In the last few months, states have been trying to agree on plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, which are believed to contribute to climate change. Negotiations have occurred both bilaterally (between two countries) and multilaterally (among many countries). Last year, there was an international summit in Lima; this year there will be a major summit in Paris. Below are a handful of articles written about these developments. · To what degree is the information provided consistent with Waltz’s theory of international relations? · To what degree is the information provided consistent with Keohane’s theory of international relations? 
 · Guidelines 
Length: The essay should be 4-5 full pages in length. Please number the pages. There is no need for a fluffy introductory paragraph. Just give the reader your analysis. · 
Format: Your essay should be stapled and double-spaced, with 1-inch margins (the same as this page) and 12-point Times New Roman font. Note that the default in Word is 1.25-inch margins. · 
Scope: This is not a research paper. You are not expected to draw on literature other than the books by Waltz and Keohane that we have discussed in class and the news reports below. You do not need to know anything more about the topic than what is provided below. Remember to stick to the topic. The question is not about your view of the issue; it is about how the two authors would be able to explain the facts below in light of their theories. 
Textual grounding: Make sure your argument is grounded in the two books. Support your argument with explicit references to particular passages/sections/chapters from the texts. Information you got in the lectures should be supported explicitly by the texts themselves. I recommend using good, short quotations from the texts every now and then. Anytime you reference an argument that the author makes, you must provide a citation. As long as you are referencing Waltz or Keohane, you do not need to provide a full citation. Example: Keohane asserts that hegemony is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the emergence of cooperation among states (5). 1 U.S. and China Reach Climate Accord After Months of Talks By MARK LANDLER NOV. 11, 2014 The New York Times BEIJING — China and the United States made common cause on Wednesday against the threat of climate change, staking out an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse gases. The landmark agreement, jointly announced here by President Obama and President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for carbon emissions reductions by the United States and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030. Administration officials said the agreement, which was worked out quietly between the United States and China over nine months and included a letter from Mr. Obama to Mr. Xi proposing a joint approach, could galvanize efforts to.

1. In the last few months, states have been trying to agree on plans
to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, which are believed to
contribute to climate change. Negotiations have occurred both
bilaterally (between two countries) and multilaterally (among
many countries). Last year, there was an international summit in
Lima; this year there will be a major summit in Paris. Below are
a handful of articles written about these developments.
·
consistent with Waltz’s theory of international relations?
·
consistent with Keohane’s theory of international relations?
· Guidelines Length: The essay should be 4-5 full pages in
length. Please number the pages. There is no need for a fluffy
introductory paragraph. Just give the reader your analysis.
· Format: Your essay should be stapled and double-spaced,
with 1-inch margins (the same as this page) and 12-point Times
New Roman font. Note that the default in Word is 1.25-inch
margins.
· Scope: This is not a research paper. You are not expected to
draw on literature other than the books by Waltz and Keohane
that we have discussed in class and the news reports below. You
do not need to know anything more about the topic than what is
provided below. Remember to stick to the topic. The question is
not about your view of the issue; it is about how the two authors
would be able to explain the facts below in light of their
theories. Textual grounding: Make sure your argument is
grounded in the two books. Support your argument with explicit
references to particular passages/sections/chapters from the
texts. Information you got in the lectures should be supported
explicitly by the texts themselves. I recommend using good,
short quotations from the texts every now and then. Anytime
you reference an argument that the author makes, you must
provide a citation. As long as you are referencing Waltz or
Keohane, you do not need to provide a full citation.

2. hegemony is neither a
necessary nor a sufficient condition for the emergence of
cooperation among states (5).
1
U.S. and China Reach Climate Accord After Months of Talks
By MARK LANDLER NOV. 11, 2014 The New York Times
BEIJING — China and the United States made common cause
on Wednesday against the threat of climate change, staking out
an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to
spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in
greenhouse gases.
The landmark agreement, jointly announced here by President
Obama and President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for
carbon emissions reductions by the United States and a first-
ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing
by 2030.
Administration officials said the agreement, which was worked
out quietly between the United States and China over nine
months and included a letter from Mr. Obama to Mr. Xi
proposing a joint approach, could galvanize efforts to negotiate
a new global climate agreement by 2015.
It was the signature achievement of an unexpectedly productive
two days of meetings between the leaders. Mr. Obama and Mr.
Xi also agreed to a military accord designed to avert clashes
between Chinese and American planes and warships in the tense
waters off the Chinese coast, as well as an understanding to cut
tariffs for technology products.
A climate deal between China and the United States, the world’s
No. 1 and No. 2 carbon polluters, is viewed as essential to
concluding a new global accord. Unless Beijing and Washington
can resolve their differences, climate experts say, few other
countries will agree to mandatory cuts in emissions, and any
meaningful worldwide pact will be likely to founder.

3. “The United States and China have often been seen as
antagonists,” said a senior official, speaking in advance of Mr.
Obama’s remarks. “We hope that this announcement can usher
in a new day in which China and the U.S. can act much more as
partners.”
As part of the agreement, Mr. Obama announced that the United
States would emit 26 percent to 28 percent less carbon in 2025
than it did in 2005. That is double the pace of reduction it
targeted for the period from 2005 to 2020.
China’s pledge to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, if not
sooner, is even more remarkable. To reach that goal, Mr. Xi
pledged that so-called clean energy sources, like solar power
and windmills, would account for 20 percent of China’s total
energy production by 2030.
Administration officials acknowledged that Mr. Obama could
face opposition to his plans from a Republican-controlled
Congress. While the agreement with China needs no
congressional ratification, lawmakers could try to roll back Mr.
Obama’s initiatives, undermining the United States’ ability to
meet the new reduction targets.
2
Still, Mr. Obama’s visit, which came days after a setback in the
midterm elections, allowed him to reclaim some of the
momentum he lost at home. As the campaign was turning
against the Democrats last month, Mr. Obama quietly
dispatched John Podesta, a senior adviser who oversees climate
policy, to Beijing to try to finalize a deal.
For all the talk of collaboration, the United States and China
also displayed why they are still fierce rivals for global
economic primacy, promoting competing free-trade blocs for the
Asian region even as they reached climate and security deals.
The maneuvering came during a conference of Pacific Rim
economies held in Beijing that has showcased China’s growing
dominance in Asia, but also the determination of the United
States, riding a resurgent economy, to reclaim its historical role
as a Pacific power.

4. Adding to the historic nature of the visit, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi
were scheduled to give a joint news conference on Wednesday
that will include questions from reporters — a rare concession
by the Chinese leader to a visiting American president.
On Tuesday evening, Mr. Xi invited Mr. Obama to dinner at his
official residence, telling his guest he hoped they had laid the
foundation for a collaborative relationship — or, as he more
metaphorically put it, “A pool begins with many drops of
water.”
Greeting Mr. Obama at the gate of the walled leadership
compound next to the Forbidden City, Mr. Xi squired him
across a brightly lighted stone bridge and into the residence.
Mr. Obama told the Chinese president that he wanted to take the
relationship “to a new level.”
“When the U.S. and China are able to work together
effectively,” he added, “the whole world benefits.”
But as the world witnessed this week, it is more complicated
than that. Mr. Xi won approval Tuesday from the 21 countries
of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to study the
creation of a China-led free-trade zone that would be an
alternative to Mr. Obama’s Trans- Pacific Partnership, a 12-
nation trading bloc that excludes China.
On Monday, Mr. Obama met with members of that group here
and claimed progress in negotiating the partnership, a
centerpiece of his strategic shift to Asia.
Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership are much further
along than those for the nascent Chinese plan, known as the
Free Trade Area of Asia Pacific, and some analysts said the
approval by the Pacific Rim nations of a two-year study was
mainly a gesture to the Chinese hosts to give them something to
announce at the meeting.
For all the jockeying, the biggest trade headline was a
breakthrough in negotiations with China to eliminate tariffs on
information technology products, from video-game consoles and
computer software to medical equipment and semiconductors.
3

5. “We’re going to take what’s been achieved here in Beijing back
to Geneva to work with our W.T.O. partners,” said Michael B.
Froman, the United States trade representative. “While we don’t
take anything for granted, we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to
work quickly” to conclude an expansion of the agreement,
known as the Information Technology Agreement.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Xi formally welcomed Mr. Obama
at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People; they later toasted
each other at a state banquet.
Administration officials said Mr. Obama had pressed Mr. Xi to
resume a United States-China working group on cybersecurity
issues, which abruptly stopped its discussions after the United
States charged several Chinese military officers with hacking.
“We did see a chill in the cyber dialogue,” said Benjamin J.
Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser. “We do believe
it’s better if there’s a mechanism for dialogue.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama credited APEC with originating the
work on reducing tariffs, saying, “The United States and China
have reached an understanding that we hope will contribute to a
rapid conclusion of the broader negotiations in Geneva.”
Talks with China over expanding the 1997 accord on
information technology broke down last year over the scope of
the products covered by the agreement. But after intensive
negotiations leading up to Mr. Obama’s visit, Mr. Froman said,
the Americans and the Chinese agreed Monday evening to
eliminate more than 200 categories of tariffs.
While the United States still exports many high-technology
goods, China is the world’s dominant exporter of electronics
and has much to gain from an elimination of tariffs. Taiwan,
South Korea and Japan increasingly find themselves supplying
China’s huge electronics industry, deepening their dependence
on decisions made in Beijing.
The administration estimated that expanding the Information
Technology Agreement would create up to 60,000 jobs in the
United States by eliminating tariffs on goods that generate $1
trillion in sales a year. About $100 billion of those products are

6. American-made. The administration faces a longer path on the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, including whether Mr. Obama will
obtain fast-track trade authority from Congress. That could
make it easier for the United States to extract concessions from
other countries, since they would have more confidence that the
treaty would be ratified by Congress.
While Mr. Froman conceded that sticking points remained, he
said, “It’s become clearer and clearer what the landing zones
are.” He said that Mr. Obama would seek fast-track authority,
but that the best way for him to win congressional passage of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be to negotiate the best
deal.
Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley contributed reporting from
Hong Kong, and Coral Davenport from Washington.
4
After U.S.-China climate deal, focus on India to follow suit
(Reuters) - After this week's carbon deal between the United
States and China, No. 3 emitter India faces growing pressure to
devise a clear strategy and step out of China's shadow during
pivotal global climate talks.
India has given no sign what kind of commitment it will make
to address climate change in a global agreement. Officials
previously stressed that India would likely opt to slow
emissions growth rather than set a peak year on the grounds it is
entitled to economic growth.
That position might no longer be tenable after China - often
India's ally in resisting specific pledges at talks to reach a
global accord - said this week its carbon emissions would peak
by no later than 2030.
President Barack Obama deepened U.S. cuts to 26 percent to 28
percent below 2005 levels by 2025, a goal it should be on track
to meet with proposed new rules on power plant emissions.
India's new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has already set
renewable energy targets for the country, including using solar
energy to ensure full energy access by 2019, but analysts and
experts are expecting more definitive commitments.

7. The U.S.-China deal "frees up India to say what it believes is an
equitable stance ... now that China is saying what it plans to
do," said Alden Meyer, director of international policy at the
Union of Concerned Scientists.
While Modi's pledge to boost renewable energy is welcomed by
activists, New Delhi has stressed it will mine more thermal coal
to get power flowing to the third of its 1.2 billion people still
without electricity.
With the U.S.-China agreement widely viewed as a modest,
symbolic measure, India might take the opportunity to step out
of China's shadow during United Nations climate talks next
month in Lima, Peru.
Indian officials declined to comment on the U.S.-China deal.
Privately, they say Modi's new government is finalizing the
position it will take to Lima in December.
Earlier this month, Modi recast the almost defunct Prime
Minister's council on climate change, seeking to reinvigorate
the body ahead of a pivotal year for global talks.
OUT OF CHINA'S SHADOW
BY VALERIE VOLCOVICI AND TOMMY WILKES
WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI Thu Nov 13, 2014 4:24pm EST
5
Indian delegates have long been ardent defenders of the
principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" - the
concept that the burden of emissions reductions and financial
assistance on climate change for poor countries belongs to
developed countries, who have a historical responsibility.
The concept has often hampered global climate negotiations,
especially as some developing countries became emerging
economies.
Jairam Ramesh, India's former environment minister and chief
negotiator, believes it is time to rethink that approach.
"Differentiation is essential but is this distinction made in a
completely different era over two decades back still
meaningful? Simply put, it is not," he wrote in an op-ed on
Thursday.

8. Some experts think India can now play a more prominent role as
a bridge between the United States and China and developing
countries.
“India will be doing a balancing act,” said Krishnan Pallassana,
India director of NGO The Climate Group.
India will likely argue that its per capita emissions are around
1.9 tonnes per person - dwarfed by China with around 7.2
tonnes per person and less than half the 5 tonnes world average.
This gives Delhi plenty of room to argue that its own
commitment should differ from China's as it continues to grow
its economy and justify its continued use of fossil fuels.
Local environmental groups say India's new climate strategy
needs to address its reliance on coal.
"Energy poverty is no longer a justification for coal expansion,"
said Ashish Fernandes of Greenpeace India.
U.S. officials are now turning their attention to India to ensure
it helps secure a final UN climate treaty, which is to be
negotiated in Lima and then sealed in Paris in 2015.
John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science
and Technology Policy, will travel to India next week to meet
officials working on climate change, while former
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner
was in Delhi this week chairing the U.S. India Track II
Dialogue on Climate Change and Energy.
Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Tommy
Wilkes in New Delhi; editing by Jonathan Leff
6
The Soft Path to a Climate Agreement, From Lima to
Paris
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
DECEMBER 5, 2014 4:45 PM
The New York Times
Needless to say, there’s been a big and promising shift in tone
and some substance in global warming diplomacy of late — led

9. by the paired pledges of China and the United States to
intensify efforts to curtail heat-trapping carbon dioxide
emissions. Other countries, including gas-rich Malaysia, have
promised to act on climate.
No one should presume things will be easy in Lima, Peru, where
negotiators are gathering through next week to shape a global
climate agreement that could be finalized in Paris a year from
now. There’s strong — and to a large extent justified —
resistance to new carbon commitments in India, for example,
where hundreds of millions of people lack access to any modern
energy sources, let alone clean ones. And there will be
intensifying demands for billions to flow from industrialized
countries that spent decades building wealth burning fossil fuels
to poor, vulnerable ones. Given continuing economic troubles in
many developed countries, those demands will be hard to meet.
Still, there are plenty of signs that there’s room for a global
accord to emerge, with every faction — from the poorest to the
richest — finding a comfort zone thanks to the 24-year-old
clause in the original climate treaty laying out nations’
“common but differentiated responsibilities” (here’s a great
explainer from McGill’s Center for International Sustainable
Development Law).
As long ago as 1991, there were calls to pursue “soft,” not
internationally binding, steps toward a global climate treaty.
Read these notes from a fascinating 1991 Harvard meeting on
Negotiating a Global Climate Agreement to get the idea. (There
are some excerpts below. I first wrote about that meeting in
2010.)
Talks are progressing now because this shift is in fact
occurring.
John Upton has an informative piece on Climate Central that
lays out the logic of non-binding success and also why some
parties, particularly Europe, still resist:
As negotiators gather in Peru for a critical round of climate
talks, U.S. delegates are straining to explain what they call a
“counterintuitive” reality: For next year’s global climate

10. agreement to be effective, commitments made under it must not
be legally binding.
Such an outcome would disappoint many, including the
European Union’s negotiating team, which says it will be
pushing for binding commitments during the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Lima this
week and next. America’s negotiators are pushing for voluntary
commitments.
7
The success of the next climate agreement, which is due to be
finalized during talks in Paris one year from now, may hinge on
American negotiators winning in this latest spat in a long-
simmering quarrel with their European counterparts.
It’s a pretty good bet that Europe will — excuse the term —
soften, given the momentum built by the year-long process that
produced the American announcement with China and
particularly because failure in the heart of Europe is
unimaginable.
The new emphasis on a soft approach is quite a contrast to the
tone in the run-up to the tumultuous Copenhagen talks in 2009,
when inflated “seal the deal” expectations — partially driven by
the election of President Obama — led to the idea there could
be new international, legally-binding gas limits like those tried
in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol — which has proved a dead-end
document.
Yvo de Boer, who held the chair in the climate talks through
Copenhagen and now runs the Global Green Growth Institute,
made the point this way in an interview with Bloomberg’s The
Grid back in June:
Q: Is it still realistic for climate negotiators to want an
“international, legally binding” treaty? Was it ever realistic if
the U.S. always opposed one?
A: If a country enters into a legally-binding commitment and
they back away from it, what do you do? Arrest the prime
minister? “Nationally legally-binding” is much stronger. I think
we’ve moved beyond Kyoto-style agreements. Hopefully in

11. Paris we will see countries make ambitious pledges to limit or
reduce emissions.
Debates will (and should) continue over how much of what’s
being pledged is simply enshrining energy and pollution trends
(both in the United States and countries like China) that are
already being driven by other factors (cheap shale gas and
growing energy efficiency here, smog concerns in China, etc.).
And much of what is being pledged, despite Yvo de Boer’s hope
for legally-binding actions at the national level, is still much
more like putty than steel, as Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law
School noted (in the context of United States law) on his
Lawfare blog earlier this year.
But momentum matters, as does the rising trust among parties as
they split from a faction- against-faction approach (remember
the Group of 77 plus China bloc?) to finding common threads,
one on one.
The summary of that 1991 meeting on climate agreements,
written by Henry Lee, who’s still at Harvard, have some
relevant sections, including this one:
Perhaps the real problem is not agreeing on a treaty, but
building nations’ confidence in other nations’ capacity and
willingness to cut emissions. We are skeptical about whether
Brazil will do it, and they are skeptical about us. And as
8
in the recent U.S.-Japan decisions over Structural Impediments
to trade, if we both can do it, we will both be better off.
Overcoming this blockage will either take an adjustment of our
notion of sovereignty where implementation is concerned, or a
focus on unilateral action. U.S. unilateral action could set an
example for the world, and help to structure the international
process so as to increase confidence. If the U.S., for example,
significantly increased transportation fuel prices, then this
action would both increase our influence in pushing for good
international deals, and exempt us from charges of obstruction
when we refuse to sign a bad one.
There is a lot of latent cooperativeness, looking for a structure

12. in which to express itself. This is what international legal
measures, soft or hard, should do — give an enabling structure
to this latent willingness to help.
Obama has moved far more on power plants and auto efficiency
than fuel prices (which are headed down of course), which
simply shows that expectations and options evolve over time.
But his administration’s domestic power plant rules and
simultaneous interaction with China reflect how this dynamic
can work.
There’s much more at the Harvard Project on Climate
Agreements, including this new paper: “A Pre-Lima Scorecard
for Evaluating which Countries are Doing Their Fair Share in
Pledged Carbon Cuts.”
Update, Dec. 6, 8:45 a.m. | Professor Lee at Harvard sent this
illuminating note after I’d posted:
The real architects of the soft strategy were Abe Chayes [bio]
and Tom Schelling [Nobelist in Economics] and it is fascinating
that it has taken 23 years for the world to finally catch up.
Although Chayes’s thumbprint is all over the Rio treaty of
1992. Howard Raiffa convened a bi-weekly seminar at the
Business School in which both Tom and Abe participated, and it
was out of these discussions that the soft strategy emerged.
While I firmly believe it to be the only workable strategy that
can result in meaningful progress, skeptics ask –will this
strategy be enough to make a measurable difference in slowing
the build up of greenhouse gas concentrations? Given the
domestic hurdles facing Obama, the inability to raise significant
funds for the Green Climate Fund and China’s long farewell to
its growth in carbon emissions, we may still be another decade
away from seeing this issue turn around. This is not to say that
the Xi-Obama agreement or a successful Paris protocol will not
be significant, but the question is –will it be enough.
I replied this way (email shorthand cleaned up):
The “Will it be enough?” question leads to “What is enough?”
I’ve always liked John Holdren’s notion that there’s a sliding
mix of “mitigation, adaptation and

13. 9
suffering.” No hard lines going forward. And the learn-and-
adjust aspect of humanity’s complex response will keep
tweaking the two knobs as necessary.
It will be far from perfect, or rational. But we’ll keep moving
on. The human way.
Update, Dec. 6, 11:45 a.m. | Robert Stavins, another Harvard
economist focused on climate policy, sent the following
observation:
You mention something that is very important to keep in mind,
but frequently ignored in press and other commentary on the
ongoing international climate negotiations, namely: “No hard
lines going forward.”
There is not some distinct bend in the marginal damage function
or marginal cost function at 450 ppm [a carbon dioxide
concentration of 450 parts per million]. In other words, it’s fair
to say that stabilizing at 350 ppm means less damages, and
stabilizing at 550 ppm means more damages (things get more
complicated when bringing in marginal costs, and searching for
the most dynamically efficient path forward), but there is really
not something magical about 450 ppm.
The 450 ppm target is a political goal (which is important), but
is not linked in some rigorous way with the science and
economics. It has also become fundamentally infeasible, as the
this year’s IPCC AR5 WG3 and SYR reports have illustrated
quite clearly.
Unfortunately, pointing this out has become politically incorrect
and controversial.
I was also remiss in not including a link to his excellent blog
post explaining the significance of the Lima meeting and why
recent steps are important. Here is a snippet:
There will be — indeed, already have been — pronouncements
of failure of the Lima/Paris talks from some green groups,
primarily because the talks will not lead to an immediate
decrease in emissions and will not prevent atmospheric
temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6

14. degrees Fahrenheit), which has become an accepted, but
essentially unachievable political goal. These well-intentioned
advocates mistakenly focus on the short-term change in
emissions among participating countries (for example, the
much-heralded 5.2% cut by the Annex I countries in the Kyoto
Protocol’s first commitment period), when it is the long-term
change in global emissions that matters.
10
India Lowers Expectations For Paris Climate Talks
Jeff McMahon
2/20/2015 @ 9:02AM
Forbes.com
The Paris Climate Conference this December will not produce
an agreement that is “environmentally optimal,” according to
the member of parliament who served as India’s chief negotiator
at the 2009 conference in Copenhagen.
But Paris will serve as a springboard to help the world’s major
economies begin to develop low- carbon economies, Minister
Jairam Ramesh said last month during a side event at the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“All negotiations on climate present trilemmas—not dilemmas,
but trilemmas,” Ramesh said at a panel discussion sponsored by
the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago. “You have to have
something that is politically feasible, something that is
economically desirable, and something that is environmentally
optimum.
“And in Paris, what you’re going to get is an outcome that is
not environmentally optimum, but that is politically and
economically acceptable.”
Ramesh’s remarks (video) came on a day that President Obama
was meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New
Delhi, a visit that produced a memorandum of understanding on
clean energy, but not a comprehensive climate agreement like
the one Obama had secured with China in November.
Ramesh suggested the Paris agreement, too, may lack substance.

15. “The commitments that countries are making—unfortunately,
even the word commitment has been diluted. It’s now
contributions, as if countries are doing a favor to humanity. It’s
now, in UN Speak, INDC: Intended, not even pledged, but
Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.”
Ramesh predicts many countries will be making such
contributions in Paris, promising to limit their carbon
emissions, “but what you have to lock, in Paris, is a system that
will ensure compliance with these contributions.”
So the key to the Paris Conference, according to Ramesh, is not
whether countries make contributions, but whether the UN can
muster support for an enforcement mechanism to ensure that
countries comply with the contributions they make.
Developing countries like India may be reluctant to accept any
enforcement mechanism that could have the effect of limiting
economic growth. Were they asked to rank economic growth
against climate objectives, Ramesh said, developing countries
would choose growth.
11
“It’s a no-brainer. They will rank the growth objective higher
than the climate objective. That was clear at Copenhagen,” he
said. “We are in a very serious situation that will make any
solution to the climate problem environmentally suboptimal
because the growth objective will always predominate.”
Nonetheless, Ramesh was not without optimism for Paris.
‘Paris will be a springboard. It will not be the final destination.
It will be a springboard to a low- carbon economy for the major
economies of the world.”
EU wants Paris climate deal to cut carbon emissions 60% by
2050
A major UN climate summit in Paris later this year should call
on countries to make tough carbon cuts to avoid dangerous
global warming, EU document says
By Arthur Neslen Monday 23 February 2015 11:32 EST
The world’s states should commit to a legally binding emissions

16. cut of 60% by 2050, with five- yearly reviews, in a Paris
Protocol to replace the moribund Kyoto agreement at a climate
summit later this year, according to a leaked EU document.
But environmentalists have questioned the integrity of the
headline 60% figure, and a strategy which is seen as overly-
tilted towards the US.
“Major economies, in particular the EU, China and the US,
should show political leadership by joining the Protocol as early
as possible,” says the EU’s ‘Road to Paris 2015’
communication, which the Guardian has seen. “It should enter
into force as soon as countries with a share of 80% of current
global emissions have ratified it.
The EU accounts for nine percent of global emissions, compared
to China’s 24%, and the 12% emitted by the US, according to
the document. “Combined, these targets would cover around
half of global emissions,” it says.
As soon as that number reached 80% - or 40 Gigatones of CO2
equivalent pollution - the new Paris Protocol would kick in.
Environmentalists welcomed the EU’s attempt to keep
emissions cuts within the rubric of a legally binding deal, rather
than seeing it relegated to a protocol annex.
But many noted that the 60% CO2 cut would be measured
against 2010 levels, and was thus the same as the bloc’s
previous aspiration of a 50% cut measured against 1990 levels -
itself a genuflection to a 2007 IPCC report seen as outdated.
12
“The communication is absolutely not in line with the two
degrees target and is a missed opportunity after the latest IPCC
report clearly stated that there is a cumulative carbon budget,”
the Green MEP Bas Eickhout told the Guardian.
“It’s frustrating to see the European Commission insist on the
need to keep global temperature increases below two degrees
celsius, but gloss over the inadequacy of its own action on
climate change,” added Brook Riley, a spokesman for Friends of
the Earth Europe.
The five-yearly review suggestion is viewed by green NGOs as

17. a concession to advance the EU’s ten-year emission-cutting
model onto other countries. The previous Kyoto agreement had
begun with a five-year commitment period, which President
Obama implicitly acknowledged in his offer of CO2 reductions
by 2025 earlier this year.
The EU’s gambit may receive a cool reception in Washington,
where the Obama administration fears a Senate block on any
legal agreement that gives the UN arbiter powers. But according
to Eickhout, a focus on Obama’s difficulties could cement a
perception in the developing world that the EU was acting as
the gatekeeper for a rich world club.
“I find it worrying that the EU is still so trans-Atlantically
obsessed when there is much more movement in China and
among other developing countries which want a deal,” he said.
“If we are able to build an alliance for a final deal with the
African Union, progressive Latin Americans, Least Developed
Countries and the low-lying islands - who are most affected by
climate change – I don’t think the US will really block it.”
The EU’s communication does exempt the poorest countries
from presenting their proposed emissions cuts in the first
quarter of 2015 - unlike G20 nations – and stresses that public
sector climate finance should “continue to play an important
role after 2020.”
But only $10bn of a proposed $100bn a year climate aid fund by
2020 has so far been provided, raising fears that the global
foundations of any deal could be eroded before negotiators have
even arrived in Paris.
“The EU can do these communications but the big debate in
Paris will be on finance where developing countries will ask for
more,” Eickhout said. “We should send the finance ministers to
Paris, not the environment ones. The EU is trying to downplay
the issue but it wont be downplayed by our partners around the
world.”