THOUGH THE Copenhagen Accord on climate change has grown in terms of signatories it is unlikely to have any great effect on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, a leading Irish expert on climate change has said.
Prof John Sweeney, director of the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Unit (Icarus) at NUI Maynooth, said experts were hoping a more tangible agreement might emerge after meetings at Bonn in June or at Cancun in December. “Most people are pessimistic even about that,” he said.
The text of the Copenhagen Accord was agreed at an international summit in December. It sets a goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial times. But it leaves each nation to set its own targets for 2020 and is built on voluntary agreement.
Yesterday, the UN published its first formal list of 110 signatories, which include China, the United States, the European Union, Russia, India and Japan.
Prof Sweeney said there is not much hope for the agreement. “It would be fair to say a voluntary accord is very unlikely to have a useful effect. We have seen the way voluntary guidelines operate when economic issues are at stake.” He said climate change “went off the boil” because there was a realisation that European efforts were being sidelined by Chinese and US politics.
“People are fatigued with it, but the problem is as big as ever. It is still the largest problem of our generation.” he said.
US president Barack Obama had been focusing on passing healthcare legislation, he added. Now he had passed that legislation, he might be emboldened to push through a Bill on climate change.
A spokesman for Minister for the Environment John Gormley said the outcome again emphasised the need to make every effort to reach a legally binding agreement at the summit later in the year.
“The development is disappointing but not surprising and merely underlines the difficult task ahead,” he said.
