Climate Challenge Briefing from Jan 2009

Good briefing on climate challenge and potential for COP-15 from Feb 2009.

UN Climate Conference: Thecountdown to Copenhagen: In 331 days' time, 15,000 officials from 200countries will gather in the Danish capital with 1 goal: to find a solutionto global warming. Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, presents the firstin a series of dispatches on the crucial summit. 

Known officially in UN-speak as COP 15 - the 15th meeting of the parties ofthe UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change - the meeting in Denmarkwill try to work out a way for the world to act together to preserve thethin envelope of atmosphere, soil and sea which surrounds our planet andenables us to live, in the face of rising temperatures which threaten todestroy its habitability.

All the world's major governments, including the once-scepticaladministration of the US President George Bush, now formally accept thattemperature rises have already begun, are likely if unchecked to provedisastrous for human civilisation, and are being caused by emissions ofgreenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from our power plants, factories andmotor vehicles. 

But if all the major governments now accept it, getting them to agree on howto tackle it still seems a very long way off indeed. The essential problem,to use the jargon, is burden-sharing. We know the world has to cut its CO2emissions drastically, and soon. But which countries are to cut them, by howmuch?

The penalty for failure could not be higher. It is just 20 years since theworld woke up to the danger of rising carbon emissions destabilising theatmosphere. Two decades ago it seemed a fairly distant threat, prefiguredprincipally in supercomputer climate prediction programmes; something thatwas likely to happen a comfortably long distance away, such as at the end ofthe 21st century. 

Three things have altered since then. First, the changing climate is nowvisible, not just in computer predictions, but all around us: spring insouthern Britain, for example, is arriving about three weeks earlier than itdid 40 years ago. At this time last year a red admiral butterfly, anarchetypal creature of the summer, was photographed perching on a snowdrop,a flower of the winter - a previously unheard-of occurrence. 

Second, it has become clear in the past five years that the earth isresponding to the increasing CO2 loading of the atmosphere much more rapidlythan scientists initially thought. There are numerous examples but toinstance just one, the summer sea ice of the Arctic Ocean is melting farmore quickly than anyone imagined. 

Third, it has become apparent, even more recently, that global emissions ofCO2 are shooting up at a rate that far exceeds anything the UN'sIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thought possible when itsketched out future emissions scenarios in a special report in 2000. Eventhough we have had 20 years to think about emissions cuts, and 11 years ofthe Kyoto protocol, the treaty which actually prescribed the first cuts forthe industrialised countries, emissions are soaring as never before. 

Some leading climate scientists are now openly voicing concerns that thismakes it increasingly unlikely we can meet the aim of keeping globaltemperature rise to about 2C above the pre-industrial level, which isgenerally regarded as the most that may be endured by human society withoutmortal danger. (We are now at about 0.75 degrees C above pre-industrial, andanother 0.6 of a degree is thought to be inevitable because of the CO2 whichhas already been emitted). 

Certainly, if we are to have any chance at all at holding the increase totwo degrees, there is wide agreement that global emissions have to peak verysoon - probably by 2015 or 2016 - and then rapidly decrease, to 80 per centbelow present levels by 2050. The later the peak, the greater (and thereforemore difficult) the subsequent decrease would have to be. 

That's the pathway the world has to follow. Copenhagen offers the chance toset out along it. But even if the deal in December is not as ambitious asscientists and environmentalists insist is necessary - and at the moment,that seems pretty likely - it is vital that there is actually an accord.Disagreement would be a catastrophe.