As deadlines of global significance go, it was pretty…underwhelming. Sunday (January 31st) was the date by which countries were asked to declare whether they were putting their eggs in the Copenhagen Accord basket, and specify their 2020 emission reduction targets.
The deadline was the most immediate ‘action point’ in the non-binding Accord (which has been described by some as having “all the authority and meaning of a bus ticket"). But it failed to jolt countries out of their we’ve-got-all-the-time-in-the-world-to-deal-with-climate-change stupor.
Although most of the G20 (major economy) countries have now “associated” with the Accord, their targets are nothing like what’s needed. See here for details of developed countries targets, and developing countries mitigation actions. New Zealand has simply reiterated its initial offer of 10-20% below 1990 levels by 2020. Unfortunately, this offer is so conditional (on a range of things) that to call it a committment of any kind is a bit of a misnomer.
No countries have improved on the targets they set prior to Copenhagen (it had been hoped they would). So, we now have a situation in which the COMBINED commitments would mean an average global temperature increase of more than 3 degrees C, setting the world on a sure path towards catastrophic climate change. If you want to check out what a 3-degree world might be like, take a look here.
As summarised in a new Greenpeace briefing that examines the implications of current emissions pledges, warming of even half this level would have nasty social, environmental and economic impacts.
To conclude, countries like New Zealand can claim, as Climate Change Minister Nick Smith has done, that joining the Accord reinforces New Zealand’s ongoing commitment to tackling climate change, but if they all fail to make the emissions pledges strong enough to actually avert dangerous climate change, then their participation means very little. It’s like saying “I’ll play the first quarter but I’ll play badly.”
The Accord’s 31 January deadline appears to have been no more than a cynical PR exercise allowing governments to recycle existing pledges and dress them up as effective action. Let this not be the start of a year of Copenhagen 'greenwash'. Not only are the target pledges measly, but the Accord is no substitute for the fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty demanded by millions of people around the world.