Obama Won’t Say the “C-Word” as Rich Countries Let Poor Countries Do the Heavy Lifting on Climate

A recent report from the Stockholm Environment Institute contains a shocker: developing countries’ pledges to cut the emissions of heat-trapping gases under the Cancun Agreements exceed the pledges of the high-income countries. This is despite the fact that the developed countries have far higher per capita emissions and are responsible for most of the atmospheric load that is driving global weirding.The SEI report examines four recent detailed studies: all agree that developing country pledges to reduce CO2 emissions from the business-as-usual trajectory (“mitigation” in the climate jargon) are larger than developed country pledges.  (Estimates for totals developing country pledges for 2020 range from 2.3 – 10.7 gigatons of CO2 (GtCO2) equivalent; developed country pledges range from 0.0 – 7.4 GtCO2 equivalent.  U.S. pledges range from 0.0 – 3.1, less than China’s pledges, which range from 1.0 – 7.6 GtCO2 equivalent.Frighteningly, but less surprisingly, the report also concludes that the total emissions cuts pledged by developing and developed countries together are insufficient to hold the planet to a maximum 2 degrees C increase, the goal agreed at the last round of climate talks in Cancun, and that an increase of up to 5 degrees C is possible.  (In case you forgot: at 4-5 degrees C, much of southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East will be uninhabitable due to excessive heat and drought, and humanity will be forced towards the poles.)Of course, pledges aren’t actions, and it’s possible that the developing countries are making promises that they don’t aim to keep. Still, since a binding global agreement is off the table, pledges are all we have.  So it matters that the rich world can’t be bothered even to promise to do their fair share.Moreover, the evidence suggests that developing countries are moving to meet and strengthen their emissions reductions commitments. As my colleague David Wheeler reported in a recent working paper, India has adopted an ambitious renewable energy standard.   A recent NY Times article cites data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that developing countries are already home to more than half of the word’s electricity from renewable sources.China, whose booming economy and vast population led it to surpass the United States as the world’s biggest emitter, is nonetheless moving rapidly to reduce the carbon-intensity of its economy, which is more than can be said for the United States and other rich countries.In a recent talk on “China’s Low Carbon Development” at The Brookings Institution, Professor Qi Ye, director of the Climate Policy Initiative at Tsinghua University, outlined China’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in key sectors of the economy.”Look at the fuel  economy standards.  China certainly has a higher standard than that of the United States and even higher than that of California,” he pointed out.  On building efficiency, he said, China annually releases 28 kilograms of carbon dioxide per square meter compared to an average 87 kilograms per square meter per year in the United States.(view the full slide set)Since 1980 China has implemented an energy conservation policy that resulted in an average decline of 5 percent per year in energy intensity, the amount of energy used to produce a unit of GDP.  In China’s newly released 12th Five-year Plan (2011-2015), the target shifts from energy intensity reductions to overall emissions reductions.Meanwhile, here in the United States, a president who campaigned with a promise to tackle the issue has stopped using the word “climate.”As Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute said in a recent article in the Washington Post, the administration runs a risk when it minimizes global warming’s public profile:

“I don’t blame the president for the failure of climate legislation, but I do hold him accountable for allowing opponents to fill the void with misinformation and outright lies about climate change,” he said. “By excising ‘climate change’ from his vocabulary, the president has surrendered the power that only he has to explain challenging issues and advance complex solutions for our country.”