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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
64 April 2015
and what are alarmingly referred to by
Robert Keohane and David Victor as
land-use ‘innovations’. They have also
presented the advantages of a “regime
complex” or a combination of overlap-
ping and intertwining measures and
mechanisms instead of a comprehen-
sive instrument. They claim this is more
“politically realistic” in a climate where
nation states are still bound by the inter-
ests of ‘major constituencies’, such as
major fossil consumers or producers.
Notwithstanding the unfairness and
ineffectiveness of the current Kyoto
and post-Kyoto arrangements, there
are signs that major emitters from
developing countries – China and
India particularly – will be drawn into
the next deal to be hammered out in
Paris next December at ‘COP 21’. The
US particularly has found it politically
impossible to get a climate deal without
the involvement of developing countries
through the Senate, Although Presi-
dent Obama has found renewed zeal on
the issue it is not on the agenda for the
upcoming Presidential elections. Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said
his first priority on election would be
to “do whatever I can to get the Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency reined
in”, he said, referring to the agency’s
proposed regulations to limit carbon
pollution from power plants. Climate-
change sceptic James Inhofe now heads
the Senate’s environment panel, Presi-
dential candidate Ted Cruz and even
establishment-backed candidates like
former Florida governor Jeb Bush, deny
climate change.
Bush had previously asserted that the
climate may be warming and, as gover-
nor of a state regarded as the hotbed for
hurricanes and coastal erosion, fought
against drilling off the Florida coast
and launched a massive Everglades
T
WENTY years after the UN
Framework Convention on Cli-
mate Change, adopted in 1992,
there is still no comprehen-
sive agreement that regulates
emissions from all countries, or which
would divide up the remaining carbon
budget fairly between developed and
developing countries. Indeed there is a
strong case to be made that emissions
budgets should be allocated to people,
not countries, which would eliminate
the historical entitlement of devel-
oped countries to existing high levels of
emissions.
Against a background of obfuscation
there is increasing speculation that what
might emerge from COP-21 is a ‘bubble’
of options which offer increasing flexi-
bility for countries to devise and meet
targeted reductions. Such measures
include emissions trading, technology
cooperation and transfers and forestry
Bilateral deals may supplant the UN Climate Framework long-term. By Sadhbh O’Neill
An improvement,
but unfair and ineffective
ENVIRONMENT Emissions
The US-China
deal does not
specify at what
point China
should peak
its emissions
“
Presidents
Obama and Xi:
not that much to
celebrate
April 2015 65
restoration project.
These attitudes underpin appeals
for flexibility – even if they undermine
the comprehensive regime that envi-
ronmentalists have been campaigning
for through the UNFCCC. So, the US
recently signed a climate deal with
China directly, whereby both parties
entered a bilateral political agreement,
outside of the UNFCCC process, to stabi-
lise and reduce emissions according to
an (arbitrary) timetable consistent with
their national interests:
“The United States intends to achieve
an economy-wide target of reducing its
emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005
level in 2025 and to make best efforts
to reduce its emissions by 28%. China
intends to achieve the peaking of CO2
emissions around 2030 and to make
best efforts to peak early and intends to
increase the share of non-fossil fuels in
primary energy consumption to around
20% by 2030. Both sides intend to con-
tinue to work to increase ambition over
time.’ (US – China Joint Announcement
on Climate Change, November 2014)”
This agreement signals an important
shift in US policy though the Obama
administration has committed itself to
working also towards a binding agree-
ment in Paris at COP-21. While the
targets for the US appear more onerous
than the Chinese objective of merely sta-
bilising emissions in 2030, the reality is
that US emissions have not grown since
2005, largely due to the shift from coal
and oil to gas, and Chinese emissions are
increasing at a perilous rate of about 7%
per annum. Key to the success of this
deal will be the degree to which China
acts before 2030 to peak and reduce its
emissions, and the degree to which the
US can deliver the cuts it has promised
in the face of a return to moderate eco-
nomic growth. While the commitments
are phrased very differently for the US
and China, the key point is that China
will have to get its emissions off the
exponential track before 2030.
According to analyst Raymond Pierre-
humbert, the trick is to both guess – and
influence – the point at which China will
peak its emissions. In principle, the US-
China deal does not specify at what point
China should peak its emissions. In an
article for Slate Magazine, Pierrehum-
bert argues:
‘Translating this commitment into
quantitative implications for cumula-
tive carbon involves a lot of guesswork
as to how China will go about fulfilling
its commitment, because the agreement
does not spell out the value at which
emissions will peak. A cynic would say
that China could just increase its growth
rate to, say, 10 percent and peak at an
enormous value in 2030, giving itself
plenty of wiggle room to hold emissions
constant or decrease them thereafter.
If this is really China’s intent, then the
new agreement is largely meaningless.
But let us suppose instead that China’s
commitment was taken in good faith. A
minimum good-faith fulfilment would
be to continue growing at 7 percent up
to 2030 and then hold emissions con-
stant thereafter. This scenario is shown
in the middle (black) curve of Figure
1. In terms of cumulative carbon, that
would mean that China emits another
roughly 70 gigatons out to 2030, and
holding emissions constant thereafter,
emits a further 86 gigatons between
2030 and 2060. Without the agreement,
China’s emissions scenario would look
like the upper (red) curve, and China
would emit a further 790 gigatons in
the latter period, which would be more
than enough to bring the world over the
trillion-ton limit regardless of what any-
body else did. So yes, getting China off
the exponential curve is a very, very big
deal indeed.’
The analysis above highlights the dif-
ficulties in securing an effective global
regime for emissions reduction in a con-
text where developing countries with
large populations – such as China - are
bent on increasing standards of living
consistent with 1st World energy use. It
is entirely possible that a regime complex
may emerge at COP-21, and it may well
be effective in reducing emissions and
weaning developed countries gradually
off fossil energy. However, the problem
is that it will offer no guarantees that
emissions will be reduced in a manner
which transfers the global wealth that
has been captured by rich countries
as a result of their emissions since the
industrial revolution, or that developing
countries will be appropriately compen-
sated for the emissions they have not
been able- and now will not be allowed
- to make. Indeed, it is also plausible that
the model proposed by Robert Keohane
and David Victor for a ‘regime complex’
will permit extraction of fossil energy
in developing countries to continue but
for the benefit of existing major energy
consumers i.e. a continuation but grad-
ual contraction of the neo-liberal model
without the concomitant ‘convergence’
of developing countries.
The US-China deal sits well into a
political framework where high histor-
ical emitters are not penalised for past
excesses and are able to specify when
and how they reduce their emissions
in a manner which does not damage
their economies. From a political view-
point this amounts to a victory for the
George W Bush position at the expense
of the global commons and future
generations. •
The targets for
the US appear
more onerous
than for China
but the reality
is that US
emissions
have not
grown since
2005, largely
due to the
shift from coal
and oil to gas
“
ENVIRONMENT Emissions
Chart 1: CO2 annual emission rates for China
Courtesy of Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
2010
Year
Business as usual
Emissions rate, gigatons carbon per year
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
2020 2030 2040 2050 2060
US/China agreement – Scenario 1
US/China agreement – Scenario 2
