by David Steven | Jul 8, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia, North America
Like Alex, I spoke at the United Nations University symposium on climate change and innovation on Friday – and one notable theme was the ferocious kicking that Kyoto received from some of the speakers.
Leading the onslaught were Ted Nordhaus, author of The Death of Environmentalism, and Gwyn Prins, who runs the LSE Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events.
Nordhaus, writing with Michael Shellenberger, has called for Kyoto to be scrapped in the current issue of Democracy. “Kyoto is dead,” they write, “and that’s a good thing. In its place, we need massive global investment in new clean energy technology.”
Gwyn Prins takes a similar line, an argument he set out in a pamphlet written with Steve Rayner, and subsequent op-ed for Nature (which he says received a bigger response than anything the journal has previously published).
On Friday, both attempted to bang a few nails into Kyoto’s coffin. Gwyn, in particular, was adamant that the protocol had long been dead. Only a few diehards – emotionally incapable of accepting they are wrong – had failed to admit its passing:
We have to find a way, diplomatically, for the Europeans to join in [to a new approach to climate control] without losing face. You don’t get progress if you tell people that they must admit they made a mistake. Most of us don’t like to admit that we have made mistakes.
Prins and Nordhaus agree on a great deal. On Kyoto, they argue that:
- Its targets have had no impact on those countries that adopted them – not even slowing the rate of increase in their emissions.
- In Europe, any emissions reductions that have occurred are due to factors that precede the implementation of the Kyoto protocol.
- European emissions are rising faster than American ones (a ‘hard fact’ that embarrasses European politicians who relish looking down on ‘ugly Americans’ as Gwyn put it).
On a future climate regime, they contend that:
- Kyoto’s failure means that the Copenhagen agreement should exclude binding targets.
- Instead, a ‘bottom-up’ approach should be adopted, with investment in technology at its heart. This will reduce emissions more effectively than binding targets.
- Leadership on climate is shifting away from Europe and towards the United States.
I am going to leave future frameworks to another post. In this one – and below the jump – I look at Kyoto’s impact on Europe. There’s a lot of detail in the main post, so here are the key conclusions:
- It’s too early to say whether Kyoto has worked as advertised in Europe – but the evidence suggests that Europe as a whole will meet, or even exceed its targets.
- Later reductions in emissions seem likely to be due to policy responses to Kyoto. Governments are reacting to the pressure that a binding target applies.
- It’s likely that Europe would be emitting more if Kyoto had never been ratified – and it’s a real stretch to argue that the US is doing better than the EU on emissions.
(more…)
by Daniel Korski | Jun 12, 2008 | Conflict and security
Reading Alex’s argument about the hollowing-out of governmental authority, I am reminded of Richard Norton’s term a “feral city”, something he defines as a metropolis with over a million people in a state whose government has lost the ability to maintain the rule of law within the city’s boundaries yet remains a functioning actor in the greater international system.
In a feral city social services are all but nonexistent, and the vast majority of the city’s occupants have no access to even the most basic health or security assistance. There is no social safety net. Human security is for the most part a matter of individual initiative.
Yet a feral city does not descend into complete, random chaos. Some elements, be they criminals, armed resistance groups, clans, tribes, or neighborhood associations, exert various degrees of control over portions of the city. Intercity, city-state, and even international commercial transactions occur, but corruption, avarice, and violence are their hallmarks.
Read more here in the Naval War College Review.
Crucial to the term, I think, is the assumption that “ferality” can visit any city, even if for only for a few hours. Look at Copenhagen, a model of tranquility, wrecked by riots in 2006 and 2007.
by Daniel Korski | Jun 6, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
“It’s deja vu all over again”, as the famous U.S baseball player Yogi Berra said. The latest polls show Irish voters’ getting ready to reject the Lisbon Treaty, much like they rejected the Nice Treaty seven years ago. Even though the campaign is not over, it is probably not too soon to speculate about the consequences of a “No” vote.
The rejection of the Lisbon Treaty will pose a huge headache for Europe’s leaders, who negotiated the accord after the rejection of the European Constitution by French and Dutch voters.
Even though things would perhaps not be as dire as they were in 2001 – when the Nice Treaty was seen as necessary for the Union’s expansion – a rejection of the Treaty would hobble the Union. The always sensible Andrew Duff writes why here.
Besides the effects on the Irish government – which thought it would be rejection-proof without Bertie Ehaern as Prime Minister – a rejection will lead to an extended period of navel-gazing. The French EU Presidency would be focused on the issue entirely, as would that of the Czech Republic. Real business would be pushed to one side.
Three options are possible. First, another referendum in Ireland, probably within the next 18 months. The search would be on for “concessions” to be offered Dublin much like the Danish op-outs offered to Copenhagen when the Danes rejected the Amsterdam Treaty. A key issue might be ESDP, which is sensitive in neutral Ireland. But given the two Irish votes on the Nice Treaty, another twirl of the referendum merry-go-round might be too much.
The second option might be for all the other countries to ignore Ireland’s decision and to plough on, letting Dublin know that it can either jump on board or jump off.
On this argument, four million should not be able to hold back the rest of Europe. But this nuclear option would be very risky and unpopular in many countries. The third option would be a long period of “reflection” with EU leaders basically pushing the issue off until at least the Swedish EU Presidency in 2010.
Either way, a rejection can hardly come at a worse time. Britain’s Gordon Brown is paralysed after the Crewe by-election and is unlikely to welcome a lengthy debate about Europe’s machinery. Any concession to Dublin would be an embarrassment for his government, which claimed that the Lisbon Treaty had to be accepted in its entirety.
President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel did the most to rejuvenate the Constitution…woops I mean Treaty. But their relationship has deteriorated markedly over the last year. With the SPD at the lowest point in the polls ever, this could be a tough issue for the German power-sharing government while Sarko needs thi sissues as much as he needs a third leg. Finally, the arrival of Silvio Berlusconi on the scene will not make matters easier.
One way out, as my colleague Jose Igancio Torreblanca says, could for the Lisbon Treaty to be applied to those EU states who voted ratified the Treaty, whenever 2/3 of Member States did so. In this way, the “No” votes would only affect those who voted to reject the Treaty, who should then opt-out totally or selectively, but would let the others move forward. But what about the change to the voting procedures. Would Ireland not be able to vote on those matters?
Bottom-line, if the Irish vote “No” it won’t be just a set-back, but a major problem for the EU.
by Alex Evans | Jun 3, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development
The FT’s Gideon Rachman has a terrific column today mulling over the question that this week’s UN food summit in Rome is likely to sweep politely beneath the carpet: the question of fair shares to scarce global commodities like energy, food and ‘airspace’ for our emissions.
It is all very awkward. China and India are getting richer. And it appears their new middle classes want all the things we want: cars, washing machines, even meat. Here in the west, we have to restrain ourselves from saying: “Stop. You can’t live like us. The planet can’t stand it. And our wallets can’t stand it. Have you seen the price of petrol?”
Global equity is the awkward issue lying behind the world food crisis. In the long run, it will also prove fundamental to discussions on energy and global warming.
Gideon’s clearly right that asking China, India and other emerging economies to stay poor is a total non-starter (politically as well as morally) – but on the other hand (as his article also makes clear), the problem is that a burgeoning global middle class also risks leaving the world’s poor in an untenable position, now that supplies of energy, food, water, land and ‘airspace’ for our emissions are all getting scarce. Moises Naim asked in a recent LA Times editorial whether the world could afford a middle class – he might have asked whether the poor can afford one, too.
On climate change, at least, we’ve known for a while where the debate needs to go. Given that stabilising the climate will necessarily entail sharing out a safe global ‘emissions budget’, we can’t duck the question of how to share such a budget out – and, by extension, how to satisfy the different equity claims of both emerging economies and least developed countries. How to do that? In a nutshell, through enshrining the principle of fair shares to the global common resource of the atmosphere through a process of convergence to equal per capita emission rights by some agreed date (2030, 2050, the day after tomorrow – whatever countries can hammer out). More and more people in the climate debate are now accepting that proposition (Nick Stern being a notable recent convert), and discussion of it ought to figure heavily on the road to next year’s Copenhagen summit.
With food, though, it’s very much harder to see how the principle of fair shares can be operationalised. At this week’s UN food summmit, the demand side effects of changing diet patterns aren’t even being talked about seriously, even though most analysts agree they’re the most important driver of rising food prices.
Still, one starting point would be to get some basic analytical tools up on the web. If I want to calculate my lifestyle’s carbon footprint, there are any number of websites that will allow me to do just that – and to see whether I’m living within or beyond my ‘fair share’ of the atmosphere. But if I look for a calculator to figure out my diet’s “grain footprint” – the amount of wheat, corn and other cereals needed not just for my daily bread, but (more significantly) the meat, dairy products and processed food in my western diet – I draw a blank. As a result, I’ve no way of telling whether I’m taking food out of someone else’s food bowl, or being a responsible consumer and living within my fair share.
True, grain footprint calculators hardly represent a comprehensive global solution. But if global food supply fails to keep pace with demand growth – forecast by the World Bank to rise by 50% by 2030 – then they’re not a bad place to start the discussion.
by David Steven | May 12, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
John McCain’s out on the campaign trail today promoting his green credentials, but its clear that his climate change proposals would put a McCain administration on collision course with many, maybe most, of its international partners.
Here’s McCain’s headline promise on climate:
By the year 2012, we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission, by 2020, a return to 1990 levels, and so on until we have achieved at least a reduction of sixty percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050.
At first glance, this sounds pretty compatible with the ranges that the Kyoto countries (almost all countries bar the US) agreed to be ‘guided by’ in their side negotiation at Bali. Following the lead of the IPCC, these countries said that:
Global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) need to peak in the next 10-15 years and be reduced to very low levels, well below half of levels in 2000 by the middle of the twenty-first century.
McCain’s 60% by 2050 is ‘well below half’ of course (especially when you note the different baseline). But that fails to take into account how Americans emit at the moment. The US will have to cut much further and faster than McCain realises, if we are going to hit the global target.
Breaking out emissions on a per capita basis shows why:
- According to Nick Stern (pdf), per capita emissions will need to be around 2-2.5 tonnes gigatons CO2e by 2050, based on a population of 9 billion people.
- The US government’s own stats, however, show that its per capita emissions were around 24 tonnes gigatons in 2006 (based on a population of 300 million).
- McCain’s 60% reduction would take them down to just under 6 tonnes gigatons, based on a population that had grown to 420 million people (and obviously higher if population growth is less rapid.
In other words, the US would still be two to three times above the global average in 2050. By mid-century, under McCain’s plan, its per capita emissions would be higher than China’s – at around 5 tonnes gigatons – are today! (more…)
