As the dust settles from last month's eventful climate talks in Copenhagen, where do the international climate talks stand? What are the key events to watch in 2010? How will the Copenhagen Accord affect the Senate's climate discussions? During today's OnPoint, Rob Bradley, director of international climate policy at the World Resources Institute, discusses the path forward on international climate discussions.

Transcript

Monica Trauzzi: Welcome to the show. I'm Monica Trauzzi. Joining me today is Rob Bradley, director of International Climate Policy at the World Resources Institute. Rob, thanks for joining me today. It's nice to see you.

Rob Bradley: Great to be here.

Monica Trauzzi: Rob, last month's Copenhagen climate meeting received a lot of criticism. It's been labeled as a failure by many people and it sort of left the international community with many unanswered questions about the U.N. process as a whole and what the Copenhagen accord actually means. So, where does the international climate process stand right now?

Rob Bradley: I think, to a certain extent, even those who were involved intimately in that process are still in the process of trying to figure that out. A lot of conversations are coming. Now people have sort of come down emotionally a little bit from the process. People are starting to ask themselves what just happened, and bear in mind that it hasn't finished happening. Many of the targets and the financial pledges that countries are going to be putting forward are only going to be put into the document by the end of January. So, as we try and assess the progress that has been made, there are still a lot of moving parts and, to a certain extent, a lot of these discussions are kind of variations on I don't know. There's no doubt that the meeting itself was something of a mess. There were all kinds of problems over attendance. Far too many people registered, even ministers being sort of stuck out in the snow when they could have been in negotiating. And, of course, we had this unprecedented process of having heads of state come in and that was both incredibly important, but also very confusing for the process. It is not something that's happened before. Heads of state obviously are dealing with this in a very different way, in a way that really didn't connect a whole lot with the rest of the process. Now, having said that, I certainly don't think characterizing Copenhagen as a failure is the right way to look at it. I mean never before has the issue of climate change been dealt with at this kind of level. We had nearly 130 heads of state involved, so countries are moving forward, sort of walking away from that discussion with a much higher level of engagement and commitment than has ever happened before. Secondly, it's moved fundamentally in terms of the engagement of developing countries. Never before have major developing countries like China, like India had actual commitments on the table and we are now in a process in which these countries are both going to be putting forward actions and are going to be scrutinized on a very regular basis as to whether they are in fact meeting those commitments.

Monica Trauzzi: So, what's the outlook for 2010 as we get into the new year? As we mentioned, many in the international community are asking to step away from the U.N. process. So what are meetings like the G-20 going to start holding a little more weight when it comes to climate change? I mean what are you looking at as the key events leading to the COP-16?

Rob Bradley: Yeah, I mean there are not a whole lot of new meetings already scheduled, although there are a lot being talked about. China and some of the other major developing countries are looking to get together over the next month or so. The U.S. has been talking about convening a group of the large emitters sometime very early in the new year. The French and the Bolivians have both been talking about doing similar convening activities. So, those things are not necessarily all scheduled, but the intent is there to have those discussions amongst perhaps smaller groups of countries very early in the new year. The U.N. process continues. There will be a sort of technocrat level meeting at the end of May, early June, and there will be another ministerial level meeting in Mexico City at the end of the year. In the meantime, the U.N. Secretary is almost certainly going to have to sort of come back at a more technical level and take the pulse of little bit of where some of these other negotiations have been going. Bear in mind that while the very high-level discussions amongst heads of state were settling some of the very big political issues, there are a whole range of things, adaptation, forests, technology, on which more detailed negotiations have been going forward and on which further progress needs to be made in the new year. But by far the most important thing that's going to happen is going to happen at the end of this month when countries are actually putting their targets and putting their financial commitments down on paper in a way that can actually add some solidity to what has been agreed in Copenhagen.

Monica Trauzzi: What's wrong with the U.N. process? Why has it created so many problems?

Rob Bradley: Well, some of the problems that occur are down to the sheer complexity of climate change as an issue. It's too politically charged for the technocrats, but it's way too technical for the politicians. You know, very often ministers come in and they're handed, by their subordinates, simply too long and difficult a list of questions to get to grips with. But it's true that the U.N. as a process offers a lot of challenges of its own and we saw some fairly ugly scenes really towards the end of Copenhagen. It operates by consensus. You've got every country in the world in the room and, in principle at least, if one of them disagrees with what's happening they can block it more or less indefinitely. And so you have groups of countries, in many cases fossil fuel exporters who probably don't see it in their interest to have a strong deal on climate change, objecting and preventing the process from moving forward. Confusingly, they were sometimes allied with countries like some of the small island states who objected on the grounds that the deal was not nearly ambitious enough and who obviously face an existential threat. But nevertheless, a process in which you're trying to get all of that group of countries with such an incredibly diverse set of interests to agree on something is a process that is always going to raise problems.

Monica Trauzzi: So, a big question that remains back here at home is what will the Senate do? I'm curious, did the Copenhagen meeting impact the Senate's process at all and the fact that not as much happened as some were expecting, does that sort of give the naysayers a little more ammunition when it comes to actually passing some legislation in the Senate this year?

Rob Bradley: I'm sure you're going to hear people spinning it both ways, but I think there are two sets of things to look at. There's the Copenhagen meeting itself and there's everything else that happened last year on climate change. We have seen incredible movement. I mean what I get asked time and time again in the Senate is, is China going to play and, if so, can we check up on what they're doing? And the answer to those two questions is yes and yes. There is a process now within the Copenhagen accord by which countries actually get to scrutinize what they're doing. For the first time developing countries are not merely going to say what they're going to do, but are going to have to report every two years on the progress that is being made on those. And China has made some pretty significant announcements over the last six months about what it intends to do. So, really, the critical issues that the Senate were looking to get out of this process have been delivered. Now, there's lots more that can be done. We, from an environmental perspective, look at this overall deal. The total ambition is not where we would ideally want to see it. There's certainly a lot more to be done in terms of fleshing out the details, but to my mind the big political questions that the Senate wanted answered have been answered in the affirmative.

Monica Trauzzi: OK, it will be interesting to watch the next couple of months. We'll end it right there. Thank you for coming on the show.

Rob Bradley: Thank you.

Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see back here tomorrow.

[End of Audio]