By Jim Green
International efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are faltering as representatives from 166 nations meet in Bonn, Germany, from October 25 to November 5 to debate proposals to reduce greenhouse emissions and reduce global warming.
The Bonn gathering is the fifth conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The third conference, in Kyoto in 1997, set targets for greenhouse gas emissions. However, the Kyoto Protocol cannot be enforced until 55 countries have ratified the agreement — including countries accounting for at least 55% of total emissions from developed countries.
This gives the US a veto over the Kyoto Protocol, and US ratification is unlikely unless industry-friendly agreements are reached. So far, only 14 countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, all of them developing countries.
The Bonn conference is negotiating on rules, regulations and mechanisms for reducing greenhouse emissions, and penalties for countries failing to meet their target.
The current round of negotiations is scheduled to conclude at the next major conference, to be held in The Hague, the Netherlands, late next year or early in 2001.
"The crunch will come in The Hague", said Michael Zammit Cutajar, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, prior to the opening of the Bonn conference. "The final results will have to satisfy the major industrial countries, trigger their ratification of the protocol and offer incentives to developing countries to take further action in the future.
"The Bonn conference must build confidence in a successful outcome at The Hague by adopting important technical decisions, sending positive signals to business and industry and engaging ministers fully in the task of focusing and speeding up the negotiations."
Nearly 80% of the world's fossil fuel carbon pollution is generated by 122 companies, according to the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council. The recurring theme in negotiations over climate change, from the advanced capitalist countries in particular, is the "need" to avoid any change that will impact on "economic growth", i.e. business interests.
The debate has largely been reduced to negotiation over "flexibility mechanisms", strategies which will enable advanced capitalist countries to meet their Kyoto targets without reducing emissions by the amounts agreed at Kyoto.
One "flexibility" scheme is called the "clean development mechanism" and involves developed countries building infrastructure in developing countries and obtaining emission "credits" for resulting greenhouse gas emission reductions. A related program will offer credits for contributing to projects in central and eastern European countries and the former Soviet states.
Emissions trading scheme
Another "flexibility" mechanism is the planned establishment of a global emissions trading scheme. Heavy polluters will be able to purchase pollution credits from nations which pollute less than their limits allow.
The US, which according to varying estimates causes 22-36% of global warming pollution, is at the forefront of the push for an open trading system. A letter from the US Business Roundtable, leaked last year, said that with unlimited pollution trading, US business can save most of the cost of compliance by buying credits from other countries rather than reducing emissions.
Many of the credits would be bought from former Soviet states and would result not from increased energy efficiency, new technology or regulations forcing business to clean up its act, but simply from the collapse of polluting industries in recent years.
One model under discussion involves governments capping the total allowable greenhouse emissions and selling or auctioning emission credits to businesses. However, it is likely that global business interests will bury this "cap and trade" model, perhaps before the end of the Bonn conference.
A more likely option is termed the "baseline and credit" scheme, in which the historical level of emissions by an installation is the baseline and the business buys credits if it exceeds that level or sells credits if it reduces emissions.
The economics of trading schemes are so flexible and arbitrary that scenarios can easily be envisaged which involve no change to expected patterns of pollution, and the trading scheme being simply paper-shuffling.
While environment groups are divided over some of the emissions trading proposals, the most industry-friendly options promoted in Bonn are unacceptable to all. Environmentalists, along with many Third World countries, argue that it is the duty of developed countries to directly reduce their emissions.
An unlikely ally of environmentalists in the debate over emissions trading is the European Union (EU), whose president, Michael Meacher, said last year, "Domestic action must be the main means of achieving the emissions reductions" or else trading in "hot air" will make a mockery of the Kyoto treaty.
It would not be too cynical to suggest, as the US Business Roundtable does, that European capitalists and their political representatives are more interested in obtaining a competitive economic advantage than in taking the moral high ground and protecting the environment.
The US government has said it will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol unless developing countries are required to cut their emissions by a specific figure. However, the industrialised capitalist countries are responsible for 80% of greenhouse gas pollution.
Moreover, Third World countries face the greatest risks from global warming. In particular, the existence of some small island states could be jeopardised by rising sea levels.
Paaniani Laupepa, from the small Pacific nation of Tuvalu, said at the Bonn conference, "We are talking about survival. Whole countries are in danger of being wiped out."
Carbon sinks
Another strategy with widespread support in business circles is the greater use of so-called carbon sinks to "mop up" pollution. The main options are reducing land clearing and planting trees.
According to Professor Ian Noble, an Australian scientist on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the expansion of carbon sinks can help reduce greenhouse gas levels, "but it's only going to buy us a few years of breathing space before we have to improve our energy use and efficiency".
If sink saturation occurs, the Kyoto targets would be totally inadequate to make a significant change, Noble says. "In that case Kyoto targets would be out by an order of magnitude."
Reductions in land clearing are likely to be factored into the carbon credit trading scheme. This could involve paying pastoralists for not clearing land.
The contribution of sinks in the overall calculations on emission targets is, in the words of the UN, "technically complex and politically charged". If you planned to visit a creative accountant in the near future to sort out your tax return, forget it — they're all in Bonn.
Australian debate
The Australian ruling class argues that business ventures are already being jeopardised by the threat of serious action on greenhouse. The executive director of the Minerals Council of Australia told the October 2-3 Australian Financial Review, "The government shouldn't be imposing costs on Australian industry ahead of ratification [of the Kyoto Protocol] and ahead of action by other countries".
The federal government has a slightly different view. According to a report in the same Australian Financial Review, "Unity between the government and business over greenhouse policy is gone".
The government is concerned about loss of credibility if nothing is done, and the possibility that Australia will be forced to take serious action to reduce emissions unless the perception can be generated that a genuine effort is being made. As a result, Canberra prefers highly visible gestures that have a minimal impact on its business mates, such as the One Billion Trees Program.
Reflecting the tension between business and government was the cabinet decision in late October to defer a decision on requiring electricity providers to obtain an extra 2% of their electricity from renewable sources. This was to be the first mandatory greenhouse measure in Australia. The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network has fought the proposal fiercely, and some companies threatened to boycott it.
Industry is divided too. More than 200 companies have participated in a voluntary emissions reduction program. Industry propaganda makes it clear that its involvement in this scheme is designed to head off mandatory change.
The government promised significant funding for greenhouse abatement programs to win support for the goods and services tax package from the Democrats earlier this year.
What is emerging is business as usual for industry, while taxpayer funds offset the pollution from private sector developments. The benefits arising from government-funded schemes to reduce greenhouse emissions will probably be outweighed by polluting developments such as the three new coal-fired power stations planned in Queensland.
The October 2-3 Australian Financial Review cites state government officials who say that, even with full implementation of all current greenhouse gas abatement programs, Australia's emissions will increase by 18% between 1990 and the years 2008-2012, overshooting the target agreed to at Kyoto by 10%.