November 28, 2006
Europe is world’s best hope on climate change, alas
I sometimes ask myself whether, in 20 years’ time, I will look back on everything I am writing at the moment and wonder why I wasted so much time on relative trivialities such as the Iraq war or the future of the Bush administration. Will such issues seem like footnotes in history, compared with the consequences of global warming?
A similar question of priorities has obviously occurred to Tony Blair. In the run-up to the most recent European Union summit, he and Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, sent a joint letter about climate change to the other 23 EU leaders. “We have a window of only 10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points,” they warned.
None of the other European leaders disputed this vision of impending catastrophe. But if you look at the conclusions that came out of the summit, global warming appears like just another issue on the EU leaders’ “to do list”: review innovation policy; reach agreement on EU patent; improve internal decision-making procedures; save planet.
This mismatch between rhetoric and reality may be about to change, however. Climate change is moving sharply up the EU’s agenda.
This is an extract from Gideon Rachman’s regular Tuesday column in the FT - the remainder is available for FT.com subscribers here.
Dear Gideon Rachman,
Thank you for writing such an excellent and realistic article regarding the dubious prospects for the EU to lead substantive cuts in global warming emissions. You are right, for sure.
At present, the global free movement of capital and corporations generally means that no government - nor even the EU - could implement the regulations/taxes necessary to compel business to do what is necessary. For to do so would only make the EU (and its businesses) uncompetitive and that would force them to move elsewhere. That’s why, as you point out, the EU is relatively hamstrung.
Also, we have the problem of free-rider nations such as the USA which, as the main polluters, have no incentive cooperate. And that, in turn constrains nations such as the EU who DO want to do something about global warming to make only inadequate emissions cuts because greater ones would make them uncompetitive with the free-riders (which is why Kyoto Protocol targets are increasingly missed). Combined, these problems leave us with a vicious circle which governments are powerless to get out of.
So what we need, I suggest, are three things:
1. A basis of action upon which no nation, corporation or citizen would lose out unduly to any other. I.e. one that maintains everyone’s relative competitiveness.
2. A policy framework which permits the bitter pill of a climate policy to be “sweetened” by off-setting revenues that could be raised from a complementary global tax-raising policy.
3. A means for civil society to use their votes to make it in the vital electoral interests of policitans and governments to cooperate internationally.
You may be interested to know that there exists an initiative which meets those three criteria. It has already succeeded in driving 18 UK MPs from all the main political parties to sign up to its agenda as well as some MPs in the EU and elsewhere and it’s making further progress all the time. It also has the support of the prime minister of East Timor, Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta. Our latest press release which explains the initiative’s relevance to climate change is attached.
I hope you might be pleasantly surprised to find that Simpol is, perhaps, the only genuine solution to problems like climate change which implicitly accepts the underlying logic and benefit of open, global free markets and which does not entail resorting to protectionism. You can find more at http://www.simpol.org and hope you’ll take a look. I hope it may be useful in future articles you may write on the subject.
Please contact us if you require any more information.
Posted by: John Bunzl | November 29th, 2006 at 11:29 am | Report this commentbest wishes
John Bunzl
Dear Mr Rachman,
Like so many current climate change commentators, your starting point assumes that global warming is definitely man-made and therefore “something must be done about it in order to avoid catastrophe”.It is further assumed that climate change is supported by theory and that the theory and evidence are sufficiently robust for great confidence to be had in the phenomenon.
Posted by: John Small | November 29th, 2006 at 2:09 pm | Report this commentHowever, there are many dissenters from this “consensus” view who simply do not get an adequate hearing in the debate. For example,the so-called “hockey stick” graph, used both in the UN 2001 report and by Stern in his latest tome,has been largely discredited because it conveniently “airbrushes” out a warmer period about 400 years ago and a “mini ice age” some 200 years ago.
The average temperature line over the past 1000 years was certainly not “flat” until about 30 years ago, when it is assumed that global warming caused by man apparently started to kick in. It is also quite plausible to believe that over 1000 years ago the average global temperature was warmer than it is today.
The scientific debate on climate change is certainly NOT over and not all credible climate scientists are agreed.
There is plenty of other scientific evidence that casts conmsiderable doubt on this consensus view and it should not always be the one and only “logical” starting point for commentators like yourself. If more attention was paid to the science, we may well find that we are looking at the wrong problem and therefore reviewing the wrong solutions, at great cost to the global economy.
Dear Mr. Rachman,
We humans are tribal and will NEVER agree on a global action, especially requiring shutdown of all sources of carbon dioxide emissions above 20% of today’s level. Short of this action, according to NASA’s satellite data, at least USA average annual temperature rises 0.8 deg. C per decade. This is double rate versus 10 years ago. Even under fantastic assumption that this rate will not increase, gradual desertification will continue and will reclaim all continents below 45 deg. latitude in the next 50 years. Because of non-linear nature of earth temperature regulation, the breakover will happen in approximately 20-25 years, with no way to reverse the rise to 24 deg. C average earth temperature. Only small archipelagos in Arctic ocean will be left habitable. Except you, me, and very few other people, the rest and espeicially fossil industry people act as Dr. Strangelove.
The bright spot is that there is a solution to replace 80% of emissions from fossil industry - build 12,000 nuclear power plants of the EPR (1.6 GW) capacity to supply double amount of energy in 2050 in synthetic fuels and electricity. To save a half of currently habitable land, the rate must be 300 plants per year, starting today.
The economics of it is quite favorable. Using price umbrella created by oil industry, only approximately 120 billion USD is required, the rest is self-funding from profits. This solution is using market incentive of profit and for this reason alone is imminently doable.
I am looking forward to a bright future on a half of the Earth.
Posted by: Alex Severinsky | November 29th, 2006 at 8:58 pm | Report this comment