Paris climate change talks: a brief guide to all the shouting
OPINION: If you thought the Rugby World Cup dragged on a bit, hang onto your hat, because the global climate change summit talks that start in Paris on Monday will give the rugger a run for its money. Not only is the conference scheduled to run for a marathon 12 days from November 30 to December 11, but the smart money is picking it will probably go over time. The prospects are high for a late night, TPPA-style arm-twisting session at the highest level of world governments. Already, the volume of protest from climate change activists, sceptics, and governments trying to look busy is ratcheting up by the day. The Greenpeace activists who scaled the gantry of the government marine research ship Tangaroa on Tuesday were followed within hours by the long-awaited discussion paper on the review of the emissions trading scheme. Forget about whether you think climate change is real or not. Even if you don't accept the overwhelming scientific evidence, the political argument is settled. There will be global action on climate change, and the Paris summit is more likely than any global summit since the once that failed six years ago in Copenhagen, to stitch together a deal that the world can work with. The following questions and answers are intended as an incomplete guide to the inevitable swirl of conflicting claims the Paris talks will produce. Will these talks produce a global climate change deal? Almost certainly yes. Copenhagen in 2009 failed for several reasons that are absent or less significant in Paris. Six years on, global consensus on the need to act is far stronger than at Cophenhagen. On top of that, the framework under discussion is fundamentally different. What's different this time? At Copenhagen, countries effectively had a gun to their head to sign up to a stringent set of relatively inflexible rules that failed to recognise that every country has a different emissions profiles and national circumstances. Developing countries weren't interested. Nor was the US. This time, a new system of intended nationally determined commitments (INDC) is likely to emerge, effectively replacing the more rigid Kyoto Protocol. And this time, China and the US are aligned on a successful conclusion. How will INDCs work? In the simplest terms, countries will make commitments to reduce emissions by certain amounts within certain timeframes in a variety of different ways that recognise both their differing emissions profiles and what they can do at lowest cost and with least economic and social disruption. A principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" will apply. For New Zealand, that includes being able to count plantation forests as carbon sinks. But if INDCs are not legally binding, what use are they? Newsflash: creating legally binding international environmental law is not as easy as it sounds. The use of non-binding national commitments to act on climate change is the most "exciting" and necessary result required from Paris, says climate change policy expert Suzi Kerr, from independent Wellington policy shop, Motu. Her colleague, Professor David Frame from the Victoria University climate change research institute, says the most important outcome from Paris is to secure much wider involvement by far more countries in climate change action. INDCs are more likely to achieve that than illusory legal commitments. Is New Zealand a leader or a laggard on climate change? Both. New Zealand's new emissions reduction target, a 30 per cent cut from 2005 levels by 2030 is unambitious. But then, New Zealand has fewer low-cost emissions reduction options than most industrialised nations and was early in at least establishing an emissions trading scheme (ETS), even if it's been next to useless at reducing carbon emissions to date. Our limited options are for two reasons: there is no current way to reduce methane emissions from animals other than to have less of them. Nitrous oxide is another story and can be dealt with, and the exclusion of both gases from the ETS review is a pure political sop to the farming vote. Poor form. Secondly, so much of our electricity comes from renewables that we can't do what many other countries can: switch from coal to gas to produce electricity and still look pretty good. "If you look at New Zealand's effort against Europe's across the period 2005 to 2020, (it) is quite comparable with what would have been expected, had we been a country in Europe with the per capita income we have," Frame says. Also, INDCs were a New Zealand innovation and we've been prime movers in the global research coalition on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Kerr sees major opportunities for New Zealand's lead in this area for Latin American countries like Colombia or Brazil, where renewable electricity and large farm animal populations means we share problems that European countries have barely looked at. Is Paris likely to produce enough action quickly enough? No. For a start, it will be a framework for action. Detailed negotiation will follow. So, at best, it's progress. Frame and Kerr reckon we have until the end of this century to get net carbon emissions to zero globally if there's any hope of containing global temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius or less. In their hearts, few politicians believe that's going to be possible without a massive disruption to existing energy use. Such changes might include mass adoption of solar power and other renewables, backed by massive uptake of electric vehicles, and a huge switch away from eating meat. But if something like that doesn't happen, adaptation to wilder weather and a warmer globe is inevitable. The challenge is how much can be done in the meantime to reduce the amount of adaptation required.