The world between Rio (1992) and Paris (2015)

In 1992 the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio gave us the Framework Convention on Climate Change.  A generation later, ‘the world’ (cough cough) looks on to Paris for another such statement.  What are the similarities and differences between the two lead-up periods?  Some initial thoughts…

Disclaimers-

1) this post is to fulfil a promise to a good friend with whom I just had a lovely phone call. It’s not necessarily my final considered view. Very happy to be corrected!!

2) I wasn’t hugely focused on climate in 1992, so what I am saying is based on a reasonable amount of reading instead, fwiw.

The key things to understand about Rio was that in the two years leading up to it, A Lot Happened;

1. Geopolitically – the Soviet Union disintegrated (with interesting effects for Germany and  Russia’s 1990 carbon dioxide baseline), the US went to war in Kuwait/Iraq .
2. American industry mobilised quickly and effectively around the Global Climate Coalition and the Climate Council, to emphasise the uncertainties in the climate science and the (perceived) high cost of doing anything to reduce emissions
3. The Bush (Snr) administration managed to get ‘targets and timetables’ (for emissions reductions) OFF the table/out of the treaty, by the simple threat of refusing to turn up, leaving the spectre of another Law of the Sea debacle.

I’ll skip over the Berlin Mandate, Kyoto, the struggles over ratification, the failure to replace Kyoto.  Simple thing is this – in 1992 the atmospheric concentration of C02 was a little over 350ppm.  Now it is over 400ppm.

So, leading up to the Paris meeting we have

1. The loss of Western pre-eminence (choose your date – 2005 with the obvious failure in Iraq, 2008 with the global financial crisis, the set-backs for US hegemony in Latin America etc)
2. The collapse of the closed industry front against climate action – there are now enough bankers, insurance industry folks etc etc to make total ‘spoiling’ impossible [Jeremy Leggett is writing about this].  There’s (overblown?) talk of ‘civil war’ in the fossil fuel industry.  The climate science and quicker-than-expected impacts (sea level rise, ocean acidification, absurd heat waves, Arctic loss etc etc etc) are concentrating minds wonderfully.
3. The Chinese and American political elites say they are ‘onboard’; the Chinese because they are mostly engineers and can see what’s coming, and fear middle-class uprisings over things like air quality, Obama because he is in full-blown legacy mode.

So what will happen?  Well, I predicted there’d be some sort of weak deal at Copenhagen, so what the hell do I know?
Surely the abject failure to predict the UK General Election of 2015 should make us all wary of expert prognostications.

Fwiw – I think there will be some motherhood and apple pie statement.  There will be a big round number of pledges for adaptation funding, and a much smaller number delivered.  There will be some hand-waving about new technologies, technology transfer and CCS.  Some radical activists will get their heads cracked open.

And in ten years, the carbon emissions will still be increasing, and the atmospheric concentration will be somewhere in the region of 425ppm.

#gladIgotthatvasectomy