Copenhagen 2009 [Part 1]

I'm almost halfway through 2009 in news reading, though this is less than a quarter of the way through the actual set of news articles I need to read, since articles are, not surprisingly, clustered around the actual UNFCCC meeting in December.

So far no great revelations. Just a couple of thoughts:

1) Russia has really been the dog that hasn't been barking. I've come across several articles that mention them being expected to play a disruptive role (in amongst lots of hope and hype about the US and China coming to the table to make a deal). But they didn't, as I recall. Nor did they, I think, at Cancun the next year. I guess they don't really need to, given everything that's happened; there were plenty of other nations willing to be disruptive instead. Still, I sort of expect Russia to act like a bull in a china shop even when it doesn't have to, so I feel mild surprise at its discretion.

2) You know, China really telegraphed its punches with regard to Copenhagen. Here were China's demands, issued in mid-May 2009:
--rich countries cut greenhouse gases by 40% relative to 1990 levels by 2020
--poor countries continue making only voluntary contributions
--developed countries be legally bound to give at least 0.5 - 1% of their annual economic worth to help poorer countries cut emissions and cope with global warming

There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of any of this happening. It was so ridiculous that everyone just assumed they were talking crazy as an opening offer tactic. But hey, it turned out that China really wasn't willing to sign anything reasonable in Copenhagen, and in retrospect, maybe that's what people should have started worrying about after they made a totally unreasonable opening bid. I think people didn't because for the prior year, there'd been a lot of discussion about how China was starting to take this stuff seriously and setting a bunch of internal energy targets. People took this as a sign that China was coming around on emissions, even if they were still talking tough and didn't want to make external commitments.

What people didn't understand, I think, was that China's internal energy targets, though they do result in lower emissions, aren't about emissions. They're primarily about reducing China's energy intensity enough that its new power plant building can keep up with the exploding power needs of its population; and secondarily about ameliorating China's particulate pollution problems. Emissions were a distant third priority in this equation, and still are.

3) I wonder if the US didn't help create that bad negotiating outcome, though, inadvertently. There was all this hype about how with Obama in office, the US was really going to start doing stuff now. Less than a week after China made the above ridiculous opening bid, Secretary Chu got up in front of a big pre-summit meeting in Copenhagen and told everyone that the US was going to have to start leading on climate change and not worrying about whether China was cooperating or not. I was there, so I know a senior Chinese delegate was also there to hear this (and I know said Chinese delegate made a really uncompromising speech of his own at the same meeting). Did this look like a response, to the Chinese? I just wonder if the Chinese thought that with Obama in office making big promises, and his delegates making statements like that, the US was going to start behaving like the Europeans had at Kyoto, willing to sign treaties that bound only the developed nations to set reduction targets.