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Crunch time for climate change treaty

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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with British Secretary for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, about efforts to craft a new international agreement on how to tackle climate change. The head of the United Nations has called a special meeting of global leaders next week to instil a sense of urgency.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH-Boston.  Time is running out on efforts to craft a new global treaty to address climate change.  That’s the warning from many world leaders and climate activists.  The clock is ticking toward a December deadline for agreeing on a treaty to replace the 12-year-old Kyoto Protocol.  Serious rifts remain between developed countries and the developing world, and Europe and the United States aren’t on the same page either.  The head of the United Nations has called a special meeting of global leaders next week to instill a sense of urgency, and many key players are in Washington this week to try and rally support for action.  Among them is Britain’s Secretary of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband.  He says the U.S. has to act soon on climate change.

ED MILIBAND: I think we do need the U.S. to move as quickly as possible and get its legislation through.  We have a deadline that’s been set by the world of December this year at Copenhagen in Denmark to reach a new agreement on climate change.  It’s very urgent that we do it.  Obviously, we need the U.S. on board.

WERMAN: But there is great concern that the U.S. could come into Copenhagen in December and essentially scrap all of Kyoto and try something completely different.  Are you concerned about that?

MILIBAND: I think in a sense the question of legal forms is less important to me.  What really matters to me is do we have significant cuts in emissions from developed countries?  That includes Europe and the United States, and do we have significant action on carbon emissions from developing countries?  Because the truth is that we’re in this together, and we can’t solve the problem unless we get developed countries and developing countries to act.  And that’s what I’m talking about here in Washington this week, and indeed in New York next week at the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Meeting on Climate Change.

WERMAN: How are you going to pay for this new treaty?  I mean, there’s been a consensus in Europe for a common fund, but in the U.S.?  There is probably little chance of people paying taxes to a foreign entity.

MILIBAND: Yeah, that’s another difficult issue for us.  We have put forward proposals, the U.K. Government, for how we can raise about $100 billion a year of public and private finance by 2020.  It is one of the important responsibilities of developed countries.  We have caused the problem.  We’ve got countries like India, for example, that have 400 million people living on less than a dollar a day.  We need to help them both to adapt to climate change, but more importantly as far as a country like India is concerned, also to go down the low carbon path, not the carbon path that we took which was high carbon but to grow in a low carbon way so they can continue to take their people out of poverty, but they don’t increase their carbon emissions at the same time.

WERMAN:  Well, fair enough.  It’s good to be hopeful but why persist with the idea that the U.S. will sign up for any revenue generating scheme when there’s very little chance that that will happen?

MILIBAND: Well, maybe I’m an optimist by nature.  Look, I think that it’s in the U.S.’s self-interest to sign up to a scheme that both reduces its own emissions and that helps other countries because the truth is that there’s no solution to this problem without developing countries being on board.  I think the U.S. recognizes that.  So I guess I’m more optimistic than you that as part of an overall agreement, which gets global warming under control internationally, the U.S. will also sign up to the financial part of this.

WERMAN: A lot of people are saying, Mr. Miliband, that Copenhagen is the last chance to save the planet from a temperature rise of 3-1/2 Fahrenheit, a kind of danger benchmark that could bring calamity, but a lot of big players like China and India are making big strides toward renewables.  I’m wondering how important it really is that we get a strong treaty this time around?

MILIBAND: I think it’s pretty make or break, to be honest.  I think if the world ducks this opportunity or fails to meet this opportunity, I don’t even guarantee this will just come along again next year or the year after.  So that’s why in Europe there is huge pressure rightly on politicians to make December at Copenhagen count and that’s the message I’ve been taking to the discussions here this week.

WERMAN: And next week U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is aiming to sit down with all the heads of state and government and regenerate a sense of urgency and commitment to lead up to Copenhagen.  Will that be enough to get everyone on the same page?

MILIBAND: It will not be enough on its own, but I think it’s an important contribution.  Obviously, the power of the convening power of the U.N. Secretary General is important.  I think the point about this is how do we overcome these obstacles?  The answer has to be imagination.  If we leave this like a conventional negotiation like the trade talks, for example, until three o’clock in the morning on the last evening, we won’t get an agreement.  That’s why Britain took the lead in saying we’ve got to [INDISCERNIBLE] for finance for developing countries.  That’s why I’m pleased that developing countries like India are now saying that we will quantify the actions we will take on emissions. That’s a recent announcement that they’ve made.  I think everyone needs to understand each other’s constraints but also see that we’ve got to contribute to solving the problem.  The U.N. Secretary General will be an important factor in this, but really it’s up to us. It’s up to the governments of the world to say we understand that this is something where if we don’t act, future generations will look us in the eye and say, “You knew the scale of the problem, but you failed the test.”

WERMAN: I’m interested about your title as Secretary for Energy and Climate Change, which is a job created in 2008.  It kind of hints at a new mindset, but also a possible conflict of interest.  It must be tough to balance lobbying from energy giants like BP and National Grid with environmental activists.

MILIBAND: You’re right but there are tensions in this.  It’s interesting, over a particular issue like coal where I’ve put forth some proposals on how we regulate new coal-fired power stations in a pretty strong way to encourage carbon capture and storage.  I think there’s more consensus possible than people might imagine in this thought.  Because the truth is, and this is something that we do have to make industry realize, is that we’re moving towards low carbon.  There’s no other way to go, and it’s the question whether it happens sooner or later, and it might be it needs to happen sooner and those countries that actually wake up and smell the coffee will benefit as a result.

WERMAN: Well, we certainly see the BP propaganda in the pages of glossy magazines here in the States, but it’s still got to be difficult with coal lobbying and BP breathing down your neck.  How committed are you personally to your portfolio?

MILIBAND: I’m very committed to this.  I do think this is the biggest challenge the world faces.  And I think it emphasizes something very important, which is that we can’t think about any policy now in isolation now from the issue of climate change, whether it’s your energy policy, whether it’s your transport policy, or your economic policy.  And I think that sort of the strides …  I guess, in the U.K. we’ve still got to fully make, and all countries still have to fully make is to integrate climate policy with everything we do.

WERMAN: Ed Miliband the British Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.  Mr. Miliband, thank you very much for your time.

MILIBAND: Thanks, it’s been a pleasure.

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