A Short Summary on Nation's Quasi Commitments on Greenhouse Gas Reduction. (June 17, 2009_)

On May 4, 2009 Australia's Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, announced a revised target for reducing Australia’s carbon pollution committing  to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution by 25% below 2000 levels by 2020 if the world agrees to an ambitious global deal to stabilise levels of CO₂ equivalent at 450 parts per million or lower. Senator Wong's announcement states: "The Government will retain its White Paper target range of an unconditional commitment to reduce carbon pollution by 5 per cent by 2020, and a commitment to reduce carbon pollution by 15 per cent by 2020 if there is an agreement where major developing economies commit to substantially restrain emissions and advanced economies take on commitments comparable to Australia's," and finally: "A Ratification Review will be established in addition to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) Process to assess whether the terms of any global agreement meet the conditions set out for Australia to adopt the 25 per cent target."

[Note: It is estimated that Australia's greenhouse gas emissions in 2000 was 108% that of 1990]

To give some idea of the complexity of the international negotiations on greenhouse gas reduction NatureNews today noted: "International climate negotiators muddled through the latest round of global-warming talks in Bonn, Germany, last week, overshadowed by independent bilateral negotiations in Beijing between the United States and China... [N]ew disagreements seem to have outnumbered resolutions by a wide margin," and Keya Chatterjee, deputy director for climate change at the WWF environmental group in Washington DC commented: "We're at the point where we desperately need some higher-level leadership to get this process going."

From 7–10 June China, hosted a delegation led by Todd Stern, the US' lead climate negotiator, and John Holdren, President Barack Obama's chief science adviser. China and the United States combined produce 40% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

The bilateral meeting followed China's release of a position paper on 20 May calling on developed nations to reduce emissions to at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Jeff Tollefson in NatureNews writes: "A bill that could come up for a vote as early as this month in the [US] House of Representatives — would establish an emissions-trading system to reduce US emissions to 1% below 1990 levels by 2020. Other provisions in the bill would go further, but even the most optimistic assessment, by the World Resources Institute, pegs potential reductions at only 17–23% below 1990 levels," and Mr Stern admitted that: "We certainly did not agree with each other on everything, but I think that we each came away with a better and a clearer understanding of each other's views and perspectives."

Robert Stavins, an environmental economist at Harvard University, told Mr Tollefson: "The gulf between the countries of the industrialized world and what is usually referred to as the developing world, is, if anything, growing, or at least solidifying."

In summary:

The largest pledged emissions cut on the table is of 30% from 1990 levels by 2020; that is what the European Union (EU) says it will do if others commit to similar cuts. If they don't, the EU offers only 20%. And things drop off quickly from there: Japan came under fire last week for proposing a plan to reduce domestic emissions by about 8% below 1990 levels.

Such numbers would seem to indicate a substantial divide among industrialized countries, but the gap largely disappears if the commitments are measured against a 2005 baseline.

 
Using this baseline, Japan's proposal is a 15% reduction by 2020; Europe's, 9–13%; and the United States', up to 10%, according to an analysis by Nigel Purvis, a former US negotiator and current president of the Climate Advisers consultancy in Washington DC. If programmes to reduce emissions internationally are included, US emissions could decrease up to 28%, with Japan's also likely to drop further.

Perhaps trying to develop methods for controlling atmospheric nitrogen concentration may not be any more difficult than getting global agreement on a useful approach for the reduction of greenhouse gasses.