This article by Greenpeace climate campaigner Joss Garman (above) first appeared in yesterday's Guardian.
In his inaugural address, President Obama promised to "work tirelessly to … roll back the spectre of a warming planet", and to "restore science to its rightful place", adding: "Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed."
You wouldn't know it from reading the Guardian this morning. Instead of sensing the spirit of "yes we can", you feel the familiar muscle of America's Big Carbon special interests. For months, US officials have been dampening expectations and lowering the bar on which climate measures could be expected from the new administration. This culminated yesterday in Obama signalling that he wants to delay a formal global climate agreement until next year at the earliest, rejecting the advice of his own science adviser, John Holdren.
"In every era there are only one or two moments when nations come together and reach agreements that make history, because they change the course of history. Copenhagen must be such a time."
Gordon Brown
In August Holdren said: "We really have to have in place across the industrialised world the agreements and the measures that are going to enable us to peak [global emissions] no later than 2015 … and if you want those things to be in place no later than 2012, we really should get it done in Copenhagen. That's the schedule." But now the US, together with other rich countries, notably Denmark who will host the talks, is leading a concerted move to shift the goal posts.
For the 12 years since the Kyoto protocol was signed there have been plenty of talks about talks offering more than enough time to work out what needs to be done. The last thing we need is more procrastination. It's been two years since the negotiations began on what should become the Copenhagen treaty, so it's hardly as if it has been rushed, and 2010 won't make the task any easier.
The real reason talks have stalled is the failure on the part of rich countries to make any ambitious pledges as to how much they're willing to cut their carbon emissions by 2020, and to put forward a financial package for poor and vulnerable countries to adapt to the impacts of climatic changes and to develop their economies by low-carbon means.
The US is acting like a dead weight on the talks, pulling down the level of ambition so that the industrialised world has a combined offer on the table for just a 10-17% cut in their emissions on 1990 levels by 2020. This is despite two years ago recognising the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recommendations that they would need to cut their emissions in the range of at least 25-40% to have a 50:50 chance of keeping global temperatures below two degrees of warming.
At the G8 summit in July, Obama pledged again to fight to keep temperatures below the crucial two degree mark. Now he wants the whole world to wait for a bill currently bogged down in the US Senate. The bill itself will deliver just a 4-7% cut on 1990 levels by 2020, which is completely inadequate.
As Copenhagen offers the best chance we've ever had of agreeing a deal to beat climate change, its going to be crucial that Gordon Brown and other European leaders now face down America's "no we can't" attitude. More than a hundred developing countries are still seeking a legally binding and ambitious deal from Copenhagen. For them it's life or death.
In our prime minister's own words, "In every era there are only one or two moments when nations come together and reach agreements that make history, because they change the course of history. Copenhagen must be such a time. If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice."
