Whither the UNFCCC and the Copenhagen Accord?

I have been meaning to post some thoughts on an article in Foreign Affairs for some time, so here goes!

Levi puts forward the argument (NB: bear in mind that it was written in the run-up to COP15) that mega-multilateral agreements, a la the Kyoto Protocol, are a dead end. Hopes that an international treaty, to be negotiated in Copenhagen, are misplaced. And not solely due to logistical, diplomatic barriers. Levi sees the problem as running much deeper. At a fundamental level the possibility of agreement between the developed and developing nations is not possible, due to the divergence of international demands and domestic political realities. This is a familiar story-line, but that makes it no less true: the US needs China/India/Brazil to take on absolute emissions targets; China needs the US/EU to take on aggressive absolute emissions reduction targets; the “south” needs a large pile of money from the “north”; and the “north” needs to put in place effective monitoring and verification measures to ensure that emissions cuts in the “south” are actually taking place.

Levi pulls three core problems facing an effective international treaty, and highlights them as the reasons why the Kyoto/Copenhagen process should be abandoned in favor of a “bottom-up” country-driven approach (in which countries adopt their own domestic targets and then strike targeted bilateral/multilateral deals):

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1 down/1 to go?

While the passage of health care reform legislation in the US is anything but a sure thing, the recent victory in the house for the forces of reform gives the process a sense of forward momentum. Talking Points Memo has a good piece today on the key interest groups that are a party to the process,  identifies how they have been brought on board/defused, and points to this as a key contributor to the “success” that has been achieved to date.

This sense of near inevitability, that health care legislation is going to get through the Senate and the process of reconciliation, turned my attention to the ongoing debate on climate change that is taking place. Who needs to be brought on board in order to get legislation passed in the US? What about in Canada?

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