A nice precis of the current situation in the negotiations — as we turn the corner and head for Lima, and then for Paris — was just published by Ian McGregor in e-international relations, here.  The piece is notable for its clarity about the international support being as much a part of a nation’s fair share as its domestic emissions, and, notably, about the notion of “emerging shares.”  To wit:

“As CAN pointed out recently, when a country submits it INDC it is implicitly choosing a temperature target, the one that would be realized if all other countries were to act in a comparable manner, relative to their fair share of the global effort required.  If a country proposes a contribution that amounts to less than its fair share of the global effort required to keep temperature rise well below 2°C, then that country is, in effect, proposing an overall global temperature increase that exceeds 2°C.”

Many of the details will be familiar to the readers of this site, but the piece is nonetheless notable for its detailed realism, and its familiarity with the equity debate within the negotiations, and for the detail in which it lays out civil-society position on the fair shares problem.

Great piece — here – on the Responding to Climate Change site on our Climate Equity Reference Calculator.

Great but not perfect, alas.  For example, the opening tag says “New equity calculator says UK needs to cut emissions 94% by 2020, US by 73% and China just 9.4%.” And of course this will be read as implying that the is the one sole result of the calculator.

Here’s comment that we made soon after the piece was posted:

“Not that I’m complaining about the publicity, but one clarification.   Where the RTCC author says . . .

China’s emission trajectory for 2020 is a whopping 16,688 MtCO2e, just under the target total for the whole world. But the ERF calculator says it just needs to shave off 1,575 MtCO2e, or 9.4%.

What he should have said is something like . . .

China’s emission trajectory for 2020 is a whopping 16,688 MtCO2e, not much less than the mitigation target for the whole world. Of this, according to the ERF calculator, it needs to itself finance mitigation of 1,575 MtCO2e, or 9.4%.  (It’s “fair share”).  The total mitigation that needs to take place within its borders is, of course, much greater, and amounts to about 4,673 MtCO2e, or 28% of China’s projected 2020 baseline emissions.

The problem is that this last number is hard to read out from the Calculator UI as it currently stands.   We will fix this.”

 

Recently, we were invited to do a post on our “equity reference framework” work for the MAHB — that’s Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere, in case you were wondering.  Pronounced “MOB.”  It’s an interesting project, and it has a significant foothold in the fluid, fertile space where environmental scientists and civil society “actors” meet.

The post turned out to be a good introduction to the Climate Equity Reference Calculator, one that situates it firmly in the global climate justice debate, as it’s unfolding in the international climate negotiations.   Here a link to it.  And here’s the lead . . .

“It’s about 18 months now until the Paris climate showdown.

The good news is that there’s quite a lot happening.  The clarifying science, for example, is no longer easily denigrated.  The IPCC’s 2°C carbon budgets, the new age of “extreme weather,” the fate of the Arctic, these can no longer be cast as fervid speculations.  Denialism – at least classic denialism – has peaked.  This is a time of consequences, and we all know it.

But what about Paris?  Why do I even mention the international climate negotiations?  Don’t we all know that the North/South divide is unbridgeable?  Don’t we all know that the wealthy world will never provide the finance and technology support that’s needed to drive deep and rapid decarbonization in the emerging economies?  Don’t we all know that the prospect for a meaningful breakthrough in the climate talks is nil?

In fact, we do not.”