Fossil-fuel limits emerge as goal for deal on global warming
February 14, 2015 12:00 AM
Stefan Nicola / Bloomberg News
BERLIN — Envoys from some 190 nations are taking more seriously the idea of setting a goal to phase out the pollution from fossil fuels, lending support to the movement against investments in oil and coal companies.
After a week of discussions in Geneva, delegates convened by the United Nations adopted an 86-page draft document with options including the near-elimination of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 or 2100 — or to suck the most destructive fumes out of the atmosphere by 2080.
While the text marks only the starting point of discussions, that fossil-fuel limits have been given such prominence in the talks is an indication that the envoys are looking to ratchet up ambitions for a deal they wish to conclude in December in Paris.
“It’s hard to imagine Saudi Arabia and some of the other oil producers will accept language that explicitly says fossil fuels have to be phased out,” Alden Meyer, who follows the talks for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in Geneva. “It’s also difficult to believe that some of the Europeans and small island states will accept language that doesn’t at least implicitly go in that direction.”
With gases from burning oil, coal and natural gas at record levels, global temperatures are on track to warm by 3.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s the quickest shift in the climate in 10,000 years, which scientists say raises risks of more violent storms and rising seas.
The envoys are working on a deal that would build on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which limited emissions in industrial nations. The goal of that treaty was to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The United Nations and some of the island nations most at threat from climate change want a more specific goal in the Paris deal.
There’s a “growing realization” among nations that the Paris agreement won’t be just a short-term fix for the climate, but instead must set out a long-term path toward protecting the environment, said Christiana Figueres, the lead U.N. diplomat coordinating the talks.
Almost 120 nations are backing some variation of a goal for eliminating manmade greenhouse gases, said Farhana Yamin, founder of Track O, a research group tracking the discussion about the targets. Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, opposes a long-term target, and China is apt to resist binding targets, Ms. Yamin said.
“The fact that such an ambitious goal is even on the table is a good indicator,” David Turnbull, campaigns director of Oil Change International, said in an interview.
President Barack Obama’s top climate envoy, Todd Stern, last year acknowledged that any solution to climate change would mean leaving a lot of fossil fuels in the ground. Mr. Stern, in an emailed statement, said the Paris agreement should include “a means for articulating a longer-range vision of deep decarbonization” that sends a signal “that we are on a determined path to a low-carbon future.”
French President Francois Hollande, who will host the key climate summit in December, has said such a deal needs to ensure that the world’s net emissions eventually go down to levels the planet can safely absorb.
Whether any of the options survive in the final deal in Paris will be the subject of negotiations throughout the year. Envoys meet next in Bonn in June.
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