Credentials in hand, I ventured into the Belle Center for an overwhelming day of events and conversation. I started off attending a side event given by the Research Center for Sustainable Development(CASS), a China-based NGO. The talk set down a theoretical framework for why and how carbon budgets should be used to govern global greenhouse gas emissions through a system of emissions caps and transfer payments between countries which emit above their cap and those which emit below their cap. In my view, it was an ideal way to begin my week here because it gave a good introduction to the central conflict that's playing out, with Developed and Developing nations pitted against each other as they tussle over who has what obligations and what the magnitude of those obligations are.
The basic tenets of the argument made were easy to accept: To meet keep climate change within safe parameters, we need to cap carbon emissions, and a cap should be applied equitably on a per-capita basis. If one person emits above their cap, they must pay a transfer payment to someone who has not exceeded their cap in order to obtain that person's left over emissions rights. Applied on a global level, a similar system would work for individual countries, ensuring that the cap is not exceeding and allocating emissions to the most efficient uses via the transfer payment mechanism. Sounds fair, right?
Of course, the issues get sticky when these principle are put into practice. Countries can't agree on a basic level for the cap - should we keep the rise in average global temperature below 2°C? 1.5°C? The answer depends, at least in political terms, on how much low-lying land your country has. Another one of the biggest sticking points for the developed and developing countries is the question of historical responsibility. If, as CASS argues, countries bear responsibility for their carbon emissions over the last 100 years, this implies that developed countries owe transfer payments to developing countries on the order of $1 trillion. But developed countries have no intentions to give that kind of money. The latest proposal from the US calls for just $350 million. Meanwhile, developed countries and the US in particular demand that developing countries take a stronger stance on global warming themselves, a tenet that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense since most of these nations are emitting well below a reasonable per-capita emissions cap. China, after all, produces 1/10 the amount of carbon as the US per-capita.
At least, that's what I'm given to understand are some of the major issues at stake here. While I found myself surrounded by people profoundly concerned about climate change, the people actually making the decisions were not-so-strangely elusive. It wasn't until I returned home at the end of the day, for instance, that the big stumbling block of today was Developing countries' fear that the Kyoto Protocol will be dropped entirely at COP15, a decision which they fear will undermine the few gains they were able to make in 1997 when the protocol was developed. Yet its clear that many very important people are here this week, and it's exciting to be rubbing elbows with the big shots.
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