by Alex Evans | Jul 10, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system
Usually when you see phrases like “oil crunch in five years”, you assume that you’re being addressed by a peak-oiler who is about to go on to explain to you the composition of the canned food stash that he’s secured in his attic. So when you realise that you’re actually reading the FT, and the people using the phrase are the International Energy Agency, it’s easy to do a double-take. But there it is, in black and white (well, pink):
In its starkest warning yet on the world’s fuel outlook, the International Energy Agency said “oil looks extremely tight in five years time” and there are “prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade”.
The IEA said that supply was falling faster than expected in mature areas, such as the North Sea or Mexico, while projects in new provinces such as the Russian Far East, faced long delays. Meanwhile consumption is accelerating on strong economic growth in emerging countries.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that supply from non-members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase at an annual pace of 1 per cent, or less than half the rate of the demand rise.
The widening gap between rising consumption and lagging non-Opec supply will force Opec to sharply increase its production in the next five years.
Lawrence Eagles, head of the IEA’s oil market division, told the Financial Times: “If we get to the point were there is insufficient supply, the only way to balance the market will be through higher prices and a drop in demand.
IEA’s gloomy pronouncement comes within a week of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation forecast of food price increases of between 20 and 50 per cent over the next decade, thanks to biofuels, climate change, water scarcity and increased demand (see GlobalDashboard’s one pager on how scarcity trends intersect here).
All of which raises the rather pertinent question: Does anyone, at either national or global level, have a plan to manage all this – or indeed clarity over whose job it is to worry about such a cross-cutting trend?
P.S. If you’re now wondering what you should have stashed in the attic: help is at hand.
by David Steven | Jun 28, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
There was a paradox at the heart of this week’s conference on climate change.
When describing the scale of the problem, speakers gave very strong messages. Temperature changes need to be kept below 2 degrees. This means keeping greenhouse gases below 450ppm (CO2 equivalent) – and even this might be too high. Emissions need to peak in the next few years and fall dramatically by 2050.
But when the time came to talk about how to respond to this challenge, speakers were much more cautious. No-one knows what kind of deal will prove politically possible.
Even governments who favour radical action seem reluctant to go on the record about what needs to be done. There is a marked contrast between their anodyne public messages and what they’re prepared to say behind closed doors.
This has to be wrong.
The Stern Review showed the advantages of doing your thinking out in the open. Instead of commissioning an internal review, the British government used a high profile piece of research to help change the terms of the global debate.
Surely, the same approach should be taken as governments sidle towards negotiating a post-Kyoto climate agreement. (more…)
by David Steven | Jun 27, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
Over the last couple of days, we’ve been blogging from the Chatham House conference – Climate Change: Politics versus Economics.
As the conference made clear, there is growing consensus about what a full-term solution to climate change would look like: concentrations kept below 450ppm or even a shade lower.
This target allows some fairly easy sums to be done. How much can we emit to keep below those limits? When will emissions need to peak? How far will they need to decline from this peak?
IPCC answers for these questions are a peak by 2015, with a decline of as much as 85% by 2050.
Add to that a professed commitment by leaders to get a deal on a post 2012 framework in place by 2009 – and you have a clear and demanding ‘signal from the future’.
That matters. It allows politicians to begin to understand the deal they will be required to make. It helps them build the alliances at home that will give them credibility on the world stage.
It also gives them an idea of the how much climate change is likely to happen – what level of risk they need to prepare for, how much resilience will be needed against future changes.
This is particularly important for developing countries. I firmly expect them to play a much bigger role in the climate change debate over the next year or so.
At the moment, the strongest voices on climate change (Merkel, for example) come from the developed world. More recently, the big emerging economies have become increasingly influential voices.
There is a line that says that that extends the circle far enough – 30 or so emitters make up 90% or so of global emissions. Why bother with countries that emit less than 1% of the world’s total?
The answer is that developing countries are important not because of their emissions, but because of they will bear the brunt of unchecked climate change.
Take people who already experience unforgiving climactic conditions and who have so few reserves that they live their lives on a knife edge. Add extra stress. The likely consequences are obvious…
That’s why I think we’ll soon see the emergence of new voices from the developing world, able to talk with real authority about why the big emitters need to act swiftly to curb their emissions. (more…)
by Alex Evans | Jun 27, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
That was a pretty good conference. But here are five leftfield suggestions for how to make conferences even more fun – and get the speakers to perform. (Most of these ideas – oh, OK, all of them – are David’s; but hey, what’s blogging if not glorified plagiarism?)
- Every discussion panel should have on it someone bringing ‘news from elsewhere’: an intelligent non-expert who can give a reality check from a different sphere. Think about non-party representatives on BBC Question Time and you get the idea.
- Panel discussion structured around “I’m going to take three questions and then go back to the panel” should be banned, in favour of more interesting formats (like this).
- Conference participants should be provided with laptops that allow them to live chat in a dedicated chatroom about the quality of speeches and speakers. For additional amusement, these comments should be projected onto the wall behind the speaker (so that everyone can see them except him/her).
- To avoid the classic conference phenomenon of speakers telling the long-suffering audience stuff that they already know (like the speaker who told us that climate change was a long term problem that would require transformation of energy systems – er, thanks), there should be a briefing paper containing all the obvious stuff. When any speaker says anything in it, they have to do a forfeit (perhaps picked out of a hat).
- To stop speakers from overrunning, there should be a countdown clock on the wall. When speakers run out of their allotted time, easy listening music should be played to drown them out.
by David Steven | Jun 26, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
In his closing key note speech at Chatham House, Malik Amin Aslam Khan, Pakistan’s environment minister, argued that ‘we are fast running out of time for remedial action’ on the ‘indisputable’ threat from climate change.
While the science becomes clearer, the economic warnings unmistakable, the physical reality unambiguous and world opinion strongly in support, the politics on the issue, unfortunately, lags indecisively behind.
All the above influences seem to be strong drivers for shifting political paradigm but they are still not enough to untangle the complex web of global politics caught up in the UN system in unending discussions on the post-Kyoto climate regime.
He welcomed recent agreement of a 2009 deadline for reaching an agreement and the IPCC signal of the need for a $100/ton price of carbon.
But, he wondered, will a future agreement provide developing countries with a fair deal.
“The time may be right to give serious political thought to the principle of ‘equal per capita entitlements’,” he argued. “The basic ethical foundations belying this approach – every human being should be entitled to equal emission rights – has a very strong defining power which is likely to shape long term global principles.”
