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ENVIRONMENT: Lawmakers See New Urgency in Warming Debate

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Feb 15 2007 (IPS) - Legislators from 20 countries meeting here in Washington called on the world’s richest nations to urgently adopt a plan to address climate change that includes emissions targets for both developed and developing countries, as well as measures to reduce deforestation.

The lawmakers said that the governments of the main industrial powers, as well as large developing nations, need to start global talks on these issues at the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Bali, Indonesia in November.

The talks between the G8 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain and the United States – and the so called +5 developing nations – Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa – should be completed by 2009.

In a statement at the end of the two-day meeting, delegates said there was a growing global recognition that “the costs of inaction will be greater than the cost of action” and that the longer governments around the world waited, the more difficult it will be to solve the problems associated with climate change.

Their statement will be presented to the German chancellor and current president of the G8, Angela Merkel and the G8 + 5 Climate Group in June of this year. The final statement will be presented to the Japanese president, and sitting president of the G8, in 2008.

Some of the senior delegates heralded a new era in the way countries are responding to the issue of climate change, especially Washington, given the U.S. position as the leading country responsible for carbon dioxide emissions.

Elliot Morley, a British member of parliament and the president of Global Legislators for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE), the main organiser of the event, told a press conference that there was “no dissent [among countries] on the need to move forward”.

Anders Wijkman, a European Parliament rapporteur and former U.N. deputy secretary-general, said there were a number of factors that spurred this global turnabout.

For one, there have been more extreme weather events over the past few years. In the United States, he gave the example of the catastrophic hurricanes of 2005, Katrina and Rita, which devastated several U.S. cities.

He also noted that scientists have been steadily churning out research papers solidifying the evidence behind the grim picture of climate change and its dangers at a pace that few have failed to notice.

“There’s hardly a week that passes by without a paper coming out on the issue,” he told IPS. “You’d have to be really blind to ignore all this.”

The past few months saw a bleak report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which conclusively blamed human activities for global warming. The Stern Report in Britain, which came out last October, also warned that climate change would have a steep economic price.

But the biggest change appeared to come from the U.S. lawmakers, whose country represents about five percent of the world’s population, yet contributes at least 20 percent of the planet’s human-made greenhouse gas emissions

“I detected quite a remarkable change here,” Morley said.

Canadian MP Bob Mills agreed he has been coming to Washington for years, but he sensed a new interest this time.

The White House has steadfastly rejected the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty governing greenhouse gas emissions, as too costly to the U.S. economy.

However, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, promised action in the new Congress.

“Change is happening in Washington D.C. and nowhere is it happening more rapidly than in the global warming area,” she said.

The forum was attended by heavyweight U.S. lawmakers such as Senator John McCain and Joe Biden, two 2008 presidential campaign hopefuls.

Others included Senators Joe Lieberman, Jeff Bingaman, Olympia Snowe and Larry Craig.

“I believe we are witnessing a sea-change in acceptance of the reality of global warming. The issue has intensified not only environmentally but also politically and, as such, has dramatically changed the prospect for passing climate change legislation substantially for the better,” Sen. Snowe told the gathering.

Last month, the U.S. Congress saw the introduction of a bill that aims to help companies control costs through emissions credit trading and calls for U.S. “leadership” in spurring other energy consumers like India and China to move towards emissions reductions and alternative energy sources such as nuclear power.

Sen. Biden also introduced a resolution that calls on the U.S. to address global climate change through the negotiation of fair and effective international commitments.

But the upbeat rhetoric on an emerging global consensus didn’t hide the undercurrents of differences among many industrialised and industrialising nations.

Morley told reporters that the statement was a good start but there were some disagreements.

China, for example, wants industrialised countries to take responsibility for the damage they did to the environment over the past decades. It has also urged them to share cleaner technologies with poor countries, but rich nations say developing countries can only get the technology at a price and by respecting intellectual property rights.

It was also clear at the meeting that Brazil, a major emerging economy, was concerned about deforestation and fought to place the issue in the final statement, when European countries in particular were more interested in pushing lawmakers to advocate a cap on carbon emissions.

U.S. lawmakers were still working out their differences on whether to accept mandatory emissions caps or not, with many arguing that such limits would hurt U.S. companies’ ability to compete internationally.

The G8 + 5 Climate Change Dialogue was launched a year ago to build an international consensus amongst legislators, senior business and civil society leaders for a way forward after 2012, when the current global treaty on climate change, the Kyoto Protocol, expires.