THE UNITED Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December is sometimes described as a last chance to avert catastrophe on a global scale; and that is on the less extreme end of the debate.
While it can be unhelpful to cast green issues always in terms of impending apocalypse, it is important to state how much rides on the success of the summit, especially since, as the Observer reports today, the prospects of a deal are receding.
The Copenhagen conference is supposed to negotiate a replacement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the landmark deal that first bound nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Its provisions start expiring in 2012.
There is scientific consensus that Kyoto's successor should cut carbon emissions to the point that average temperatures do not rise by more than two degrees Celsius. Any more than that would risk ecological changes of devastating proportions. In practical terms, that means binding targets so that the rate of emissions stops growing immediately and starts falling by 2015. By 2050, say UN scientists, they should be cut by 80%.
There are various obstacles in the negotiations, but the main one is a global fault line between developed and developing worlds. Countries with massive industrial potential still unfulfilled – mainly China and India – will not take moral instruction in eco-austerity from countries that have already industrialised and left a legacy of carbon in the atmosphere as a result.
The industrialised countries, meanwhile, are reluctant to bind themselves to targets that do not also restrain countries they see as competitors.
The theoretical framework for a compromise is broadly in place: the developed world must accept its responsibility for old pollution and make amends by subsidising low-carbon energy in the developing world. In exchange for redistribution of green technology from rich to poor, the developing world would accept significant emissions targets.
Turning that framework into a treaty will be hard. But global leaders have shown in their response to the financial crisis that fear of catastrophe can galvanise co-ordinated and collective action. They ought to fear climate catastrophe and they are running out of time to act.