Climate change: can the UN break the deadlock?

Organisers say they are expecting 100,000 people to take to the streets of Manhattan today to call for global action to tackle climate change.

Parallel marches are planned in places like Rio De Janeiro and London and if people appear in the kinds of numbers predicted this will be the largest ever climate change protest in history.

The events have been scheduled to coincide with a meeting of heads of state in New York later this week to try to persuade the world’s biggest emitters to make meaningful pledges to reduce their carbon emissions.

The UN Climate Summit on Tuesday has been called by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a way of breaking the deadlock over a global climate deal. The meeting is happening outside the painfully slow global climate negotiating process that gave rise to the failed Kyoto Protocol and the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks.

The idea is that unconstrained by the line-by-line treaty writing process that will continue in Peru later this year, heads of state will be able to “pre-agree” commitments towards the environment without formal talks.

‘Danger level’

Secretary Ban will take to the streets alongside celebrity campaigners like Leonardo Di Caprio and Al Gore. But the call to arms remains a long way from the realities of getting countries to work together to reduce emissions.

Europe has made some firm commitments to reduce CO2 emissions, recently the US made moves in a similar direction. But the rate of emissions reductions are still way behind what is needed to avoid a scientifically agreed “danger level” of two degrees of global warming.

Above: Beijing smog

China has now surpassed the US and Europe as the world’s largest emitter and its economy continues to grow. India is fast catching up with developing countries as a globally significant polluter.

Paying for green

A key sticking point for fast-growing economies is how much the developed world is willing to pay them to reduce their emissions given that most of the greenhouse gases emitted so far have been by rich countries. Firm commitments to an agreed Green Climate Fund are hoped for at Tuesday’s summit — but in practical terms such a deal is a long way from coming to fruition.

Despite the challenges campaigners say there is a lot of reason for optimism since the failed climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. Air pollution in China has forced the government there to plan limits on its expansion of coal fired power stations and the country already leads the world in low carbon energy technologies.

A number of businesses will also use the summit in New York to call for a global “carbon price” to be agreed to drive investment towards less carbon intensive economic growth.

Unilateral action by countries like Norway, Mexico and, to a degree, China, is also causing some campaigners to wonder whether the best hope for a true “greening” of the global economy will happen independently of the UN process.

Clearly not something Ban Ki-moon will be heard calling for, but it’s one to watch.

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