It’s still over eight months before the next climate summit – COP21 – will be held in Paris. These are annual events, but some are more significant than others; in this case, negotiators have deemed it time for a further major push, and the organisers have put on record their commitment to coming up with a binding international agreement committing all nations to take action.
In the months leading up to each of these events, it is normal for there to be a spate of news stories focusing attention on the need for action, to heighten awareness and raise expectations. Given that the Paris conference is arguably the most important since the much-hyped Copenhagen event in 2009, we can expect a fairly steady flow of headlines from now on, building to a veritable crescendo in late autumn.
The Copenhagen conference turned out to be a fiasco; not only was there no binding agreement, but many delegates could not even get into the venue. Since then, media attention has waned. This year, the organisers are determined to maximise the chances of success. Another failure to agree would surely set the current process on the path of terminal decline.
What is increasingly seen as a key factor is the willingness of major economies to make their pledges on emissions reduction ahead of the summit, potentially giving negotiators in Paris a much easier run. So, we see recently that US makes climate pledge to UN. The offer (made on Twitter under the tag #ActOnClimate) is for a 26-28% reduction in emissions by 2025 (against a 2005 baseline). Although difficult to make a direct comparison because of a different baseline (1990), the EU’s offer of a 40% reduction by 2030 is broadly similar.
China, the world’s biggest emitter and still a fast-growing economy, has promised to reach peak emissions ‘as soon as possible’, which has been hailed as a breakthrough but in practice means very little. The hoped-for deadline for pledges was the end of March, met by only 33 out of 195 countries.
The list included Mexico, the first developing country to sign up, but not Canada, which has back-tracked on its previous enthusiasm for climate change policy in recent years. And, despite the rhetoric about an early peak to emissions, there has been no commitment from China. Compromising continued growth is not an option, so we are likely to see some form of words which negotiators can hail as progress but which will mean little in practice. Nevertheless, they are expected to join Australia and Japan in submitting their plans in June. The positive spin being put on this is covered in Climate pledges: Deadline sees slow but promising start.
An even more positive spin is put on the whole process in a report from the New Climate Institute (Limiting climate change could have huge economic benefits, study finds). The analysis suggests that the EU’s current commitment could produce 70,000 full-time jobs, cut €33bn in fuel imports and save 6,000 pollution-related deaths. But cutting emissions more steeply would, according to the authors, save 42,000 lives, produce 420,000 jobs and cut fuel imports by $173bn in Europe alone. Which begs the question: why aren’t governments rushing down this path already? Looking at climate change policy through such rose-tinted glasses will achieve very little other than perhaps rallying the troops.
The other thing we will undoubtedly see more of is reporting of the negative environmental impact of climate change. Recently, for example, we see that Antarctic ice shelf thinning speeds up. This, according to the story, is a trend which has started since 2003, with global warming being the implicit cause. In fact, this says little about the real causes, likely to be variations in ocean currents and winds. These could in turn be due to perturbations in the climate but, since we know that climate is not static, tells us nothing more about the ultimate causes. But expect plenty more of this over the next eight months, with few if any reports contradicting the bad news agenda.
The purported solution which will drive emissions down is renewable energy, so the continued growth in generating capacity is also being pushed as a good news story (UN: New renewables broke through 100GW barrier in 2014). What we don’t hear of are the additional costs and vulnerabilities this puts on energy networks, the diminishing returns in terms of emissions reduction as wind and solar energy capacity grows, or the very small contribution they will make to overall energy use for the foreseeable future.
Whatever agreement may be reached in December, fulfilling targets will be much more difficult than setting them, without some technological breakthroughs. Otherwise, without some sort of climate dictatorship, the early peaking and then steep reduction in emissions deemed to be necessary to avoid a supposedly damaging increase in average temperatures seems impossible to achieve.
Would it not be better, then, to come to terms with this reality, take appropriate measures to adapt to changes which may occur, and focus efforts on developing new and economic energy generation and storage systems? In the meantime, the least-regrets option is a large investment in new nuclear power stations, of which there is currently little sign.
Behind all this seems to be a mind-set of idealism and unwillingness to face reality. Perhaps a good example of this is the list of Prospect World thinkers 2015. This is dominated by left-wing politics and critics of current governance systems, some of whom might very well welcome a climate dictatorship. Top of the list is Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty first Century, followed by the new Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, anti-globalisation campaigner Naomi Klein and …Russell Brand, the comedian who is becoming unaccountably highly regarded in some quarters for his incoherent ranting against the current political system.
Perhaps this is simply a reflection of who reads Prospect, but if so, it could also be seen as a reasonable summary of the views of much of today’s intelligentsia. This suggests an unwillingness to engage with some of life’s realities and work to make present systems better, but instead a wish to tear things down and build a new Utopia from scratch. And Russell Brand a leading thinker? Really? And with that thought, I wish you a Happy Easter.
Martin Livermore
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
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