Last week’s climate change talks in Bonn – part of a series of preparatory meetings leading up to the COP20 summit in Lima in December – by all accounts did not go well. The annual Conference of the Parties meetings are still attended by thousands of delegates from around the world, but no longer provide front-page stories. Even the launch of a massive new Assessment Report from the IPCC does not attract the extensive media coverage and splash headlines which were once the norm.
The international climate change negotiation round has a life of its own and continues to grind on, but the media have, to a large degree, lost interest. This, in turn, is because they judge their readerships also to be no longer interested. Climate change has become part of the background noise rather than the main signal for the majority of people.
So it is with many contentious issues, which dominate the news for a period and then are superseded by something else. GM crops are a good case in point. In the mid to late 90s, newspapers were full of stories about ‘Frankenfoods’ and supposed dangers. Fast forward a decade, and there were fewer stories and much more balanced reporting. Nowadays, you are more likely to read a positive story about some new development than to be reminded of some hypothetical ‘link’ (such a useful, all-encompassing word in the absence of any evidence) with cancer or other disease.
But this hasn’t made the opposition disappear. It’s still there in the form of policy from mainstream environmentalist groups such as Greenpeace and is also the focus of single-issue groups including GM Freeze and Genewatch. For anyone moving in these circles, an anti-GM attitude is the norm and is unlikely to be changed by any scientific, policy or commercial developments.
It seems a long way from the heady days of the lead-up to the 2009 COP15 in Copenhagen, when the pressure to agree a globally binding post-Kyoto deal was at its most intense. As we now know, the Copenhagen summit was a high-profile failure, and the drop-off in media and public interest dates from then.
Not that this has made any difference behind the scenes. Last week’s event in Bonn was a meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP). Listed on the UNFCC website are a further 22 meetings of various committees and subgroups between now and early November, the majority in Bonn but others in Vientiane (Lao), Luanda (Angola) and Bogota (Colombia).
In June, a further large conference will be held in Bonn (sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies on Implementation and Scientific and Technological Advice and a further one of the ADP). The year finishes with the COP20 jamboree in Lima, preceded by two more preparatory meetings in late November. The bureaucracy and effort is almost breath-taking in its scale, with the main beneficiary appearing to be the conference industry in Bonn.
Pressure from activists for action remains strong, but their influence is less pervasive. Currently, the EU is dragging its feet in setting new emissions targets for 2030 and looks set to take a more flexible approach comprising top-level goals without dictating how they should be met. This is a small but significant sign of weakening of resolve, perhaps indicating a recognition of the failure of the current approach.
Meanwhile, in this week’s UK Budget speech, George Osborne put a cap on the carbon price floor, which the government had somewhat unwisely introduced in the expectation of a rising price of carbon under the ailing Emissions Trading System. The Chancellor is freezing the price at just under £20 per tonne which, with the current EU price at less than €7 per tonne, still looks set to disadvantage UK businesses and consumers unnecessarily. In fact, there is a range of subsidies to compensate energy intensive industries, so of course weakening the policy’s impact. The Chancellor giveth, and the Chancellor taketh away…
There remains a perfectly respectable case for cutting back on carbon dioxide emissions as a precaution but the reality is that there is as yet no economic way to do so, since policy dictates extensive use of renewable energy and biofuels. The best ‘no regrets’ policy would be to invest heavily in new nuclear power stations, but this is anathema to many. EU Member State governments therefore continue down the road of subsidising renewables even though many politicians in their heart of hearts must by now be beginning to realise that the policy cannot be effective.
Hence the weakening of resolve, including the highly significant announcement on the carbon price floor in the only country with (nominally) legally binding targets for emissions reduction. This is a cause for despair among those committed to the need for radical action. They have achieved a lot by putting constant pressure on governments, but the whole fabric became vulnerable to unravelling after the failure in Copenhagen, which had so much political capital invested in it.
This presents something of a dilemma for some people. In 2010, the eminent environmentalist James Lovelock gave an interview to the Guardian (James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change) in which he was quoted as saying "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."
No matter that Lovelock has himself gone from being one of the most pessimistic of observers (once being of the view that only a few breeding pairs of humans in the Arctic might survive) to a much more optimistic view (Gaia creator rows back on climate change). That someone with his influence can talk about suspending democracy should be taken very seriously indeed.
There will be those in the climate change movement who consider the threat so great that they would be willing to go along this route, but the precedent of following autocratic leaders who know best is not a good one. People who espouse such ideas have an intrinsically pessimistic view of the human race, but optimism and belief in our ability to adapt and change have stood us in good stead. They will hopefully continue to do so for many years to come.
Martin Livermore
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
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