Mr Lewis said a target to restrict global warming to those two degrees is "probably unrealistic now, because of the politics; not because the technology isn't there, not because with the right policies it's just not possible - it's just that there isn't the political will".
Without the United States signing up, there's unlikely to be a global deal on emissions reduction negotiated at the next climate summit in Durban, South Africa. Without such a pact, there will be no successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
"Frankly the UN process has become, not totally irrelevant, but it's not the forum where a meaningful global deal is going to be brokered that will get you on a two degrees centigrade trajectory," Paris-based Mr Lewis said on a recent visit to Australia.
"That is not the political framework through which this (trajectory) is going to be delivered. I can't tell you there is a ready-made alternative framework in place that will allow a global deal to be delivered because I don't believe that either."
Deutsche Bank's Australian environment, social and governance analyst, Tim Jordan, agrees government emissions reduction pledges for the post-Copenhagen period were ambitious. Still, "even if we assume that they fully deliver on their pledges there is still a several-gigatonne gap between what the scientists are telling us we need to be delivering by 2020, and what the pledges would take us to," Mr Jordan said. Read the full report here.
Source: Paddy Manning, Sydney Morning Herald.
