Coca-Cola Co. Chief Executive Officer Muhtar Kent said multiple international accords, not a single treaty, are needed to fight climate change.
“I don’t think one treaty can work for the world,” Kent, 58, said in an interview in Cancun, Mexico, where delegates from more than 190 countries are gathered for United Nations-led talks on setting rules to limit global warming.
The world’s largest soft-drink maker is among companies in the Mexican resort lobbying envoys on the shape of an eventual accord that may restrict emissions from burning fossil fuels, channel up to $100 billion to poor nations and protect forests.
A year ago in Copenhagen, delegates failed to draft a treaty, leaving in limbo the 1997 Kyoto accord that mandated cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions until the end of 2012. While envoys aim to replace that agreement with new commitments, UN officials say a treaty is unlikely to be drafted this year.
Comments by India’s environment minister and Kent add strength to suggestions from climate envoys that working for a single binding treaty may not be the best way forward for the negotiations set to end Dec. 10.
“An international agreement is not anywhere on the horizon,” Jairam Ramesh said today in New Delhi. “Action has to be domestic. That’s what the last 15 months has shown.”
Rich, poor divide
Since the Copenhagen round of talks concluded with a non- binding agreement, negotiators have been unable to bridge the divide between richer nations bound by the Kyoto treaty and poorer countries led by China and India that reject similar rules for their industrializing economies. Indian and Chinese leaders say their priorities are economic growth and ending poverty.
“We’ve been at it for 18 years on climate change but that’s not unique,” said Duncan Hollis, an associate professor at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia and editor of the “Oxford Guide to Treaties” to be published next year. “Breaking this up into smaller pieces and trying to knock off one piece at a time is certainly worth trying.”
Momentum is building instead for extending national and regional plans to limit greenhouse gases, from domestic carbon markets to renewable-energy standards, in which utilities are forced to include a fixed percentage of clean energy in the mix they sell to consumers.
Indian viewpoint
The UN talks in their second day today in Mexico are moving away from a global treaty, Ramesh said. Meetings instead should focus on “domestic actions,” the minister said, adding that India won’t accept limits on growth set by other nations.
While executives from 400 companies including Tesco Plc and Unilever NV released a statement saying they’d work to end deforestation and use of refrigerants that harm the atmosphere, the Coca-Cola executive went further, delving into the politics of treaty-making.
“There can’t be just one framework,” Kent said, adding that “you can’t judge India’s progress with the same metrics as U.S. progress.”
The UN framework needs to become “more flexible” and allow countries to have different timelines for moving ahead with efforts to curb fossil-fuel emissions, Kent said.
Government incentives
While companies can accomplish much on their own to reduce emissions and protect the environment, only governments can set a price on carbon and provide the incentives needed to spur shifts in energy use, he said.
President Barack Obama failed to win passage in Congress this year of legislation to cap carbon emissions linked to global warming. Prospects for action will grow slimmer next year when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives and expand their minority in the Senate. Dozens of Republican lawmakers elected this month have expressed skepticism about global warming or action to curb it.
