Rich countries working on secret climate treaty that favors them

The US, UK and other rich countries are discussing a secret draft climate treaty for the UN Copenhagen climate talks.  Excluded from the discussion are developing countries, who were rightly upset.  The Guardian reported that the draft treaty would:

  • hand effective control of
    climate change finance to the World Bank;
  • would abandon the Kyoto protocol –
    the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions;
  • would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent
    on them taking a range of actions [forcing more privatizations so as to enrich they buyers?];
  • not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per
    person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

The last point is quite key since rich countries have produced the vast majority of CO2 emissions since 1900, as this graph at the World Resources Institute demonstrates:

A climate treaty that does not recognize that rich counties got us into this mess and need pay more to get us to climate stability, will not be accepted by developing countries.

Also, Naked Capitalism has a piece on the effectiveness of Cap and Trade solutions in reducing CO2 emissions.  It isn’t favorable.

Leave a Reply