What will it take for Durban climate change conference to end positively? | Kelly Rigg

COP17 United Nations to send messages. The big question is whether Brazil, India and China, inadvertently support the United States

not rocket science: when you're at the bottom of a deep hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. This simple logic, however, is totally lacking here in the international climate negotiations in Durban.

While many detailed issues are being negotiated - the protection of forests, finance for the transfer of adaptation technology, to name a few - the central question is whether countries will stop digging and take the type of legally binding commitments to avoid climate catastrophe at all.

The U.S. arrived in Durban with a mission to prevent further commitments by 2020. This is the list of commitments that emerged from the discussions in Copenhagen two years ago. But the problem with these promises is that even in the best - in all commitments are met - it only takes us halfway where we must be on the rise in temperature. No penalty for noncompliance, is very optimistic to think that nowhere near this level of reduction.

The ultimate consequences of delaying the increase in our collective level of ambition for 2020 paints a picture of rapidly rising costs and diminishing returns. Ultimately, it is an average warming of 3.5 degrees or worse. Therefore, in the absence of legally binding commitments and a strategy to increase the ambition, you can say goodbye 2C - the maximum temperature rise that scientists believe will help us avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate truth -. And say hello to a new world of fear

The big question is whether Brazil, India and China, inadvertently support the United States. These countries and South Africa, to negotiate as a block. If they go for a delay in launching a process to deal with ambition and a more comprehensive treaty regime, legally binding, it could end up killing the Kyoto Protocol, which is currently the only legally binding treaty that we have. In this scenario, the U.S. wins. Moreover, by the side of EU countries and vulnerable, which could trigger a more ambitious outcome.

• These countries are so frustrated by the inaction of the United States as the rest of us. They publicly demand that the countries of the Kyoto Protocol to adopt a second round of commitments. Press reports confirm that China is willing to make binding commitments at international level since 2020. This is great news, but behind the scenes, these countries are sending mixed signals. China and India have said it is not necessary to begin negotiations for new binding commitments until the next revision of the science mandate ends in 2015. If not even begin to negotiate new commitments until then, will not take effect before 2020. In other words, in line with the position of the United States.
• What this means for Europe, which is under enormous pressure to save Kyoto? They said they are taking new commitments are legally binding in the absence of an industry that sees the United States, China, Japan, Russia and other major emitters of alienation from their own emissions within a reasonable time. You can arrange a face-saving "political statement" which retains some of the basic functions of the Kyoto Protocol, but we can not pretend it will go beyond the usual. As someone here noted with irony, "the sound you hear in the halls is the collapse of the current architecture of the climate."

But there is a scenario where I could still see a positive end of Durban:

1) The European Union follows the example of the positive signals from China and others, and makes a great gesture to engage in a legally binding commitment period under the Protocol Kyoto seconds. They must do today, not at 11.

2) Brazil, India, China, South Africa and other major developing countries accept as a measure meets the demand for developed countries to justify the first step. Therefore, pursuant to a warrant to enter talks on a new treaty covering all issuers.

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