Lima: weak, non-binding ‘agreement’ lays traps for Paris

Grey skies ahead in Paris…

As predicted in my post exposing the well-worn path taken by climate talks, we have reached steps 10, 11 and 12:

• A hastily cobbled-together ‘agreement’ (which will have no binding effect, and which will kick any hard decisions further down the road) will be announced in order to save face;
• The media and the Greens will publicly hail this sham agreement as a successful outcome, whilst secretly acknowledging that it is yet another embarrassing failure;
• Everyone disappears back home (belching thousands more tonnes of CO2), and the whole thing is forgotten until the next ‘last chance’ comes around.

All to be expected. Whilst some sections of the moonbat media are celebrating the ‘last minute success’, even the Sydney Morning Herald acknowledges that there are difficult times ahead:

The main aim of the Lima conference – to agree to provide detailed information about commitments countries will make before the climate change conference in Paris in 2015 to enable others to scrutinise these pledges – was achieved. Further, a draft of elements of the Paris agreement was agreed to.

But major issues of dispute have been deferred until next year in Paris. The intractable issue of the division or differentiation between developing and developed countries and how much each should do is unresolved.

This binary division was central to the United Nations Framework Convention struck in 1992 but is no longer as relevant in 2014 ; countries now range along a spectrum of economic development.

Yet this binary division flows through to most aspects of the Lima agreement and so fundamental is this binary division to some developing countries’ view of world affairs that it cannot easily be excised.

Another problem is a competition between two rival models for what a new global climate agreement should look like. One is the old-style top-down legally binding agreement in which countries negotiate the international rules and the targets and other commitments each should meet.

The other is model in which countries determine their own commitments, targets and the scope of those pledges. Through the provision of detailed information about those pledges it is expected that there will be an incentive for countries to ensure that these voluntary contributions reflect a fair share of the international effort but also reflect differences between rich and poor countries. Whether this actually occurs remains to be seen but the existing model has not had much success.

At the end of the day, negotiators faced a problem in Lima – countries had their gaze set on the main prize in Paris but were unable or unwilling to agree on how to get there. This will only heighten the stakes and expectations for next year in France.

Until next year, then…