Evan Haigler's List: Cop15

• First, it provides for real cuts in heat-trapping carbon pollution by all of the world’s big emitters.  Second, it establishes a transparent framework for evaluating countries’ performance against their commitments.  And third, it will start an unprecedented flow of resources to help poor and vulnerable nations cope with climate impacts, protect their forests, and adopt clean energy technologie
• And by securing both action and transparency from all big nations, the president boosted the odds for Senate passage of comprehensive energy and climate legislation next yea
• Copenhagen Accord – you can read it here. 

• And what of the relationship to the UNFCCC?  One can see several possibilities.  The members of the new agreement are likely to meet at least several times this coming year.  The developing country parties will not want to break away from the UNFCCC entirely, so at a minimum they will report on their activities at the mid-year meetings in June in Bonn, and at the next COP in Mexico in November.  The members of the accord, however, are unlikely to want to get tangled up in the subsidiary bodies and plenaries of the COP.  They will not give the obstructionists that leverage.

   

  That poses a dilemma for those still hoping for an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, both those who want that for the best of reasons, and those who play the game to block any real progress.  The existing convention has, at best, one last chance to get its act together.  That will require transforming itself into a functional body, capable of overcoming rogues and obstructionists and capable of making practical, timely decisions.  And it cannot succeed by trying to compete with the Copenhagen Accord.  The only way forward for the UNFCCC is to embrace the new agreement wholeheartedly.  Otherwise, the UNFCCC will wither away.

2 more annotations...