Editorial: Developed world needs to take lead

Organisers of the great climate change conference that begins in Copenhagen next week have chosen some high-flown rhetoric to define their goals. The conference will, they say, prove to be a turning point in the battle to avert a global disaster.

If not quite the battle to save the world, this sounds like something pretty close to it. No wonder, then, that some world leaders have been trying to dampen expectations. For instance, there has been talk of reducing Copenhagen to be merely the first stage of a process rather than the decisive moment in history suggested by the rhetoric.

This sounds very much like accepting defeat before the game has even begun, and all the more disappointing because, to most people, the process has been in train for some time. Copenhagen was supposed to be the culmination of the battle begun in Kyoto, not an impetus for more hot air of the metaphorical kind.

During the conference, negotiators will aim to build on the Kyoto protocols by setting targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 2050. Agreeing on the long-term targets should be the easier task. Four decades is long enough to give discussions a theoretical quality.

But the medium-term targets are of a different order. The year 2020 is closer to the present than 1997, the year the Kyoto protocols were signed, and the suggested targets are much more ambitious: industrial countries should cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 per cent from the levels of 1990.

The timing means that negotiators will be acutely conscious that any agreement will be more than just theoretical, it will have to be followed up with swift, pragmatic action.

The United States' announcement last week that it was prepared to cut 17 per cent of its 2005 emissions by 2020 is a measure of how far negotiators have to go. Although it looks impressive at first glance, the figure is just 3 per cent below the 1990 levels, way short of what would seem acceptable in the context of the Copenhagen proposal.

Organisers of the conference are looking on the bright side and seeing the US offer as just the opening move. They expect it to improve. Despite the glimmer of hope, however, the difficulties facing the delegates should not be underestimated.

As we have seen with domestic politics on both sides of the Tasman in the past few weeks, for all the scientific evidence and the apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding climate change, it is still an issue that has as much power to divide as it has to unite.

In domestic politics, the argument has been over emissions trading schemes, the effects they will have on the economy and, importantly, who will bear the burden.

In global politics there is an equally deep, if not deeper, divide between the developed countries and the developing countries. Again, the fundamental issue is who bears the burden.

More than anything else, this divide has potential to derail the talks and the big industrial nations of Europe and North America need to pay particular heed to the needs of developing nations which have so much to lose from climate change and so little with which to fight it.

If there is to be a global solution to this global problem, developed nations must take the lead. They are the ones who can afford alternative energy to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and they must be prepared to help the others with technology, innovation and finance to do likewise.

In the end, it is pragmatism, not rhetoric, that will save the day.