – something few experts believe is the case at the moment.



Ensuring larger numbers of women are included in countries' climate negotiating teams could also play an important role in achieving a new climate deal, Yamin believes. “We have to look at power and who sits at the table and whose voice counts,” she said.

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