Paris Jockeying for Competitive Position, Moral Superiority Begins

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H. Sterling Burnett

Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News at The Heartland Institute

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute. Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, most recently as a senior fellow in charge of NCPA’s environmental policy program. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations, including serving as a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission.

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Eiffel tower, Paris

Barely two years into the Paris climate agreement and it is falling apart as countries jockey for a position of competitive economic advantage, and claimed moral superiority.

Two weeks of negotiations among the parties to the 2015 Paris climate agreement failed to produce a draft negotiating text detailing steps to be taken to satisfy each country’s carbon reduction goals. Negotiations failed as developing countries demanded clarity about when developed countries will begin delivering the $100 billion annually in green development and climate mitigation aid promised as part of the Paris agreement and the Green Climate Fund, and as developed countries called for developing countries to commit to greater transparency concerning the emissions they produce, opening themselves up to some kind of tracking and verification process.

Ongoing shortfalls in Green Climate Fund commitments gave China an opening at the Bonn meetings to call for a renegotiation of the shared commitment between developed and developing countries to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Chinese negotiators suggested aid should be delivered before any confirmable emission reductions are made by developing countries.

Representatives from almost 200 nations began leaving Bonn, Germany on May 9 without producing a draft negotiating text for government ministers to discuss at the annual meeting this year to be held in Poland in December. As a result, they set another round of interim negotiations in Bangkok before the end-of-year conference. The BBC speculates the Paris climate agreement will unravel if negotiators cannot develop a consensus on accounting rules, technology transfers, and methods to verify the greenhouse gas emission reductions are on track.