2nd Major Economies Meeting

January 30-31, 2008

General Information

• The Major Economies Meeting is taking place in Honolulu, Hawaii, Jan. 30 and 31
• This is the second “Major Economies Meeting” called by President Bush.  The first was held in Washington, DC in September 2007.  Reactions by country participants to the September meeting’s outcomes were overwhelmingly negative.
• The Honolulu proceedings are largely closed to the press and completely closed to NGO participation.  Requests for NGO observer status were denied.
• 16 Participants have been invited—Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United Kingdom
• The countries most at risk from impacts of climate change – the least-developed and small island developing countries – are not even invited to be at the table for this conference.  In total, over 160 UN countries are excluded.

Addressing Global Warming

• In order to have the best chance at avoiding the most dangerous effects of climate change, the science says warming must be kept to less than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.  To stay below 2 degrees of warming, we must act quickly and boldly—developed countries must reduce emissions by at least 25-40% from 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050.
• Major emitters have the power to agree on a road forward that would keep us below 2 degrees of warming.  That road requires binding mandatory targets for developed countries. These are necessary to ensure that emissions remain within “safe” levels and that global carbon markets function successfully.
• Many of America’s top companies recognize the need for mandatory targets.  More than two dozen of the largest U.S. companies have banded together with leading environmental organizations in a U.S. Climate Action Partnership to press for domestic cap and trade legislation to start cutting American emissions now, and to ramp them down 60-80 percent by 2050.
• Any global plan to address climate change must address the needs of those countries most vulnerable to global warming impacts.  In Bali, industrialized countries agreed to negotiate new commitments.  For their part, developing countries have agreed to consider appropriate measurable, reportable and verifiable mitigation actions but these new actions will require agreement on technology and financing support from developed countries.
  

Bush’s Vision and Approach

• Despite a change in rhetoric, the Bush administration continues to push for approaches that have no hope of addressing global warming effectively.  Additionally, the administration tries to take credit for initiatives that were enacted by Congress either over its opposition or without active support, and which constitute only a modest down payment toward reducing emissions effectively.
• Bush’s visions of voluntary (“aspirational”) targets will bring us nowhere near the levels of reductions needed to stay within two degrees of warming.  This continued push for a voluntary approach is an attempt to derail progress in the international post-2012 UN negotiations.
• The Asia Pacific Partnership, a technology talkshop involving the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, China, India and Australia, illustrates just how unsuccessful a voluntary process can be.  In three years, the APP has nothing to show for itself.  With no targets and no market drivers, it makes no difference.
• The Major Economies process looks like the same approach on a bigger scale – a run-out-the-clock tactic for the Bush Administration.  They realize that this may be their last chance to lock in their approach before a new US administration with a stronger position on global warming comes into office.
• All of the leading Democratic Presidential candidates and two of the three top Republican candidates support binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions through a cap and trade system.  It is increasingly clear that the next administration will take on a serious and binding commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Big Emitters (aka Major Economies) Meetings

• The countries most at risk from impacts of climate change are not even invited to be at the table for this conference.  Therefore the result is likely to be in the interest of the polluters, not the victims.
• The Big Emitters process is just another attempt by the outgoing Administration to avoid taking on its fair share of the responsibility to avoid a climate catastrophe.  It must not distract from the valuable and constructive work over the next two years under the Bali Action Plan agreed to in December at the UN climate change negotiations.
• The first Major Economies Meeting was by most accounts a failure.  Many country delegates left the meeting publicly voicing frustration that the Bush Administration had brought nothing new to the table and had continued push voluntary approaches that have no hope of succeeding to limit dangerous climate change.
• Countries are grudgingly attending the Honolulu meeting.  At the UN Negotiations in Bali, several “Major Economies” threatened to boycott the Major Economies process should the US block progress.  Only through the reluctant acceptance by the US of the consensus agreement in Bali was the Major Economies process saved, for the time being.  The entire process remains “on the ropes”, with participating countries remaining very skeptical as to the usefulness of the process.

Reactions to the September Meeting

"One of the striking features of this meeting is how isolated this administration has become. There is absolutely no support that I can see in the international community that we can drive this effort on the basis of voluntary efforts."
-John Ashton, special representative on climate change for the British foreign secretary

"Our message to the U.S. is this: what they placed on the table at this meeting is a first step, but is simply not enough…We think that the U.S. needs to go back to the drawing board."
-South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk

"It was a total charade and has been exposed as a charade…I have never heard a more humiliating speech by a major leader. He [Mr Bush] was trying to present himself as a leader while showing no sign of leadership. It was a total failure."
-Senior European diplomat (source:  The Guardian, Sept. 29, 2007)

"The president has said he will lead on climate change but he won't agree binding emissions, while other nations will….He says he will lead on technology but then he asks other countries to contribute funds, without saying how much he'll contribute himself…It's humiliating for him - a total humiliation."
-Delegate who attended September’s Major Economies Meeting (source: BBC News, Sept. 29, 2007)

"You were left looking for a little more here, something that would make other countries sit up and take notice and say something is happening here…He [Bush] has disappointed before. I can't say he hasn't done it again."
-Samuel Thernstrom, former Bush White House Council on Environmental Quality Communications Director, now scholar at conservative American Enterprise Institute

"It's a cynical exercise in destabilising the UN process."
-European Participant (source:  The Independent, Sept. 27, 2007)

Reaction in Bali

"Yes, the time has come for international commitments, and if the principle of the meeting of these great economies is possible, it has go hand in hand with quantified commitments from developed countries…Otherwise, a discussion of means without targets runs the risk of making things even more incomprehensible."
-French Environment Minister, in Bali