Difference between revisions of "Mardi Gras"
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=2010= | =2010= | ||
After a spectacular fiasco of Copenhagen 2010 Negotiations following discussions did not bring much results and no one really believed that Cancun, planned for the end of the year, will make any difference | After a spectacular fiasco of Copenhagen 2010 Negotiations following discussions did not bring much results and no one really believed that Cancun, planned for the end of the year, will make any difference. It was mainly expected to agree upon main parts of a protocol that should commit all participants to reduce its GHG emissions to a reasonable level. This was supposed to be the protocol succeeding the Kyoto Protocol, but with some tougher limits for the countries, allowing to fix GHG concentration in the atmosphere at the level at or below 450 ppm.<br><br> | ||
However, the reality showed that expectations were too high. The draft for the new protocol (LCA) prepared in Bonn (Germany) and Tianjin (China) was not agreed upon. This was even a bigger disaster in the eyes of the observer of this conference and more baneful and alarming for all experts than after the Copenhagen conference. Each delay in the climate negotiations would mean that a reduction of GHG in the atmosphere and thus a reduction of the global temperature increase are more and more impossible to achieve. An achievement of this was only | However, the reality showed that those expectations were too high. The draft for the new protocol (LCA) prepared in Bonn (Germany) and Tianjin (China) was not agreed upon. Again. This was even a bigger disaster in the eyes of the observer of this conference and more baneful and alarming for all experts than after the Copenhagen conference. Each delay in the climate negotiations would mean that a reduction of GHG in the atmosphere and thus a reduction of the global temperature increase are more and more impossible to achieve. An achievement of this was only possible if all countries would limit their GHG emissions. <br><br> | ||
So what happened? Or better: What did not happen, that the most important parties in these negotiations were so relaxed and were not able to attain a consensus? <br><br> | So what happened? Or better: What did not happen, that the most important parties in these negotiations were so relaxed and were not able to attain a consensus? <br><br> | ||
USA was mostly concerned for its own industry. Companies from the EU region were at that time leaders in green technology, so USA did not see an advantage in this. GHG abatement would mean higher costs for the US industry, so their standpoint was not to reduce GHGs. <br><br> | USA was mostly concerned for its own industry. Companies from the EU region were at that time leaders in green technology, so USA did not see an advantage in this. GHG abatement would mean higher costs for the US industry, so their standpoint was not to reduce GHGs. <br><br> | ||
Developing countries | Developing countries were furthermore expecting the first step to be done by the developed countries. Their biggest concern was not to stop their economic growth. Additionally, some of them were expecting financial support from developed countries. Main argument was that developed countries are those who was responsible for the existing level of pollution.<br><br> | ||
However nature already started giving humanity some clues on later events. Earthquakes in China and Chile, forest fires in Russia and flood in Pakistan were followed by extremely cold winter in Western Europe and part of Northern America.<br> | |||
=2011 - 2013= | =2011 - 2013= | ||
Mostly driven by the public awareness and the pressure that came from this direction on the EU governments after the fiasco in Cancun, the region decided to put emission reduction limits for its region of 25% in the early stage of this | Following couple of years was about further fighting and struggling around climate change negotiations. Those years brought new local tragedies in a face of floods, droughts and fires. However they also brought full support to project REDD from EU and some agreement on LCA content amongst leading economies, fixing somewhat "average" options in most.<br><br> | ||
With this measure the region mainly tried to be a symbol to other countries around the world to also set reduction targets. It was also the green tech industry that pushed its governments to come to a global agreement. Moreover this should be another sign to the world that the EU | The EU harbored many companies active on the green technology sector (wind turbines, solar power generation, efficiency improvement, etc.). These companies saw a worldwide market once an agreement on UN level would have been reached. They started heavily lobbying governments and the EU representatives in the UN conferences to establish global GHG abatement rules. <br><br> | ||
In a second step the EU environment ministers decided upon a McKinsey report on climate change from 2009 to offer half of the amount needed to reduce GHG emissions to nations that use the money for this purpose. With | In the meanwhile the EU started to implement carbon trading within the region and between the EU members. This project was also pushed by the pressure on EU governments by the European citizens. The public awareness in the EU about the necessity of measures mitigating climate change had been high even before the meeting in Cancun. However, mainly NGOs were waking up the people and so the governments could feel the rising pressure, that something needs to be done. <br><br> | ||
The money | |||
In the middle of this period | Mostly driven by the [[Dynamics_of_Public_Support|public awareness]] and the pressure that came from this direction on the EU governments after the fiasco in Cancun, the region decided to put emission reduction limits for its region of 25% in the early stage of this time period. Because some companies proved that installation of emissions reducing technologies also increased the efficiency, [[Position_of_Corporates|corporations]] started rapidly investing in this area. This had lead to the fact that emissions reduction target was reached soon after it came out as a EU wide regulation.<br><br> | ||
With this measure the region mainly tried to be a symbol to other countries around the world to also set reduction targets. It was also the green tech industry that pushed its governments to come to a global agreement. Moreover this should be another sign to the world that the EU aggregation of 27 countries without a governing body at that time - was going to be more unified.<br><br> | |||
In a second step the EU environment ministers decided upon a McKinsey report on climate change from 2009 to offer half of the amount needed to reduce GHG emissions to nations that use the money for this purpose. With an yearly GDP of around 15 trillion (EU) this would have amounted to a yearly spending of 3% (=EUR 415 bn) of its GDP. The other half, the EU expected, should come from the other part of the developed world, the USA. However, this did not happen in this period. The position of the USA in fighting global warming was not so progressive.<br><br> | |||
The money were supposed to be used for one or more of the three GHG abatement opportunity areas such as energy efficiency, low-carbon energy supply and/or forestry & agriculture. Obviously, the funding was related to strict reporting and compliance standards.<br><br> | |||
In the middle of this period more severe nature catastrophes occurred in China. Furthermore its cities were constantly highly polluted and more and more people were suffering from respiratory and other health issues because of this. The number of deaths caused by air pollution has increased dramatically. Already having a lot of "green" technology manufacturing inside the country, Chinese government decided to reduce carbon emission to some extend using local technologies and technologies provided by EU companies.<br><br> | |||
Chinese government decided to put light reduction limits of 20% to the year 2030 with a year 2000 baseline and declared this on the one of global climate change conferences. However at that point in time China and EU were the only countries or regions that already started implementing reduction limits. The developing countries were still mainly concerned about their economic growth and saw it negatively affected, if they had put GHG reduction targets. Furthermore China was receiving the significant part of the funds provided by the EU in terms of agreement on meeting emissions reduction target, so for a lot of other countries EU was not able to provide enough financial and technology support to in order to reduce emissions. | |||
<br><br> | <br><br> | ||
=2014 - 2018= | =2014 - 2018= | ||
With the intention to push | With the intention to push other nations, EU put import duties on goods that had their origin in countries with a certain minimum per capita GDP without emission reduction targets. This was a surprising action for many at that time. However, it was brought forward because EU was steering towards more unification and had now own EU ministers being responsible for each field on EU wide level, including the "Minister for Global Climate Change Issues".<br><br> | ||
This fact plus China becoming | This fact plus China becoming more and more important trading partner (ahead of USA) for the EU, changed the negotiation behavior of EU and thus it also ignore the WTO, which tried to abolish such trade barriers. <br> | ||
The idea was to give the money received | The idea was to give part of the money received from this import duties to developing countries for education and GHG reduction measures. During the end of this period the developing countries also started to employ it for the implementation of green technology and thus realized that could become feasible to agree upon reduction targets.<br><br> | ||
In the past China was importing agricultural goods from some parts in Africa to provide the Chinese population with food. An increasing number of droughts in Africa damaged the harvest on these lands and made this region even more unsuitable for farming. This added to the natural catastrophes still occurring around the world and in China as well.<br><br> | |||
In the past China | Behind the curtains of the UN climate conferences China and EU were talking about the implementation of the import duties by EU. For China this was not a problem, since they had emission reduction targets in place and were planning to align them with EU in a nearest time. However, China was planning to implement such import duties on goods from countries without any reduction targets as well. This was good news for EU. Because since EU had this import duties its relation to US worsened slightly, which affected some EU exports to US. With China putting the same import duties towards the end of this period, US did not have much choice. The biggest trading partner for U.S. was China and EU. <br><br> | ||
Behind the curtains of the UN climate conferences China and EU were talking about the implementation of the import duties by EU. For China this was not a problem, since they had emission reduction targets in place. However, China was planning to implement such import duties on goods from countries without any reduction targets as well. This was good news for EU. Because since EU had this import duties its relation to US worsened slightly, which affected some EU exports to US. With China putting the same import duties towards the end of this period, US did not have much choice. The biggest trading partner for U.S. was China and EU. <br><br> | In the climate negotiations, however, US was still concentrating on its own heavy industry and thus was not willing to put any reasonable emission targets. The developing countries had other problems, like fighting poverty and improving infrastructure. So the climate change would still negatively affect their growth. During this period they did not agree to put emission targets. Furthermore they were not affected by the import duties of China and EU, since their GDP per capita was under the threshold. | ||
In the climate negotiations, however, US was still concentrating on its own industry and thus was not willing to put any emission targets. The developing countries | |||
<br><br> | <br><br> | ||
Additionally, more and more corporations world-wide recent years started moving towards AAA Green Rankings being put under the pressure of NGOs from one side and their "as green as you can be" business partners from the other. Leading countries governments being pushed by public to seal the deal met this corporations behavior as a relief and came back to the LCA discussion. In | Additionally, even more and more corporations world-wide recent years started moving towards AAA Green Rankings being put under the pressure of NGOs from one side and their "as green as you can be" business partners from the other. Leading countries governments being pushed by public to seal the deal met this corporations behavior as a relief and came back to the LCA discussion. In 2016 a number of countries ratified LCA, which was consolidated recently with some other Climate Change proposals, such as the REDD agreement (the last one became as part of the main document by demand from Brazil and some other countries, who faced huge forest fires in Amazonian earlier the same year). But some were upset to realize that it was mainly the same countries who already ratified Kyoto Protocol before. Others also started pointing to the fact that according to IPCC reports this document was already out of date even before being signed and has to be remade again to bring any real benefit.<br> | ||
Being put into the changing climate conditions some countries as US or Japan followed Russia's example and implemented new adaption plans in their Climate Change policies. While keeping some distance from other negotiators even after coming back to the table, China faced two consecutive years of droughts, which lead to the food supply crisis and even hunger in the Northern regions of the country. Hunger became a final chord that put country into the recession.<br> | Being put into the changing climate conditions some countries as [[Position_of_US|US]] or Japan followed Russia's example and implemented new adaption plans in their Climate Change policies. While keeping some distance from other negotiators even after coming back to the table in UN, China faced two consecutive years of droughts in 2016 nd 2017, which along with problems with African exporters lead to the food supply crisis and even hunger in the Northern regions of the country. Hunger became a final chord that put country into the recession. This allowed Chine to review their projected energy demand growth and made implementation of strict emissions limits more feasible.<br> | ||
=2019 - 2020= | =2019 - 2020= | ||
LCA was reworked in a shortest time and put with a realistic figures for the countries discussion. It took almost 2 years of regular conferences,meetings and debates to make countries agree on conditions. Process of moving from "paying out sins" LCA to the "saving the planet" LCA was not as long as for agreeing on the | |||
USA agreed finally in the UN negotiations in 2018 to sign the LCA and reduce GHGs. This move required mainly the U.S. industry to improve efficiency. The country did this for two reasons: | LCA was reworked in a shortest time and put with a realistic figures for the countries discussion. It took almost 2 years of regular conferences,meetings and debates to make countries agree on conditions. Process of moving from "paying out sins" LCA to the "saving the planet" LCA was not as long as for agreeing on the previous version, but unfortunately was not less painful as well. However, after India, Brazil and US jumped on the boat it was finished.<br><br> | ||
USA agreed finally in the UN negotiations in 2018 to sign the LCA and reduce GHGs. This move required mainly the U.S. industry to improve efficiency. The country did this for two reasons: to avoid the import duties from China and EU and to be an example to developing countries to also set emission targets. USA observed the developing countries growing economically. The country believed to put with emission targets a brake on this growth, which was seen as a threat to USA. So they communicated it on the UNFCCC conference.<br><br> | |||
Almost in parallel also developing countries, like Brazil, Russia and India put emission reduction targets. This was driven by that they received during the years enough funds to finance such projects like reforestation in Brazil or renewable energy power generation in India. Russia additionally was ultimately affected by several natural catastrophes that were again devastating for their harvest and thus it drove them to reduce GHGs. <br><br> | Almost in parallel also developing countries, like Brazil, Russia and India put emission reduction targets. This was driven by that they received during the years enough funds to finance such projects like reforestation in Brazil or renewable energy power generation in India. Russia additionally was ultimately affected by several natural catastrophes that were again devastating for their harvest and thus it drove them to reduce GHGs. <br><br> | ||
After the main ratification of LCA2 a real hope appeared that in a nearest decades climate will finally stabilize and there will be no irreversible consequences for the planet. | |||
=Timelines= | =Timelines= | ||
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