Talks on climate highlight loopholes

Talks on climate highlight loopholes

By Alexander Hagelueken

BONN (DPA): What with forest fires in Indonesia and flooding in the United States, there has been no lack of climate phenomena in recent months. What has been lacking, and strikingly so, has been protection from man-made climate changes, which has played little or no part in the debate.

The Kyoto earth summit left behind a pleasant sensation that the nations of the world were finally gearing up to do something about global warming. Had they not agreed, for the first time ever, on lower greenhouse gas emissions? Was the United States not prepared to make concessions that no-one had been expecting?

But, as the climate talks recently held in Bonn demonstrated, there is scant cause for such nonchalance. Now is the time that will decide what the results agreed in Kyoto are worth, and the forecasts are unchanged.

If mankind continues to release as much carbon dioxide into the air as it has been doing, terrestrial temperatures will be several degrees higher in a century's time, with attendant risks of torrential storms, failed harvests and malaria in areas that were previously malaria-free.

If the sea-level continues to rise as much as is feared, one fifth of Bangladesh, for one, will be under water, and other areas will follow.

The carbon dioxide reduction targets set in Kyoto are but the beginning of a counter-strategy. The industrialized countries are now negotiating, and how effective the start proves will depend on the outcome of their talks.

That is because of the loopholes in the terms agreed. National reduction targets need not be met in one's own country. One country can buy pollution rights from another that has cut back on emission beyond its target.

Economists enthuse about ideas of this kind. Why should U.S. money not be used to modernize Russian high-rise apartment blocks rather than to convert modern U.S. power stations at even greater expense? The problem is that, as far as the parties are concerned, this trading has nothing to do with climate protection.

Russia and the Ukraine have forced the others to accept that they will not be required to reduce their emission levels between 1990 and 2010 even though their economic collapse has led to a 30-percent reduction.

This involuntary pollution saving is to be sold to the U.S. and others who can then save themselves the trouble and expense of pollution control measures in their own countries.

That all has nothing whatever to do with climate protection, yet at the Bonn conference this strange alliance laid down for the first time how deals of this kind are to be struck.

There is no more a question of prices being decided openly than there is of checks and penalties designed to ensure that emission rights are not sold twice.

The U.S. has thus chosen to ignore the rules of the system they use at home for sulphur dioxide, a system that even environmental organizations can see some sense in.

The Europeans rejected the proposals. They want the loopholes to be regulated more precisely, including credits for climate projects undertaken in developing countries.

That, then, is the world after Kyoto, a world of dispute over details without which there will be no major headway. Much will depend on whether Europe succeeds in keeping the loopholes small.

The German government has called for a requirement that at least half the emission reduction must be achieved in one's own country. The hardliners reject all limitations and are threatening openly not to ratify the terms agreed in Kyoto.

The Americans and Russians have an enormous amount of clout. As they account for over 50 percent of the pollution emitted by industrialized countries, the Kyoto agreement will not come into force unless they give it the go-ahead.

In this difficult situation the Europeans are weakening their negotiating-position. The Dutch and Finns suddenly wants to contribute less toward the joint European target of reducing emission by eight per cent, while the British government sounds ambitious but is reluctant to commit itself.