McKinsey & Co Report Surfaces @ COP15

I grabbed this from Dean Ottinger's Day 8 COP15 blog entry, which hasn't been published on the Pace website yet:

Re emission reduction commitments there is general agreement that the US weak commitment of just 3 percent is a drag on the whole process. A number of countries won't up their ante unless we do since it would put them at a competitive disadvantage. Europe is holding back on a larger commitment to put pressure on the US. China is thought to be holding back on reporting and verification as leverage to get the US to do more.

However, a McKinsey & Company report issued today and previewed at one of the UNF briefings indicates that the US legislation goes further than the cap and trade commitments it states in that the cap does not take into account the strong efficiency and renewable energy commitments elsewhere in the agreement that would lower emissions. McKinsey postulated that the legislative cap was kept low deliberately in order to ease passage in the Senate. I will send a reference to the McKinsey Report when it is published.

Also indicated that the conference was far too focused on the costs of remediation and the allocation of those costs, ignoring the considerable benefits of transformation from fossil fuels to efficiency and renewables -- to say nothing of the far greater costs of not acting. The report will contain estimates of these benefits.