Climate talks begin under new political realities

TNS — Three years after forging the Paris climate agreement, world leaders are meeting again to decide how to turn emissions-cutting pledges into action.

But as talks begin this week in Katowice, Poland, a clash between climate science and global politics threatens the ability of nearly 200 countries to come together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

At the same time scientists are issuing increasingly dire warnings of intensifying climate change and the perils of inaction, President Donald Trump and other world leaders are pursuing nationalist and fossil-fuel friendly policies that make global warming worse.

“It’s a strange moment we’re in, where the science and people’s everyday experience are showing how important this problem is, and yet the politics, not just in the U.S. but around the world, are undermining international efforts,” said Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Research Program at Stanford University.

The dynamic is not just evident in the actions of Trump, who has attacked climate science and vowed to pull out of the Paris agreement as part of his “America first” agenda. Leaders from other countries that previously supported the agreement appear also to be backing off their commitments.

“It will be interesting to see how this local distaste for multilateralism plays against a growing understanding of the urgency of the problem,” said Samantha Gross, an energy and climate expert at the Brookings Institution.

The 2015 Paris agreement was a breakthrough, with nations across the world for the first time committing to keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit the rise to 1.5 degrees. Those international commitments to cut planet-warming emissions were a vital first step toward avoiding the most devastating effects of climate change, but the deal left many details to be firmed up later.

The negotiations beginning this week at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP24, focus on those technical matters, including the rules under which countries track their greenhouse gas emissions and report their progress to the rest of the world.

Writing the rules is a central mission of the talks “that’s essentially needed to turn Paris from an agreement on paper into a working, operational and effective regime,” said Todd Stern, who led the U.S. effort to negotiate the agreement under President Barack Obama and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Experts following the conference said its importance has grown in light of the geopolitical threats to the Paris agreement and the spate of recent reports warning that time is running out.

The planet has already warmed by about 1 degree Celsius since preindustrial times as a result of the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases, and scientists say we are already experiencing the consequences in the form of rising sea levels, more intense hurricanes and wildfires and other problems.

An October report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that some of the most devastating effects of climate change will hit harder and sooner than previously expected and could reach a tipping point within 12 years without “far-reaching and unprecedented changes.” A U.N. report released last week found that few nations are on track to meet the Paris targets, which themselves fall significantly short of achieving the emissions cuts needed to keep warming within levels tolerable to humanity. Without drastic large-scale action, the assessment found, the planet is likely to warm 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Although the Trump administration still intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement as soon as it’s eligible to in 2020, it is sending a delegation to participate in the COP24 negotiations “to ensure a level playing field that benefits and protects U.S. interests,” the State Department said in a statement.

Trump’s disavowal of the Paris Agreement, coupled with the ongoing trade dispute with China _ the most important other party in the negotiations _ weakens the U.S. position going into the conference, Wara said. Another obstacle, he said, is the administration’s push to undo regulations to fight climate change while at the same time expressing unwillingness to help poor countries reduce their emissions.

“That’s a very toxic message for the U.S. to bring to this meeting, but I suspect it is what we’ll be articulating as our viewpoint,” Wara said. Although it’s possible that countries will emerge from the two-week conference with a meaningful agreement that advances the Paris deal, Wara said, “the worst case would be that no one agrees on anything and we have a real breakdown in the conversation.”