By Cameron Neil
The long overdue paradigm shift on global warming now has
governments, political parties, business, multi-lateral institutions
and think tanks of all kinds scrambling to develop policy, set
targets, second guess voter intentions, `balance economics with
saving the environment´, `climate proof´ investments, and the rest.
"It´s about time" is what many of us are saying after decades where
serious action has not been forthcoming.
However, now we have `movement´ and momentum is behind addressing the
global warming challenge, new questions and debates arise. One of the
most important is, "what is an effective carbon emission target that
is likely to, with a high degree of certainty, enable us to avoid
catastrophic global warming".
One of my colleagues, Philip Sutton (President of the Sustainable
Living Foundation) puts it like this: "... having a target that has
very poor odds of protecting the planet even if it is fully achieved
is like deliberately flying with your eyes open - into a brick wall."
The mostly common touted target is a 60% cut by 2050. Schwarzenneger
and the Californians have set 80% by 2050 and the pressure is on for
the US to adopt that nationally. The UK is currently looking at the
60% target. Al Gore is pushing for 90% reductions by 2050 with a
total carbon freeze on any rise in emissions now. The City of
Melbourne in Australia and an increasing number of local government
bodies and organisations have the much tougher target of 0% by 2020.
[ See here for the City of Melbourne Zero Net Emissions by 2020
Strategy,
www.iclei.org/index.php?id=1179; Central Victorian
Greenhouse Alliance Striving for net zero emissions by 2020;
www.cvga.org.au/main/ ]
To quote Philip again "Let's first ask ourselves whether the target
of 60% reduction by 2050 is a good one? Already we are arguably in a
period of dangerous climate change - with the Arctic ice cap
disappearing rapidly. Even if we put not one further molecule of CO2
or methane into the air it is possible that the additional heating
coming from the current greenhouse gases and the positive feedbacks
already set in train would be enough to eliminate the Arctic icecap
during summer (when its reflective power is most needed to cool the
earth) leaving the icecap as a thin winter-only phenomenon. And
judging by the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the
commencement of frequent large ice-quakes, as the massive ice sheet
moves and cracks, could lead to major sea level change.
The recent Stern Review done for the British Government spent a lot
of time explaining why it would be catastrophic to let the
temperature get above 2ºC (compared to pre-industrial) and then had
to point out the British Government's target of, wait for it, 60% by
2050 would have a chance of between 63% and 99% of causing a
temperature rise that exceeded 2ºC."
In my readings and analysis of the situation, I feel that 0% as
quickly as possible is the only tenable target for avoiding
catastrophic global warming, but even that might not be enough given
the impacts we are already seeing.
I found an article by Tom Athanasiou from TruthOut very insightful
and persuasive on the issue - recommending not only 0% by 2050 by
developed nations, but a global accord that involves China and India,
and massive investment in helping developing nations reduce their
emissions. I have included an excerpt of Tom´s article below and link
to the full article.
I believe the next Kyoto type accord is key. I don't expect we are
going to get it 100% right, but it must address the issues that
matter and not allow nation states to dismiss things as 'not their
problem' or to find excuses for inaction. It´s all connected. Even if
rich countries can buy their way out of some of the harsher impacts
of global warming - they will get done on at least two fronts moving
forward: 1. Increasing carbon emissions from developing countries
will continue to ruin the ecosystems in the developed world and
disrupt their quality of life and cost their economies trillions of
dollars and 2. Climate refugees will flood developed countries as
life becomes untenable in highly populated susceptible developing
nations.
The end game is, for me (at least at this point) getting to better
than 0 emissions in the developed world within 20 years and investing
in a 50% reduction in the developing world.
Book: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
Do you want to get a tangible feel for what the world would be like
as we heat, degree by degree, to the IPCC predicted higher end of 6
degrees - if we let global warming continue? Do you also want to
understand the science behind the degree-by-degree predictions? If
you do Mark Lynas' book is the thing you need.
Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Paperback) by Mark Lynas,
Publisher: Fourth Estate (19 Mar 2007)
You can read about it on the UK Amazon site:
http://tinyurl.com/2knw47.
Is This a Crash Program? Inconvenient Thoughts About Rich-World
Climate Strategy
By Tom Athanasiou
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032607O.shtml
[This is an excerpt from the complete article. See the link to read
it in full]
Monday 26 March 2007
We're now so late in the game that, all else remaining equal, there
simply isn't enough remaining atmospheric space for the South to
develop to anything like the economic level that the rich countries
currently enjoy. Not without blowing the global-emissions budget. Not
without a truly heroic effort (as in "crash program") to break the
link between carbon emissions and economic development.
The problem is that, particularly in the US, we're not talking - at
all - about what's going to have to change. We're barely even talking
about the fact that, even as the South hits the wall, it's going to
be suffering huge impacts. Because (grim irony here) the poorest
people in the world also happen to be the ones most vulnerable to the
coming droughts, the rising waters and all the rest of it. And please
recall that, even as the South hits, and crashes through, the
emissions wall, it's going to be staring across the development gap
at a rich world that, though far more energy-efficient than it is
today, is still, well, rich.
The point of this story is that if we want to be making claims to a
true crash program, we're not going to do it as easily as seems to be
envisioned in even the aggressive new crop of European and American
climate proposals. And I say this while knowing full well that these
proposals already strain the credulity of honest realists.
Still, they're just not enough. Even if successful, they wouldn't
prevent developing world emissions from taking us deep into the
danger zone. And they won't support a grand North/South bargain that
can break the international climate-policy impasse and bring "China
and India" to the table. They won't do, not in the long term and not
even in the medium.
When, in particular, are we going to start talking about a global
accord that might actually work, and what it has to mean in terms of
rich-world obligation?
The irony here is that the real inconvenient truth - that the rich
world has responsibilities and obligations that go far beyond those
implied by Miliband's (UK Environment Minister) formula - is not
welcome even in the political movement that Al Gore, more than any
other single individual, has built. And why is that exactly? Because
even such a system at that envisioned by Waxman, Sanders, Boxer, and
of course Gore - one in which US emission allowances drop towards
zero by 2050 - would leave the United States off the hook! And this
is true not just because the US would be free to meet its obligations
with "emissions offsets" bought offshore, but also, and more
fundamentally, because our proper obligations exceed - by far! - the
obligation to merely decarbonize our national economy! Our historical
responsibility, our wealth, and thus our capacity to act, are simply
too high for such an easy road to be the one for us
This obligation, in particular, must be seen for what it really is,
an obligation that rich Americans share with the rich elsewhere, one
in which they (we?) are called to take up the task of decarbonizing
not just our national economies, but the entire global economy. One
in which we admit, as well, that we're obligated to protect all those
who will suffer the impacts that can no longer be avoided, whether
they live in New Orleans or on the Bangladeshi floodplain.
It's a tough situation, far tougher than if we'd acted thirty years
ago, or even twenty. It would be interesting to run the numbers and
find out. But it's late now, very late. The skeptics stalled us too
long. We now need a true crash program, one that will not be
economically "optimal" and will therefore, inevitably, be denounced
as "draconian." One that will measure the necessary action and its
cost, in terms of a global burden that, come what may, can only be
shared in a manner that is explicitly, comprehensibly fair.
I won't go so far as to say that, to stabilize the climate, we're
going to have to contrive a global new deal. But I will say that,
soon, there's going to have to be a global accord, and that this
accord will have to be consistent with a global new deal, one in
which not only the international climate regime, but the
international trade regime, the international property-rights regime,
the international governance regime and a whole lot of other
international regimes are bent, if not broken, to accommodate the
realities of the climate challenge. And I will say that today's
defining silence about this overarching challenge is inconsistent
with any true crash program.
The bottom line, in any case, is simple enough. The rich have
obligations to the poor, and unless these obligations are put
explicitly onto the table, unless they are explained, in both
political and moral terms - to the American people as well as to the
Europeans and the people of the South - the global political divide
is not going to be crossed, not in time.
