In the snowy Danish capital of Copenhagen, more than 110 Presidents and Prime Ministers together with the representatives of 193 countries gathered for a rare 12-day climate summit last week, emitting 40,500 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Ninety percent of emissions were from flights and the rest come from waste and electricity related to transport to and from the conference center and lodging in and around the Danish city.

As expected, the dispute between the world's biggest carbon polluters China and the U.S., who were aggressively reflecting aspirations of the South and North respectively, dominated the Copenhagen conference. Tens of thousands of protesters holding posters with slogans such as “Don’t betray our children’s future” and “Politician’s Talk Leaders Act”, took to the streets and staged demonstrations, even within the conference center, to demand action to cool an overheated planet. The historic U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen ended with the announcement of the Copenhagen Accord last Saturday, after a 31-hour negotiating marathon.

Within the Accord which highlighted climate change as one of the greatest challenges of modern human beings, the participating countries agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required with respect to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC. The report suggested reducing global heat-trapping gases emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Centigrade against pre industrial levels; which have already risen to 0.7 degrees. Further, the Accord mentioned that countries should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development.

Dozens of countries including the top two carbon polluters, China and the United States, came to the climate talks with proposals to ratchet down pollution levels. The proposals made by them for emissions reductions were nowhere near the expected targets and the studies showed that those targets will ultimately end up at a 3.9 degrees Centigrade increase. The Accord has gone another step backwards during the last two weeks as it is not legally-binding, containing no mid-term or long-term targets for emissions reductions and does not refer to a ‘peaking’ year for global emissions in order to keep within the ‘safe’ limit of 2 degrees C of warming. This is an utter failure as this occurred after 2 years negotiations, which began with the publishing of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The Northern and Southern politicians who came to Copenhagen with insufficient targets went home happy that the Copenhagen Accord had no binding targets. As a result the Climate Catastrophe has become inevitable!

The Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, negotiating on behalf of the 27-nation EU, blamed the impasse on the Chinese for "blocking again and again," and on the U.S. for coming too late with an improved offer. President Obama didn't offer anything more at the conference.  At the end of the day all the heads of states proved that the countries have no leaders who act but only politicians who talk.

Under the US rejected 1997 Kyoto Protocol 37 industrial nations were already cutting back on their emissions of greenhouse gases with an average of 5% against 1990 emission level. Under the new Copenhagen Accord which is a nonbinding agreement, those richer nations, including the U.S., are to list their individual emissions targets, and developing countries must list what actions they will take to reduce the growth in their global warming pollution by specific amounts.

Meeting targets given by science is not easy for humankind. It is going to be hard within countries therefore all countries wish to hide behind so-called “international treaties”. The Copenhagen summit proved that it's going to be even harder to meet emissions reduction targets between countries. If it were easy, it would have been done. This is a worrying thought.

The tug of war between US and China was a clear reflection of the tug of war between the North and the South. China which is more concerned about its economic growth than climate catastrophe represented the typical southern ‘emissions based development’ model. The main culprit however as far as carbon emissions go is the US. Therefore there are no excuses for the US not to drastically reduce emissions level. The Americans are addicted to fossil fuels and hence the former US President was reluctant to face the international community with dramatic commitments. The present US President Obama however had at least the courage to attend the conference. The overall outcome was a significant disappointment to those who had hoped Obama could put new life into the flagging prospects for some kind of legally binding agreement this year.

The US President Obama was not in a position to discuss about the targets given by IPCC with the Senate.  He has so far failed to get the approval of the Senate to meet at least Kyoto targets as a step towards protecting the rights of the people living the South. How can he do it as he is already struggling with his health care package which is to safeguard the rights of his fellow citizens? He had no other option but to buy time for him to attending to domestic issues before approaching the international scene. Hence at Copenhagen he was successful in postponing taking a decision by another year leaving numerous details yet to be decided. The next major U.N. climate conference is planned a year from now in Mexico City.

As time is running out, the rest of the world needs to use force against US to face up to its climate terrorism. Such force is needed to tame fossil fuel addicts. The South, citing the historical carbon debt of the US should isolate it and impose sanctions against it. Such a measure by the South will not disturb the current efforts of Obama but strengthen him. 

The Politicians of the South on the other hand are not particularly worried about climate catastrophe but more concerned about continuing their destructive development of fossil fuel based infrastructure and about grabbing funds from the North. China on behalf of the South did it to perfection. The South wanted to recognize the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation. Their stance of “Give us money or we will destroy our forests” is a shameful way of thinking from the Southern peoples.

The South should first settle for low carbon path ways; initiate discussions on trade off of financial debt with ecological debt and then explore the possibilities of imposing sanctions against the US. Unfortunately the people living in the South are not sufficiently aware of the gravity of the climate catastrophe to push their politicians to take such positive and aggressive measures to curb it.

Energy Forum has won the Silver Prize of the 2009 Ryutaro Hashimoto APFED Award ( Asia Pacific Forum for Environment and Development)  for our project titled: "Establishing private, public and civil society partnerships for ensuring the long term sustainability of the off-grid community based renewable energy power projects in Sri Lanka".

The Ryutaro Hashimoto APFED Awards for Good Practices (GPs) aim at promoting information dissemination of good practices towards sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific. The initiative collects lessons and experiences from innovative activities implemented in the region in order to promote sustainable development and share knowledge and wisdom with other stakeholders concerned.

A representative from each of the top 3 prize-winners are entitled to an invitation for the Award Ceremony scheduled in Ishikawa on the occasion of the 5th APFED Plenary Meeting.

Reviewed by: Prof Arjuna De Zoysa,
Head, Dept. of Mathematics and Philosophy of Engineering
Open University of Sri Lanka

Review
Asoka Abeygunawardana, Executive Director of the Energy Form, and an Electrical Engineer has written a valuable book which questions the present Energy Policy of the government and CEB directly.

It is well known that globally there is a distinct shift away from fossil fuel based energy to sustainable sources of Renewable energies.  This shift is significant and covers the entire political spectrum of countries, from China to North America.  The depletion of their resources and the problems of climate change have resulted in this situation.  Sri Lankan policy on energy stands out like a sore thumb, a lacuna resulting from erroneous advice given to the government, by the CEB and associated motley of consultants, who own consultancy firms and have direct economic interests in the outcomes of Energy Policy.  This erroneous policy of coal as the major option has been carefully agued against in Asoka’s excellent book.  A must read for any one of the stake holders in Energy supply and use.  They are the government (Politicians, such as the Minister for Power and Energy), consumers paying excessive bills, Energy Experts and the CEB Engineers, and the Opposition aligned to trade unions (the JVP as example).

The book begins with the general background to the problem, showing an exponential increase in fossil fuel consumption during the last 150 years.  Chapter two shows the depletion of these fossil sources, due to increasing demand and depletion of available sources.  A temporary decrease in fuel price is not comforting, as both long terms cost trends and reasoning will predict a final catastrophic increase and thereby the urgency for change.

Chapter 3, links the gradual impact of climate change to use of fossil fuels, and ends with a pithy quote from the Lowadasangarawa, “The crab swims happily in the pot – only as it takes for it to heat up”

Chapter 5, is a critique of both the demand forecasts and the CEB’s generating plan to meet this demand:  A plan singularly lacking in solutions for the new challenges faced by the modern world.  A simple projection of the past to the future is apparently what the CEB planners demand.  A paradigm deeply mired in orthodoxy.  The other chapters are very interesting in that, Asoka shows the many options for a country such as Sri Lanka.  An ‘Energy Crisis’ does not mean a retreat into darkness.  There are Wind, Biomass, Solar thermal, Solar PV as solutions.  And he show that they could be obtained at a much cheaper cost then the cost of imported fossil fuels (exception of Solar PV).  The last chapter on Wave Energy is a call for us to be alert to new scientific and technology developments in this area.  After all we are an island state surrounded by the seas, and waves if it can be tapped as a reasonably priced power source, could be abundant.  

There is one aspect on Energy which is not covered in Asoka’s book, which needs to be done:  The question of Total cycle expenditure in terms of Energy itself.  Some Energy sources merely raise the quality of energy (from a raw state to electricity), but do not produced any net useful energy.  A good example is Nuclear Energy, the total energy cycle takes so much energy that the net useful energy transformed in the process could be negative.  

In which event they are not solutions to the Global energy crisis.  Sri Lanka does not have to worry too much about this problem as it is reflected in its financial costs.  For example as Asoka’s book give, solar photo-voltaics are very costly.  This could be because they may not be producing net energy.  This would be okay for lighting a few lights bulbs in remote areas and not much more.  If Asoka’s book is to have a Global Appeal, he needs to address this question perhaps in a separate concluding chapter.

All in all, the book titled ‘A world without coal or oil’, ‘raises a number of thought provoking queries about our energy future.  Energy is fundamental to life so is our environment, it is clear that things cannot continue as before.