Splits grow at climate meeting as clock ticks

Few countries moving in the right direction to rein in global warming

Divisions deepened at the UN climate talks yesterday, pitting rich nations against poor ones, oil exporters against vulnerable island nations, and those governments prepared to act on global warming against those who want to wait and see.

The stakes were raised by a scientific report that warned achieving the most ambitious target in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit emissions was getting increasingly difficult. Figures released this week showed that emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped the highest in seven years, making the task of cutting those emissions one day to zero even more challenging.

Negotiators at the climate talks in Katowice, Poland, still disagree on the way forward but have just a few days to finish their technical talks before ministers take over.

Among the splits that need to be overcome are:

The question of what kind of flexibility developing countries will have when it comes to reporting their emissions and efforts to curb them. The issue is central to the Paris rulebook, which countries have committed to finalising this year. Environmental activists insist countries such as Brazil, with its vast Amazon rainforest, and China, the world’s biggest polluter, should have to provide hard data on emissions and not be treated like poorer nations unable to do a precise greenhouse tally. Complicating matters, a group of rich countries that includes the United States and Australia is seeking similar leeway as developing nations.

Some oil exporting countries have objected to the idea of explicitly mentioning ways in which global warming can be kept at 1.5C. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of scientists from around the world, recently proposed “policy pathways” to achieving this goal, which foresee phasing out almost all coal, oil and gas by 2050. But Saudi Arabia and some of its allies say it would be wrong to cite those pathways in a text about future ambitions.

■ Developing countries are frustrated that rich nations won’t commit themselves to providing greater assurances on financial support for poor nations facing hefty costs to fight the effects of climate change. European governments argue that they are bound by budget rules that limit their ability to allocate money more than a few years in advance.

What’s clear is that few countries are moving in the right direction to halt global warming.

“The first data for this year point to a strong rise in the global CO2 emissions, almost all countries are contributing to this rise,” said Corinne Le Quere, who led the team that published the emissions study this week.

“In China, it’s boosted by economic stimulation in construction. In the US, an unusual year, cold winter and hot summer, both boosting the energy demand. In Europe, the emissions are down but less than they used to be, and that’s because of growing emissions in transport that are offsetting benefits elsewhere,” she told the meeting in Katowice.

Le Quere, the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in England, noted some positive news.

“We have renewable energy,” she said. “It is displacing coal in the US and in Europe, and it is expanding elsewhere.

“It’s not enough to meet the growing energy demand in developing countries in particular. But the industry is growing.”