The Independent of London: Soros warns ’systemic failure’ may be upon us.

By Sean O’Grady, Thursday, 24 January 2008

“This is not a normal crisis”. George Soros, the doyen of international finance, the man who made billions from sterling’s expulsion from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, and who now spends much of his time on philanthropic activities, is listened to in Davos respectfully. Yesterday he had something important to say about the state of the world’s financial system: “central banks have lost control”; a “global sheriff” to patrol international markets should help them out.

Mr Soros offered the proceedings a deep historical perspective. To his mind, he told participants at the World Economic Forum, we are “at the end of an era”. The 60-year economic supremacy of the US and the dollar’s status as the international reserve currency of choice is drawing to a close, fundamentally weakened by the shift in economic power eastwards with the rise of China. A more recent era is also over: that of “superleverage”. Regulators, the financier said, have not yet fully appreciated the portent of these developments. “Systemic failure” may be upon us.

Mr Soros said he supported fiscal and monetary action to boost the US economy, but was concerned about the limits to monetary easing. Referring to the 25 per cent deprecation of the dollar in the last couple of years, he added: “I question how far the Fed can go, given the reluctance of people to hold dollars”.

Eventually, he said, there will have to be more regulation of financial institutions, including of the hedge funds he once pioneered, possibly limiting financial products and encouraging more disclosure of where risks lie. What is needed is “assurance that the main market makers will not be allowed to fail,” he said. “We need a new sheriff, not Washington consensus.”

The Independent Related Articles:
Hopes of large cuts in interest rates dashed by bankers.
Brown and Darling lose confidence of entrepreneurs, poll shows.
Market uncertainty casts chill over forum’s opening sessions. Adrian Hamilton: This crisis can only be solved at a global level.
Hamish McRae: Consumers can earn their way out of trouble but public debt is the problem.
Jeremy Warner’s Outlook: Davos mood turns ugly.

Adrian Hamilton: This crisis can only be solved at a global level.

The Independent, Opinion - Thursday, 24 January 2008

It was a coincidence no doubt – although a convenient one – that the Prime Minister was abroad when the world markets started their precipitate decline, telling the Indians that the world’s global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund needed radical reform with a role to “prevent crises and not simply to manage or resolve them as in the past”.

He was on the same theme when he returned to London on Tuesday, spreading the word that he was now calling for an emergency meeting of European finance ministers in London to urge, as one report put it, “for measures to improve transparency in the banking system, co-ordinate national regulators, review the role of credit rating agencies, and to strengthen the management of liquidity risks”.

Gordon Brown is no doubt right to call for early international action to deal with the present crisis, although whether his fellow European finance ministers will be willing to hear the call from a man who has spent the past decade bad-mouthing their efforts with the euro might be considered debatable.

Nor is he wrong to see the need for regulatory reform. There is a strong case for improving the rules on bank regulation and capital market supervision in the light of the credit crunch of the past six months. If you want to get really excited, as some commentators do, you can demand a wholesale re-ordering of the role of the state in the markets on the grounds that laissez-faire economics has been tested and found wanting.

But none of that helps deal with the present crisis. Nor is it clear that structural reform would materially affect the markets and their effective management. Institutional change makes a convenient rallying call for politicians under pressure. But it is not structures that are so much at fault at the moment as a basic failure of leadership.

If banks went in for excessively loose lending, asset prices were overvalued and the normal rules of fiscal rectitude were abandoned, it was because it suited everyone, including finance ministers and central bankers, to let it happen. It was a convenient way for countries to keep growth at a time of restricted public expenditure and for the world to cope with the huge transfer of funds from the West to the oil producers and to Asia.

The crisis we face at the moment is a very real one. It is the product of a credit crunch brought about by serious strains in the banking system, excessive borrowing by Western and Asian consumers, the onset of a business cycle that would have slowed growth in any case and serious underlying problems caused by imbalances in trade in the world.

It matters to London particularly, not just because, as the Bank of England Governor would have it, it poses problems of the risks of inflation versus recession domestically, but because the British economy and employment are now so dependent on our role as a global financial centre. When the banks in America sneeze, we can catch double pneumonia.

The credit squeeze and economic slowdown is not going to go away at the drop of a Federal reserve interest rate and a package of tax cuts, not least because the problems of overheating and credit constraint are affecting Asia as much as America and Europe. China and India may not be in a position to bail us out of this one.

The worry at the moment is that, as far as international co-ordination is concerned, it’s every man for himself. The US moves are not the product of careful consideration but the urgent actions of a country at the beginning of an election year. If it wasn’t for the politics, they wouldn’t have been introduced in this way. The Bank of England and the European Central Bank in the meantime are going their merry and quite separate ways, while currencies and capital movements – both of which will be altered by the crisis and the responses – are being left free to bounce between individual national actions, and China, India and the Middle East will be making their own decisions as to where to put their surpluses now that America is turning sour.

The need for international co-ordination and leadership has never been greater, yet the lack of it has never been more obvious. Forget institutional reform, let’s just get down to the old-fashioned business of getting the players round the table “to manage and resolve” the crisis at hand.

 a.hamilton at independent.co.uk

 ‘Calls for papers’ by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the  UN University (UNU-WIDER).

Details can be found at:
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Call for Papers to 3 WIDER Project Workshops.

-  Beyond the Tipping Point: Development in an Urban World, submission deadline 31 January 2008.

Details…

-  Entrepreneurship and Economic Development: Concepts, Measurements, and Impacts, submission deadline 14 March 2008.

Details…

-  Southern Engines of Global Growth: China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (CIBS); Financial Flows and Capital Markets, submission deadline 15 April 2008.

Details…
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The Final Evaluation Of The Bali Meetings Looks Better Then We Dared To Hope For - This Because There Are Clear Dynamics That Does Not Allow Leaders In Power To Have Their Ways.

OK, time has come that we summarize the events of the last two weeks and after that march away to other pressing issues.

Clearly, Bali did not live up to the exaggerated expectations the European leaders put into their wishes from the meetings, but was it a failure?

For those that expected the earth to fall into climate-collapse and disrepair, Bali presented very dim results. But then, if the worst of the prognoses would indeed materialize, then also all what Europe does is not sufficient, and a more forthcoming result from Bali could also not have saved the world - for that - it is already late.


But, if we think with cooler minds, then we can see that Bali has made it possible for a definite move to progress:

- Let us start with Japan and Russia that obliged themselves with planning for moves to reduce dramatically their CO2 emissions.

- The Responsibilities of the more advanced among the developing countries were defined more accurately.

- With the political U-turn in Australia, a country that joined now the ranks of those that signed the Kyoto Protocol - this left in the rejectionist’s front only the US and Canada from among the industrialized countries.

- With the US there was also a change. There is a slowly creeping change of mind and the surprising agreement to the consensus by its delegate to Bali, the White House insider, Paula Dobriansky, has now made possible that an
agreement will be readied in two years.

- The eventual agreement will go beyond the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, because now all big States will be part of the agreement. The finalization of such an agreement will occur after the Presidential elections in the USA.
Seemingly it was always planed this way.

- By the time of the COP 14 of the UNFCCC meeting in Poznan, in December 2008, there will already be a new US “President-in-Waiting” and he or she will come to the meetings or will send an emissary. With the new President
moving into the White House on January 20, 2009, it will be this new President that will be involved in the negotiations during the year 2009 - with the final outcome planned for Copenhagen at the COP 15 of the UNFCCC.
All the main contenders in the US elections, the Democrats, and the Republicans, have shown interest in pulling through the new climate change agreement, this because there is already a majority among the US population that wants positive results. Some of the main US States, including California, are already moving along lines similar to the EU States. Many US businesses are already on the process train - and the train is moving indeed.

- It is clear that the developing countries will commit suicide if they do not think about the effects their fast industrialization has on the planet, but it is also true that they will do nothing unless the industrialized countries make first and decisive moves. So, a US Administration that starts by showing a positive example will have a much higher chance for succeeding in its negotiations with China and India, then the present Bush Administration.

- So far as the UN is concerned, the snail pace of the UN decision making process is a hindrance by the fact that it is slower then the pace of climate change. We say thus with full understanding of the meaning of this skepticism
when thinking about the UN, that the efforts by the US in starting bilateral negotiations with other large polluters, if handled by a US President who is keen about what he says, is not such a bad idea as it sounds, when put forward
by the present US administration. Eventually a club of major polluters, let’s say of 80% of the total emissions will be formed, and the implementation of the program that will be discussed in Copenhagen will be entrusted to this club.
Were the US present Administration not as obstinate as they were, they could even have claimed some rights for trying to engineer this polluter’s club. The reality remains that they lost credibility by expressively not recognizing the
seriousness of the problem, censoring scientific research, removing some of the best leaders in climate change issues and so on …, but looking back at Bali, all may yet be back on track. Thank you German Minister of the
Environment, Mr. Gabriel - you are credited with getting the US attention on 12/16.2007 as you got the UN Commission on Sustainable Development attention on the night of 5/11/ 2007. The post-Kyoto process was put now back on tracks; the CSD process has yet to be revived. The CSD is important because in the end effect, there will be no action on climate change if there is no consensus that all development must eventually be of the Sustainable
Development kind.

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A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF COP 13 & COP/MOP 3                                                                                                                               by the IISD team in Bali the KIMO ENB Summary and Analysis now online:
BALI: ISLAND OF THE GODS AND BREAKTHROUGHS?
You should not be impelled to act for selfish reasons, nor should you be attached to inaction. (Bhagavad Gita. 2.47)
Marking the culmination of a year of unprecedented high-level political, media and public attention to climate change science and policy, the Bali Climate Change Conference produced a two-year “roadmap” that provides a vision, an outline destination, and negotiating tracks for all countries to respond to the climate challenge with the urgency that is now fixed in the public mind in the wake of the headline findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. The outline destination is an effective political response that matches both the IPCC science and the ultimate objective of the Convention; it was never intended that the Bali Conference would focus on precise targets. Instead, the divergent parties and groups who drive the climate regime process launched a negotiating framework with “building blocks” that may help to square a number of circles, notably the need to reconcile local and immediate self-interest with the need to pursue action collectively in the common and long-term interests of people and planet. The informal dialogue over the past two years has now been transformed into a platform for the engagement of parties from the entire development spectrum, including the United States and developing countries.
This brief analysis opens with a discussion on the complexity of the climate change process, and describes the elements of the Bali roadmap and their potential significance in enabling negotiations on the future of the climate regime, including a post-2012 agreement. It identifies the main political achievements of the Conference, and assesses some of the specific outcomes from negotiations on the so-called “building blocks” of mitigation, adaptation, financing and technology transfer.
MANAGING COMPLEXITY
Of the 10,000 participants in the Bali Conference, it is likely only a handful of them had a meaningful grasp of all the pieces that now make up the deepening complexity of the climate change regime. Delegates in Bali had to balance meetings of the UNFCCC COP and the Kyoto Protocol COP/MOP, along with the subsidiary bodies, the Ad Hoc Working Group, dozens of contact groups and informal consultations on issues ranging from budgets to national reporting to reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries, not to mention side events held by governments, international organizations, business and industry, and environmental NGOs. Balancing the large number of participants, issues and negotiating venues requires stamina, time management and a lot of creativity. With the launch of new negotiations on a long-term agreement, which, by definition must be more ambitious than anything that has gone before, yet another piece has been added to the ever-growing complex puzzle that makes up the climate regime.
Managing this deepening complexity in a highly sensitive – and largely transparent – political environment has become an extraordinary feat, undertaken by a UNFCCC Secretariat that continues to impress participants with a combination of professionalism, competence and good humor. The UN Secretary-General’s decision to adopt climate change as one of his own UN system-wide priorities, with a more effective division of labor and lines of accountability on climate-related issues throughout the UN system, will shore up the resources required for the future. A greater emphasis on the need to draw on expertise found outside the immediate UNFCCC process was also a notable and timely feature of discussions in Bali.
Nevertheless, the challenge of defining precisely what elements of the Bali decisions and outcomes constitute the “Bali roadmap” is its own complex work in progress. For example, what exactly is the nature of the agreement that must result from the Bali roadmap? This is still a matter of debate, with divergent views on the legal form or architecture that will accommodate and, perhaps elaborate, existing commitments under the Convention and the Protocol in the near term and after 2012. So, while the Bali roadmap was never categorically defined, most are viewing it as a compendium of decisions and processes adopted and launched by the COP and COP/MOP, which can be divided into three types:
·    Negotiating tracks;

·    Building blocks; and

·    Supporting activities, including reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
NEGOTIATING TRACKS                                                                                                                                                                        The Bali roadmap builds on the negotiating tracks on long-term issues launched at the Montreal Climate Change Conference at the end of 2005. In addition to the legal necessity to address the post-2012 period after the Protocol’s first commitment period expires, the Bali roadmap aims to mend some of the fractures that have evolved in the architecture of the climate change regime, most notably the refusal of the United States to ratify the Protocol. The institutionalization of tensions between developed and developing country parties,  the crisis of confidence surrounding the implementation of existing commitments, and a growing need for the distribution of responsibilities to reflect the economic power and responsibilities of major emerging economies, have also haunted the process. The Bali roadmap must continue to provide a means to re-engage the United States in negotiations on future commitments, with some level of comparability with other developed country undertakings; it must develop innovative mechanisms and incentives for the engagement of the major emerging economies; and it will be judged, above all, by the extent to which it addresses the ultimate objective of the Convention – to put the world on a path to avoid dangerous climate change – by responding, without equivocation, to the IPCC’s findings.
At the heart of the Bali roadmap are the negotiating tracks to be pursued under the newly launched Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action and the existing Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Protocol. The work of each track will be important, but – in all probability – it is the convergence of views, with each track taking the work of the other on board, that will inform deliberations on the ambition and the means for all to contribute to a future agreement or agreements.
One indication of the likely contents of the roadmap came early on in Bali in an intervention by COP President Witoelar during the Contact Group on Long-term Cooperative Action. He explained that the roadmap has a track for negotiations under the Convention, with a milestone in 2008, and a destination in 2009. The centerpiece of this track is the decision on the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action, which for the first time sets out a negotiating agenda that encompasses discussions on mitigation for both developing and developed countries. Since the negotiations will take place under the Convention, they will include all parties – developing countries and the US. However, there is some question as to the nature of the mandate for this track, other than a reference to the ultimate objective of the Convention. Some have contrasted the work of this AWG with the stronger mandate built into the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Berlin Mandate, which resulted in the Kyoto Protocol. “We may have to return to the COP to clarify and strengthen the mandate; for the moment we have taken a leap of faith,” said one observer, hoping that the work would result in a binding agreement.
On the Protocol track is the work programme, methods and schedule of future sessions of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Protocol. Important aspects of the work of the AWG will be taken on board and feed into the second review of the Protocol under Article 9 at COP/MOP 4.
One of the most significant developments in Bali was a shift that the Executive Secretary likened to the “dismantling of the Berlin Wall.” While a “two-track” approach will continue and maintain a degree of separation between discussions under the Convention and the Protocol, the decision on the AWG on Long-Term Cooperative Action uses for the first time language on “developed” and “developing” countries, rather than “Annex I” and “non-Annex I” countries. This is widely regarded as a breakthrough, as it offers the prospect of moving beyond the constraints of working within only Annex I and non-Annex I countries when defining future contributions to a future agreement. It is anticipated that new approaches to differentiating contributions, tied to countries’ economic capacity, will form part of the future architecture. Moreover, the new AWG will also fully engage and address the future role of the US, which has not ratified the Protocol.
The risk in all of this, identified by some developing country parties, is that certain Annex I parties may seize on this development to “jump ship” and attempt to adopt more relaxed commitments than those under the Kyoto Protocol. This led to proposals for a “firewall” that would lock existing Annex I parties into the most ambitious end of the commitment spectrum.
BUILDING BLOCKS
Integral to the emerging and no doubt cross-fertilizing work programmes across the negotiating tracks are the so-called “building blocks” of mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance. These key issues were considered both under the roadmap negotiations and in related talks on topics such as the Adaptation Fund.
With evidence that the confidence-building phase of negotiations has begun to yield some results in terms of the re-engagement of the US and engagement of major developing country economies, the Bali Conference was regarded by some, notably the EU and major NGOs, as the moment to lock the process into evidence-based negotiations on mitigation and commitments. The timing and ambition of the EU’s agenda was not unexpected and contributed to some of the fiercest exchanges between negotiators.
MITIGATION: The debate on mitigation, notably the terms of engagement by developing countries, in the context of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action, was not resolved until the COP plenary on Saturday. Under the gaze of unprecedented media attention, India turned the final hours of negotiations into something approaching a Bollywood Blockbuster, with star-studded cameo roles by none other than the UN Secretary-General and the President of Indonesia, calling on parties to close a deal. Up until Saturday afternoon, the prospect of a collapse of the negotiations was not ruled out by senior participants.
In a defining moment of the Conference, at the final and dramatic COP plenary session, the US stood down from its opposition to a proposal by India, supported by the G-77/China. The Indian proposal aimed to ensure that mitigation actions by developing country parties are supported by technology, financing and capacity building, subject to measurable, reportable and verifiable procedures. This new paragraph has far-reaching implications for linking developing country participation in a future agreement and confidence that they will access the means to deliver. Fired by a suspicion that developed countries had set up future negotiations that might relax their own commitments, while placing too much onus on developing country contributions, India deftly seized the momentum for the closure of a deal on the roadmap, in the full gaze of the world’s media, to introduce a new rigor to the delivery of developed country commitments on capacity building. Introducing this outstanding debate into the final COP plenary on Saturday was just one of the high-risk strategies deployed to press for closure on issues that had played out for days behind closed doors. In the end, after phone calls reportedly involving Washington, the US delegation dropped its opposition to the Indian proposal, stung by rebuffs from South Africa and Papua New Guinea and lengthy applause from delegates and observers who favored the proposal.
The mitigation debate was also behind contested approaches to referencing the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. This battle was fought on two fronts: under the Protocol and under the Convention. In the AWG under the Protocol, Russia, Canada, and Japan lined up to oppose a reference to the 25-40% greenhouse gas emissions reduction range in the AWG’s report from Vienna, which included this and other quotes from the IPCC AR4. Noting that media coverage was feeding public expectations that countries were “going to agree” to reductions in this range and that “we have to be careful about presenting the range as the target,” the Russian Federation continued its opposition all the way to the AWG closing plenary. Canada and Japan, which had argued in the informal consultations that Russia should be heeded, changed their position after a concerted campaign by AOSIS to insert a comprehensive reference to the IPCC AR4.
There was less success on the Convention front in the Dialogue on Cooperative Action, where the reference to the IPCC science is weaker. AOSIS was unable to summon up the support for a stronger reference when negotiators met in a small informal group to close on this issue. Participants believe that this will be a weaker starting point for negotiations on cooperative action under the Convention, and the IPCC references may have to be revisited.
ADAPTATION AND FINANCE: One of the significant outcomes bringing together both adaptation and finance was the decision to operationalize the Adaptation Fund, which was set up to finance adaptation in developing countries. The Fund had proven to be particularly delicate to negotiate because, unlike other funds under the UNFCCC, it is funded through a levy on CDM projects undertaken in developing countries and is therefore not dependent on donors. At past meetings, proposals to appoint the GEF as the Fund’s manager have generated controversies between developed and developing countries, and an agreement on the Adaptation Fund Board, operating under the guidance of the COP/MOP, was a significant breakthrough. However, the early stages of the Conference were marked by intensive lobbying by representatives from the GEF who were determined to secure a role in servicing the Fund. In the end, they secured an interim role in providing a secretariat function.
The establishment of the Adaptation Fund was widely applauded. It was also seen as one of several positive outcomes for the G-77/China at this meeting, which some observers note are a reflection of the increasing economic and political clout of this group.
TECHNOLOGY: The basis for an interim funding programme under the GEF was brokered behind the scenes early in the Conference, although agreement on the final details was complicated. Technology funding is expected to be scaled up when a comprehensive agreement on future commitments is reached, possibly in Copenhagen. Governments agreed to kick start a strategic programme to scale up investment in the transfer of both the mitigation and adaptation technologies needed by developing countries. Again, the outcome was widely viewed as a positive one for developing countries.
SUPPORTING ACTIVITIES – REDUCING EMISSIONS FROM DEFORESTATION                                                                    A decision on reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries is as significant for the wider deforestation debate as it is for the climate regime. As one observer put it, the deforestation issue has suffered from a level of fragmentation and now, perhaps for the first time, may ultimately be brought under a legally binding framework.
There was an agreement to launch a process for understanding the challenges ahead, including through demonstration activities over the next two years, in preparation for addressing these issues in a post-2012 agreement.
A problematic part of this debate was how to include the issue in the post-2012 regime. The US supported a reference to “land use” in the decision on reducing emissions from deforestation, alarming some observers as it recalled broader discussions of land use that included not only forestry but also agriculture and other forms of land management. There was, however, agreement to open up options in future discussions on long-term cooperative action by including in the decision an explicit reference to reduced emissions from deforestation “and consideration of … the role of conservation, sustainable management of forest and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.”
MOVING FORWARD
The Bali Conference demonstrated that at certain moments in climate talks, notably when negotiations are taking place in the full gaze of a public and media who are better informed than at any time since the emergence of the climate change agenda, parties come under extreme pressure to face up to the science. The high-level political attention given to climate change has introduced an unprecedented level of interest and investment of expertise by organizations, not only by research and advocacy organizations, but also by the media. The number of side events held in parallel to the conference was also unprecedented, and included two full day events during the weekend: the Climate and Development Days, and the Forest Day.
A youth delegate told the COP plenary, “You can’t negotiate with physics and chemistry.” This, of course, is not entirely true. Parties do disagree with the science, but their arguments can sometimes change when they are exposed to the critical gaze of global public opinion. A feature of the Bali Conference was the shift in a number of positions when negotiators left the closed-door ministerials and returned to the plenary sessions, as illustrated by the pressure that came to bear on the US and Canada in the final COP plenary. Transparency can be a decisive factor.
At COP/MOP 3, the interplay between international climate politics and domestic elections was illustrated by the dramatic win by Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party in Australia. In 2008, another domestic election may have a dramatic impact on the global climate change regime, whatever the outcome. The global public gaze that fixed on the COP plenary in Bali will now turn to the US election in November 2008.
In the meantime, parties to the Convention and the Protocol have succeeded in honoring the call for a “breakthrough” that came from the UN Secretary-General’s climate change summit in September. Bali launched far reaching negotiations with a clear deadline for the conclusion of an agreement on the post-2012 period. Bali was successful in delivering the expected roadmap and building blocks. Now it is up to everyone, negotiators, politicians, public opinion and media to play their respective parts – progress in negotiations, take action, keep up the pressure, and maintain vigilance – to make sure the road from Bali doesn’t end up in the sea.

On Saturday evening, December 15, 2007, as the remaining participants at the BICC rushed to catch their flights home or scattered to Ubud or elsewhere to recover, the ENB writing team began work on our twenty thousand-word summary and analysis. The PDF version can be found at http://www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/enb12354… and for easy cut-and-paste (”Yes, we know you do!!!” - writes KIMO) go to http://www.iisd.ca/vol12/enb12354e.html

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See Also:

Klimawende für die Zeit nach Bush.
Eric Frey, www.der Standard.at, December 16, 2007.

Der Kompromiss von Bali hat einen Kurswechsel der USA bereits vorweggenommen.
Es war zu erwarten, dass europäische Politiker und Kommentatoren das Ergebnis von Bali als faulen Kompromiss und Rückschlag für den Klimaschutz abkanzeln würden. Tatsächlich wurde in Bali weniger beschlossen als von den EU-Staaten gefordert, vor allem keine Verpflichtung auf konkrete Ziele für die Reduktion der Treibhausgase.

Für all jene, die überzeugt sind, dass die Erde in kurzer Zeit auf einen Klimakollaps zusteuert, war Bali sicher ein Debakel. Aber wenn die schlimmsten Prognosen tatsächlich zutreffen, dann ist auch alles, was Europa tut, viel zu wenig, dann hätte selbst ein besseres Ergebnis aus Bali die Welt nicht retten können.

Geht man – wie viele andere Forscher – von einem etwas weniger dramatischen Szenario aus, dann hat der Klimagipfel hingegen deutliche Fortschritte gebracht. Erstmals haben sich Japan und Russland zu einer dramatischen Reduktion der CO2-Emissionen verpflichtet. Die Verantwortung der großen Schwellenländer wurde genauer definiert, und nach der Kehrtwende in Australien, wo die neue Linksregierung dem Kioto-Protokoll beigetreten ist, besteht die Ablehnungsfront unter den Industriestaaten nur noch aus den USA und Kanada.

Und gerade bei den USA hat Bali den schleichenden Sinneswandel deutlich gemacht. Zwar erwies sich die amerikanische Chefverhandlerin Paula Dobriansky als Hauptblockiererin und zwang die Konferenz in eine Verlängerung. Aber ihre überraschende Zustimmung zu einem Kompromissergebnis in letzter Minute eröffnet nun die Chance, dass innerhalb von zwei Jahren ein ernsthaftes Klimaschutzabkommen zustande kommt, an dem – anders als am Kioto-Protokoll – alle großen Staaten beteiligt sind.

Zwar werden die USA zunächst über das Kioto-Nachfolgeabkommen nicht mitverhandeln. In der entscheidenden Phase aber wird George W. Bush nicht mehr Präsident sein. Sollte im Jänner 2009 ein Demokrat ins Weiße Haus einziehen, dann könnten sich die USA sehr schnell den Verhandlungen über konkrete Treibhausgasreduktionen anschließen. Selbst die führenden republikanischen Kandidaten sind in dieser Frage nicht so stur wie Bush. Die öffentliche Meinung in den USA_fordert lautstark einen Kurswechsel: Die Mehrheit der Amerikaner, bedeutende Unternehmen und wichtige Bundesstaaten wie Kalifornien unterstützen eine Klimapolitik nach europäischem Muster. Die nachträgliche Distanzierung des Weißen Hauses vom Bali-Ergebnis spielt hier keine Rolle: Der Fahrplan ist entschieden, der Zug rollt, und es stellt sich nur noch die Frage, wer auf ihn aufspringt.

Mit ihrer Sorge über den geringen Beitrag der Entwicklungsländer zum Klimaschutz haben die Amerikaner einen wunden Punkt aller Verhandlungen angesprochen, für den sie allerdings mitverantwortlich sind. Es stimmt, dass China und Indien mehr gegen den Anstieg ihrer CO2-Emissionen unternehmen müssen und Maßnahmen nicht auf den fernen Tag verschieben dürfen, an dem sie sich westlichen Lebensstandards angenähert haben. Eine solche Vorgangsweise wäre für alle fatal, und am meisten für die armen Länder.

Aber der Süden wird den Klimaschutz erst dann ernst nehmen, wenn die größeren Klimasünder im Norden mit gutem Beispiel vorangehen. Eine US-Regierung, die dem Energieverbrauch zuhause entschlossen entgegentritt, hätte ganz andere Möglichkeiten auf China und Indien einzuwirken als die Bush-Partie.

Gewonnen haben diese Länder in Bali die Aussicht auf finanzielle Hilfe beim Klimaschutz. Diese kann etwa von Österreich kommen, wenn es wie erwartet sein Kioto-Ziel verfehlt und dann Bußgelder in internationale Töpfe einzahlen muss.

Der kleine Schritt von Bali könnte sich so als Wegbereiter für größere Schritte ab 2010 erweisen – vor allem dann, wenn die Forschung mit Alarmmeldungen weiterhin Weltöffentlichkeit und Politik sensibilisiert. Doch gerade in diesem Fall ist zu befürchten, dass das Schneckentempo der Diplomatie mit dem Klimawandel nicht Schritt halten kann. (Eric Frey/DER STANDARD, Printausgabe, 17.12.2007)

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Climate Deal Runs Straight Into Trouble With US.
By Shaun Tandon from Agence France-Presse, Sunday 16 December 2007.

A hard-fought deal fixing a 2009 deadline for a new treaty to tackle global warming ran straight into trouble Sunday with the United States voicing “serious concerns” over its provisions.

As negotiators headed home after two weeks of intense haggling, the White House complained that the agreement did not do enough to commit major emerging economies such as China and India to big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

It underlined lingering division over how to confront the perils of global warming, which scientists warn will put millions of people at risk of hunger, homelessness and disease by the end of the century if temperatures keep rising at current rates.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who flew to the Indonesian island of Bali for a late appeal for flexibility, praised the agreement as a “pivotal first step” to tackle what he called “the defining challenge of our time”.

With the deal, the summit of 190 nations launched a process to negotiate a new treaty for when the UN Kyoto Protocol’s pledges on slashing greenhouse gas emissions expire in 2012.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who reversed his country’s previous stance and ratified Kyoto on his first official act last month, said the world “decided to take a bold step into the future”.

“But it’s only one step and we’ve got a long, long way to go,” he warned in Brisbane.

European nations and environmentalists broadly welcomed the move, although it did not go as far as many had wished by failing to specify any targets for slashing emissions blamed for global warming.

An isolated US delegation had backed down during an unplanned 13th day of talks and said it would finally accept the deal, but hours later US President George W. Bush’s administration counter-attacked.

The White House said any Kyoto successor treaty must acknowledge a nation’s sovereign right to pursue economic growth and energy security.

While there were several positive aspects to the Bali deal, it added, the “United States does have serious concerns about other aspects of the decision as we begin the negotiations.”

The United States is the only major industrialised nation to reject Kyoto, arguing it is unfair as it does not require fast-growing emerging economies to meet targeted emissions cuts.

China is the world’s second largest greenhouse-gas emitter after the United States, and is also outside the Kyoto treaty.

The White House said future talks must acknowledge that developed nations could not tackle climate change on their own through targeted emissions cuts, and that emerging economies had to be drawn in.

“Empirical studies on emission trends in the major developing economies now conclusively establish that emissions reductions principally by the developed world will be insufficient to confront the global problem effectively.”

The agreement came after extraordinary scenes in which UN chief Ban jetted in for a last-ditch appeal, the UN’s exhausted climate chief nearly broke down in tears and tiny Papua New Guinea told the United States to take the lead or “get out of the way.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the deal “a vital step forward for the whole world,” while German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it “opens the way to real negotiations on effective measures.”

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN organisation running the conference, hailed the accord as breaking down “the Berlin Wall of climate change.”

Still, analysts warn that while the framework for tackling climate change remains intact, the result of negotiations toward a new treaty depends heavily on the outcome of the US presidential election next November.

“The US elections are now the single most important factor in the equation,” said Steve Sawyer, a climate veteran and secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council, a Brussels-based lobby for the wind-turbine industry.

The drama of Bali will be minor compared to the poker game when talks on a new treaty reach crunch point, said Fernando Tudela, Mexico’s under-secretary for environmental policy.

“The mother of all battles will be in 2009,” he cautioned. “This is just a warm-up.”

The Following Is by David G. Klein - Taken From The New York Times of December 16, 2007
- The Issue That Had Many Articles Reacting To The End of the Deliberations in Bali.
We Think that the Klein Drawing Presents the Economic Essence Of The Reality When Talking
About The Effects Of CO2 Emissions Into The Atmosphere, And The Resulting Global warming And Climate Change.



An excellent article on the essence of the problem of ethics in global warming - past and present.
This is the problem that only at a UN level can get a decent hearing - this makes irrelevant if we like the UN or not.
 www.SustainabiliTank.info comment)

THE WORLD
As China Goes, So Goes Global Warming.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published:The New York Times, December 16, 2007
GIVEN the accelerated melting these days in Greenland, it’s probably no longer appropriate to use the adjective “glacial” to describe treaty negotiations aimed at curbing dangerous human interference with the climate.

Graphic
A Carbon Tide: Past, Present and Future

Dot Earth

Comment on this article at Dot Earth »

The talks in Bali over the last two weeks were just the latest baby step in trying to make that happen. The Bali achievement? Two more years of talks. In the meantime, concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main climate-heating emission, continue the climb that began 250 years ago, as industrialization surged on a diet of fossil fuels.

So, presuming the industrialized and industrializing nations are serious, who or what can realistically turn the carbon tide?

As always, the fingers of many experts on energy and the environment point both west and east — to the United States and China.

The established superpower arose riding a wave of fossil-fueled prosperity. The emerging one, sitting on a wealth of coal, sees few reasons not to follow suit; after all, it has only just caught its wave (with India and others in hot pursuit).

Yet the tide can only be turned, a host of scientists and economists with varied perspectives agree, if China and other rising powers like India speed through the familiar path in nation building — resource extraction, industrial and economic growth, accompanying despoliation, and then environmental restoration and protection. If they don’t, their emissions will eventually swamp all other sources, according to many analyses.

Richard Richels, an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute, helped produce an ominous forecast: even if the established industrial powers turned off every power plant and car right now, unless there are changes in policy in poorer countries the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could still reach 450 parts per million — a level deemed unacceptably dangerous by many scientists — by 2070. (If no one does anything, that threshold is reached in 2040.)

Libertarians say that once countries get rich, they’ll do the right thing for the climate. But critics of this view say the long life of carbon dioxide (and of sources like the coal-burning plants China is building at the rate of one a week) mean that waiting just compounds the problem beyond fixing.

Theories abound over how best to help China embrace emissions-reducing policies. One way, many scientists and scholars say, is to make nonpolluting energy sources cheaper than the unfettered burning of abundant fossil fuels. Right now they are far more expensive.

That is why several dozen top-flight climate and energy experts sent a letter this month to members of Congress and the presidential candidates seeking a tenfold rise in the federal budget for energy research, now about $3 billion a year.

Some economists say the only thing that will speed the change is money, whether it is called aid, technology assistance, or something else.

Representatives of developing countries have long made this point, noting that the established powers spent a century building the greenhouse-gas blanket. Speaking in Bali, Munir Akram, Pakistan’s United Nations ambassador, said: “What we have to do is to find a way to reduce emissions by those who can afford to reduce emissions.”

But there are plenty of doubts about the willingness of Congress, particularly, to pay emerging economic competitors.

Some experts see the best prospects for change coming from the ground up, pointing to efforts like MetroBus, a program involving the World Resources Institute that greatly expanded the use of mass transit in Mexico City.

BinBin Jiang, a research associate in energy and development at Stanford University, sees similar opportunities in creating an efficient infrastructure for China’s exploding midsize cities. “That’s where you determine if you are going to leapfrog or go along the old Western path,” she said.

But Ms. Jiang also stressed that meaningful change in energy and climate policy within the United States was critical, too. “China is clearly responsible for the largest wedge of emissions in the future, but the United States is still the biggest roadblock,” she said. “The U.S. is not going to be influential by telling China what to do. It has to lead by example.”

Drama and tears before Bali deal was struck.

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor,Telegraph.co.uk from Bali
Last Updated: 4:01pm GMT 15/12/2007

An extraordinary day began with a fresh text of the Bali “road map” which Indonesia’s Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, as president of the conference, presented to delegates saying a “delicate balance” had been achieved.