Copenhagen Summit

Very few people still believe anything worthy of admiration will result from the two week during summit in Copenhagen that started yesterday. It is considered as the last reasonable chance to come up with a decent replacement of the Kyoto-protocol that ends in 2012.

Climate skeptics keep referring to the enormous costs involved in fighting climate change, while it is not at all sure that mankind has any influence on the actual process. ‘Greens’ keep stressing we have only one planet and that the evidence is overwhelming. Neither is completely right, but the Greens show more understanding when it comes to its importance, and the irreversibility of some of possible results. What will the Copenhagen summit bring us, and what should it?

The answers given to these questions are very diverse, so we should perhaps begin with the problem itself  before turning  to politics. A lot of open questions remain, despite many attempts to settle the dispute, enormous budgets and much public attention. Let’s stress at the outset that climate change is not settled beyond reasonable doubt. There are skeptics, pros and cons as there are in any field of scientific enterprise. Not so much about the way in which data is gathered or in which way underlying processes function, but about which conclusions to draw from them. So people who doubt whether mankind has a hand in changing this world’s climate have a fair point. What they miss out on is that this is not a justification or argument that needs to make us refrain from taking action.

This seems contradictory, though it is not. We will perhaps someday know whether the ‘greens’ or the skeptics were right. However, if the green side turned out to be right and no action was undertaken it will mean catastrophe. If the skeptics are right, and we did act, no harm has been done, only some money has been lost. Since the issue remains disputed and one side bids us to act now, we would do best by minimizing harm. You can accept or decline this way of reasoning; to me it is very persuasive, after all we only have one earth.

Taking a step back to the summit we have a good number of politicians who either agree with this or are inclined to take more ferocious steps. In my eyes, the Kyoto protocol was a well intentioned, dismal failure. Only in 2004 was it ratified as legally binding by its own standards, since that was the year Russia decided it could no longer turn a blind eye to nature’s troubles. Not that ratification depended on Russia’s support; it was only because at least 55% of the countries that took care of polluting this world needed to be in on it. It would have been utterly useless to have a protocol with a backing lower than that. A big difference favoring our targets and hopes this time is Obama’s position. He does not want to be seen as a president that neglects milieu. True, his visit will be one of short notice  (he will come to Norway to pick up his Nobel-peace prize, visit Copenhagen for a day or two, after which he’ll travel on), but it’s better than not showing up at all.

Even with a good number of politicians supporting a new climate bill, reaching one will get pretty difficult. From America’s point of view there is still the Senate. Obama will need to convince the rest of the world that they will not pose an obstacle on ratification. This would have been much, much easier if America had passed a cap & trade bill before the summit started. Arguing on urgent tones is more convincing if American policies themselves would have implicitly supported it. They might not be the world’s biggest polluter anymore – China can now claim that dubious title – they still account for a big share of it. Fierce American politicians claim that countries such as India, China and Brazil need to make promises too. Their counterstrikes keep reminding of the fact that Westerners already used the opportunity to damage the earth, and that it is not their but America’s task to take initiative. Strikingly as it may seem, China doesn’t even need to act. Their current targets will probably be met without any need for a change in policy. The USA criticized them for this, saying standards are too low. In fact, they are not. China has already done some work on lowering emissions, the only question that remains is whether this is because image-building is so important to Beijing or that they care about our climate. That however, seems illegitimate and misplaced at this time.

Not all the blame is being awarded to America. Politicians are often good at transferring messages and discussing topics in public. Their ideas are not self-styled and written though. Think-tanks and scientists are vital not just to our education. Any politicians willing to fight climate change will find it impossible to do so if not for science. And it is from that corner that more critique arises. Negotiators are diplomats, their “know-why” is often limited. Very few will be able to tell exactly why climate change occurs. A result of this is that their “know-how” is also lacking expertise backing. If you want to resolve issues as complex as this one, a clear and well-founded insight to both problems and solutions are necessary.

Opponents of a climate bill stress the huge costs involved in creating policies towards a problem we are not sure that exists. It isn’t that bad, though it certainly could be. If negotiators’ willingness to come up with a deal that acts fervently, costs by fighting climate change could end up with being no more than 1% of global economic output, compared to about 5% for recent bank and company bail-outs (figures provided by the Economist.com, article “Stopping Climate Change”, Dec. 3rd). Waste time and act bureaucratically, and costs will be sure to rise dramatically. On a side-note, this will also be a good time for Europe to show that the appointment of Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton were not the result of worthless ambitions. Not that their role is likely to be prominent, but European countries have here an excellent chance to show the world it wants to take the lead other than in economics. Brussels: Stand up and take responsibility.

Enforcing a treaty

To make sure that Kyoto’s mistakes are not repeated Copenhagen will have to result in more than a simple draft or agreement. Clear decisions, sooner rather than later, on ways to punish violations are needed. The whole point will be missed if governments can get away with opt-outs (one opt-out and more will surely follow).

Punishments in the form of financial fines are in place then. Since wealth is unequally distributed, this should be taken into account. A possible way in which this could be done is by tying the heights of fines to a percentage of a country’s GDP. I’m sure there will be many ways in which you can fill in the dots, but it is important to make pollution financially unattractive, since the most important interests that fuel opposition against Copenhagen are financial ones.

On a national scale the way in which this can be achieved is familiar: Cap and trade. Setting a maximum emission for pollutants at government level, and then sell the incentives to companies. This will both stimulate development and research on the long term as well as act on a short term when it comes to climate change, as investing in ‘green’ innovation will become financially more attractive and emitting too much will result in penalties. The same could in principle be achieved on a more global scale by setting a total limit, and then share the emissions-slices between the world’s countries. Some room will probably be spared for compensatory measures, such as planting trees, in order to allow countries to emit more (This process is doubtful in the long term since it does not get rid of CO2, it merely stores it for as long as a tree lives.)

When these two principles are combined on global and national scale, an emission-market will appear and regulate distribution and prices. If prices are too low, this will mean that there is too little stimulation for green-innovation as is currently the case. In Europe price per ton of emitted carbon amount to about 20 to 23 Euros, whereas American proposals don’t get any further than a laughable 13 dollars. To actually make investments in research more sensible a steady increase is needed. Also, the money involved and earned by taxing emissions should in part be used to strengthen the circle. This could for instance be done by providing cheap loans to innovation directed at a better climate. Direct subsidies are a bad idea here. Subsidies create too much bureaucracy, resistance and dependence. Companies’ own money is much more important to them. Tax-cuts could be another one, even if these too are rarely good for transparency. (Maybe, in America’s case, this will work if they get politically strong enough to impose a value added tax, get rid of some other ones and create an efficient system to impose this.)

To come back to compensatory measures: Planting trees is said not to be a solution in the long run. That is different from saying they cannot help us in creating more time. Many trees have quite large life-spans, so they’ll be able to take in a lot of CO2 (storing the C and letting out the oxygen in oversimplified words). Yes, when burned or decomposed they’ll let it go again, so any generation of trees that dies will have neutralized the effect of the one that comes after it. We need only think of how many trees we are currently cutting down, not just in rainforests, to know we need to plant a lot of trees to improve climate. However, it does have positive effects, which could be of great importance. It has already been quite successfully argued that if climate change goes on as we expect it to do, some places will thrive when it comes to agriculture, but on the whole the effect will be negative (if climate change goes on, then agriculture will be hit). With a world population growing, probably up until 2050, slowing down that process will do much good, especially when combined with cap and trade, green investments and innovations towards another green revolution. Planting trees in order to buy more time then, seems not such a foolish plan at all, as long as it is not the corner-stone upon which we build.

Now what?

The first step, in order to get things rolling, needs to come from Western countries. They have already had historic opportunities to gain wealth without eying the interests of Mother Nature. Much will depend on Obama’s persuasiveness: He needs to convince the reset that the Senate will ratify this time. Europe seems less likely to block the road here. But only when these two stake-holders of pollution act decisively, will developing nations such as China, India and Brazil follow in their footsteps. All in all we can say it’s a good thing that policies by themselves should be pragmatic in practice, scientific in nature. Now let’s see how pragmatic our leaders actually are. To sum up the current Copenhagen summit: Our hopes are high, our expectations low.