Economist: Climate change talks - Wanted: fresh air

Economist:

WHEN argument fails, try metaphor. Shyam Saran, who heads India’s international negotiating team on climate change, says that greenhouse gases are taking up “carbon space” in the atmosphere. Past emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases from rich countries have taken up much of that space. Now the poor countries are standing up for their right to a little bit of that space too.

Put in those terms, it seems a matter of plain justice. Mr Saran is merely defending India’s right to industrialise. But as a negotiating position, it is one of the reasons why the talks on climate change at the G8 meeting in Italy this week have proved so fractious. Mr Saran says that the only limit India will accept on greenhouse-gas emissions is the same per-person amount enjoyed by citizens of developed countries. From the planet’s point of view that would mean a huge, and possibly catastrophic, increase in overall emissions.

India’s tough approach is supported by other developing countries. China, now the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, is particularly annoyed about a provision in America’s new cap-and-trade legislation on carbon emissions that would let America impose tariffs on goods from countries that do nothing to control emissions. The bill’s drafters reckon that China and similarly energy-thirsty countries are in effect subsidising their exports by allowing their firms to dodge costly environmental standards. But the Chinese say the measure could lead to a trade war.

Brazil takes a similar position. The cutting down of trees in the Amazon alone releases 700m tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air annually, fully half of the country’s total emissions. Brazil says it wants to curb deforestation, but it is reluctant to let outsiders’ rules tie its hands on the management of its sovereign territory.

The rich countries think they have already done a lot to meet the poor world halfway. At the G8 meeting in L’Aquila they proposed a “vision” in which the industrialised countries would by mid-century cut their emissions by 80% (against which base year is unclear), as part of a global effort to reduce emissions by half. The developing countries could burn more carbon as they got richer, but far less than the rich countries did in the 20th century. If the sums are correct, this would cap the rise in average global temperatures at 2°C (though that may still cause a lot of harm). If the poor countries do nothing, the rich countries argue, their own expensive efforts will be in vain. But with no interim targets, by mid-week the “vision” was fading from the draft deal at the summit.

This failure threatens to unravel a flimsy diplomatic consensus that dates back to the 1997 Kyoto protocol. Signed by most rich countries, this spoke of “common but differentiated” responsibilities for cutting emissions. This was diplomatic language that required nothing binding of developing countries and was the main reason why America never signed up for Kyoto. Barack Obama’s green-minded administration has changed that. So the spotlight is now on the poor countries. Their past position, of denouncing the previous American administration for inaction and hypocrisy, was enjoyable while it lasted but looks flimsy now. Instead they are being pressed to explain what if anything they are willing to do to save the planet.

The rich-world coalition is getting rickety too. America’s new seriousness turns unwelcome attention on countries such as Canada, Japan and Australia. They are seen as having fallen behind by the Europeans, the leaders (relatively speaking) in clean green growth

A dose of Mr Obama’s eloquence may bring a breakthrough by the end of the week. But the departure of the Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, to deal with unrest at home, seemed set to jinx the meeting’s chances. If the L’Aquila summit fails, the deadlock will threaten the climate summit to be held in Copenhagen in December. Governments’ efforts to deal with what many voters see as the world’s biggest problem will look pretty feeble.

Fresh thinking, instead of stale arguments, has rarely been so badly needed. A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week offered a contribution, based on the idea that it is rich people, rather than rich countries, who need to change the most. The authors suggest setting a cap on total emissions, and then converting that cap into a global per-person limit. This would be low enough that if everyone stuck to it, the worldwide target would be met.

Each country would then have the task of reducing its national consumption according to its number of “high emitters”—people with an extravagant output of carbon. Such individuals are scarce in India, more common in China, and common in America. If the goal were to cap emissions at 30 billion tonnes in 2030, say, that would mean squeezing the behaviour of some 1.1 billion “high emitters” worldwide. So the high-living, carbon-guzzling rich minority in India and China would not be able to hide behind their poor and carbon-thrifty compatriots.

The paper suggests that the personal emissions target would be set at around 10.8 tonnes of CO2 per year. China would have 300m emitters over this level by 2030, meaning that the country’s 4 billion tonnes of carbon emissions in 2003 should rise to no more than 8.5 billion in 2030, as opposed to a predicted 11.4 billion if China does nothing. The cuts required in Brazil and India would be far smaller, as they have fewer rich people. America’s cuts would have to be greater than those in the administration’s cap-and-trade bill.

It sounds a rather elegant idea—if implausibly complex to carry out. But as a thought experiment, it shows how even Mr Saran’s definition of “fair” falls short of the mark.

Dr. James Hansen: G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change

Dr. James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote this editorial in the Huffington Post:

It didn't take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama's agenda. As the president was arriving in Italy for his first Group of Eight summit, the New York Times was reporting that efforts to close ranks on global warming between the G-8 and the emerging economies had already tanked:

The world's major industrial nations and emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on significant cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, unraveling an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.
Of course, emission targets in 2050 have limited practical meaning -- present leaders will be dead or doddering by then -- so these differences may be patched up. The important point is that other nations are unlikely to make real concessions on emissions if the United States is not addressing the climate matter seriously.

With a workable climate bill in his pocket, President Obama might have been able to begin building that global consensus in Italy. Instead, it looks as if the delegates from other nations may have done what 219 U.S. House members who voted up Waxman-Markey last month did not: critically read the 1,400-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 and deduce that it's no more fit to rescue our climate than a V-2 rocket was to land a man on the moon.

I share that conclusion, and have explained why to members of Congress before and will again at a Capitol Hill briefing on July 13. Science has exposed the climate threat and revealed this inconvenient truth: If we burn even half of Earth's remaining fossil fuels we will destroy the planet as humanity knows it. The added emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will set our Earth irreversibly onto a course toward an ice-free state, a course that will initiate a chain reaction of irreversible and catastrophic climate changes.

The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere now stands at 387 parts per million, the highest level in 600,000 years and more than 100 ppm higher than the amount at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Burning just the oil and gas sitting in known fields will drive atmospheric CO2 well over 400 ppm and ignite a devil's cauldron of melted icecaps, bubbling permafrost, and combustible forests from which there will be no turning back. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide, coal, we have a chance to bring CO2 back to 350 ppm and still lower through agricultural and forestry practices that increase carbon storage in trees and soil.

The essential step, then, is to phase out coal emissions over the next two decades. And to declare off limits artificial high-carbon fuels such as tar sands and shale while moving to phase out dependence on conventional petroleum as well.

This requires nothing less than an energy revolution based on efficiency and carbon-free energy sources. Alas, we won't get there with the Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests.

For all its "green" aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like "cap-and-trade" scheme. Here are a few of the bill's egregious flaws:

It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA's ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants.
-It sets meager targets -- 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year's level -- and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious "offsets," by which other nations are paid to preserve forests - while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand.
-Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, "has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives."
-It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, "businesses and households won't be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense," thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short.
-There is an alternative, of course, and that is a carbon fee, applied at the source (mine or port of entry) that rises continually. I prefer the "fee-and-dividend" version of this approach in which all revenues are returned to the public on an equal, per capita basis, so those with below-average carbon footprints come out ahead.

A carbon fee-and-dividend would be an economic stimulus and boon for the public. By the time the fee reached the equivalent of $1/gallon of gasoline ($115/ton of CO2) the rebate in the United States would be $2000-3000 per adult or $6000-9000 for a family with two children.

Fee-and-dividend would work hand-in-glove with new building, appliance, and vehicle efficiency standards. A rising carbon fee is the best enforcement mechanism for building standards, and it provides an incentive to move to ever higher energy efficiencies and carbon-free energy sources. As engineering and cultural tipping points are reached, the phase-over to post-fossil energy sources will accelerate. Tar sands and shale would be dead and there would be no need to drill Earth's pristine extremes for the last drops of oil.

Some leaders of big environmental organizations have said I'm naïve to posit an alternative to cap-and-trade, and have suggested I stick to climate modeling. Let's pass a bill, any bill, now and improve it later, they say. The real naïveté is their belief that they, and not the fossil-fuel interests, are driving the legislative process.

The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It's less than worthless, because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation.

Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died this week, suffered for 40 years -- as did our country -- from his failure to turn back from a failed policy. As grave as the blunders of the Vietnam War were, the consequences of a failed climate policy will be more severe by orders of magnitude.

With the Senate debate over climate now beginning, there is still time to turn back from cap-and-trade and toward fee-and-dividend. We need to start now. Without political leadership creating a truly viable policy like a carbon fee, not only won't we get meaningful climate legislation through the Senate, we won't be able to create the concerted approach we need globally to prevent catastrophic climate change.