The best news on climate change for months. Maybe. Alex Evans
January 4, 2010 | More on Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Key Posts | 15 comments
And now for the good news on climate change.
First, an excerpt from the New York Times yesterday. We join Bono, a contributing columnist at the Times, as he’s setting out a list of 10 ideas that might make the next 10 years “more interesting, healthy or civil” – ideas which “have little in common with one another except that I am seized by each, and moved by its potential to change our world.” Here’s number 3:
In the recent climate talks in Copenhagen, it was no surprise that developing countries objected to taking their feet off the pedal of their own carbon-paced growth; after all, they played little part in building the congested eight-lane highway of a problem that the world faces now.
One smart suggestion I’ve heard, sort of a riff on cap-and-trade, is that each person has an equal right to pollute and that there might somehow be a way to monetize this. By this accounting, your average Ethiopian can sell her underpolluting ways (people in Ethiopia emit about 0.1 ton of carbon a year) to the average American (about 20 tons a year) and use the proceeds to deal with the effects of climate change (like drought), educate her kids and send them to university. (Trust in capitalism — we’ll find a way.) As a mild green, I like the idea, though it’s controversial in militant, khaki-green quarters. And yes, real economists would prefer to tax carbon at the source, but so far the political will is not there. If it were me, I’d close the deal before the rising nations want it backdated.
Bono just endorsed contraction and convergence – a big deal, for three reasons.
First, it’s clear he gets the key things that you have to get. He gets that the real potential is not in everyone having equal per capita emissions, but in everyone having equal per capita emission entitlements - the difference being, as he says, that with the latter, trading enables low emitters to profit from it while still staying within the overall emissions budget. (Fuller explanation of that point here.)
He also gets, consequently, that we’re talking about a potentially very important new source of finance for development – one that’s different from aid. This is especially important when public finances are about to experience massive cutbacks in a lot of OECD donor countries, with aid budgets probably among the first casualties.
And he gets that the clock is ticking (“If it were me, I’d close the deal before the rising nations want it backdated”). As David and I note in the post-Copenhagen analysis we did for Brookings, the risk of waiting later and later and later to start talking seriously about developing countries’ fair share of the global emissions budget - something we’ve been doing for years, and are still doing now – is that developing countries will find that all or most of the available carbon budget to 2050 will have been used up before they come to the table. Hardly promising conditions for a serious global deal.
Second, Bono’s advocacy is a big deal because it could really jump-start the process of strategic renewal so badly needed among the NGOs campaigning on climate change.
NGOs had an appalling year in the run-up to Copenhagen. Throughout last year, the main NGO coalition, tcktcktck.org, was vague about its headline policy asks (“ambitious, binding, fair” – but no definition of what these words actually meant). Then the green NGOs blundered into the start of Copenhagen by proposing a peak year for global emissions two years later than the IPCC said was needed. And by the end of the summit, they had collapsed back into the usual rhetoric about rich countries bullying poor countries – overlooking, as Mark Lynas stressed in his must-read Guardian piece, the extent to which actually, something different was going on at the summit.
Last year saw development NGOs increasingly trying to push the wider civil society coalitions towards a more effective stance. They didn’t always (or even often) succeed; but behind the scenes, they were doing as much as they could. When that wasn’t enough, to their credit, agencies like Avaaz and Oxfam proved willing to break visibly with green NGOs on key issues – like what the global peak emissions year should be. So far, though, the ONE Campaign - with its very considerable advocacy firepower - has kept a low profile in all this. Its main focus in the climate context has been on additional finance for development to tackle climate change – rather than on emissions trading as a source of additional finance for development.
Bono’s article potentially changes all that, given his passing acquintanceship with ONE. If so, then the significance is not just that it brings another highly effective development NGO into play on the big game. It’s also that it potentially encourages the emerging development / climate coalition to focus on the two biggest questions on the table: what’s the size of a safe global emissions budget, and what’s the fairest way to share it out.
Love him or hate him, Bono’s one of the few people that can take a radical, very far-reaching idea like equal shares to the atmosphere as the foundation for a global deal on climate and just mainstream it – with the UN Secretary-General, with the World Economic Forum, with the Pope, whoever. Which bring me to the third reason why this is a big deal. Not only can Bono and the ONE Campaign pitch this idea to Ban Ki-moon, WEF or Benedict XVI. He can pitch it to the most important group of all right now: G77 leaders.
He can get access to the people who most need to recognise that not only is their solidarity with China on ‘no-targets-for-developing-countries’ harming their long term future by preventing a global climate deal, given that they’re in the front line of climate impacts – it’s also ensuring that they miss out on a potentially huge new flow of finance for development. A simple message that might, just might, get low income countries demanding their fair share of the atmosphere - in doing so, becoming some of the very strongest advocates of an effective global deal. Cross your fingers.
Bono’s piece is interesting and Alex Evan’s crack analysis even more so. Well done.
So all a country would have to do to have a higher percentage of carbon credits would be to raise its birth rate? Or is it just the folks who are alive right now who get the entitlement, and future generations get shafted, as usual? Either way, seems like the unintended consequences could be severe.
to: – Dethe Elza
Some may disagree with your view that people would raise their ‘birth-rates’ to get more credits.
However, some don’t so C&C has a population base-year option.
If you truly feel that is the only problem here, you can join with OPT and campaign as they do for C&C with that: -
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24759560/Climate-Change-09-Optimum-Population-Trust
Sorry to be contrary, but i agree with Mr Elza. Emissions rights should be calculated according to no. of people in country:m2 land. Also, think the retrospective argument is stupid. Real evidence that emissions are damaging the Earth’s atmosphere has been collected relatively recently. Happy new year.
to: – C Ellis
“Emissions rights should be calculated according to no. of people in country:m2 land” Did Dethe Elza say this?
What I read Dethe Elza to say was: – “So all a country would have to do to have a higher percentage of carbon credits would be to raise its birth rate?”
Maybe you want to check with Dethe [I am not sure if Dethe is a boy's name or girl's name - forgive me please] whether what you have said is accurate.
i agree with the idea that emissions shouldn’t be calculated according to no. of people in a country, but according to the area of land a country covers. This avoids countries raising their birth rates and would not necessarily be a bad thing for poorer countries (i don’t think).
C. Ellis, sorry to disagree with you agreeing with me, but I think basing this on land size is way less sensible than by population. It would take a concerted effort to raise the birthrate enough to effect this, I was simply trying to make a point about unintended consequences (and Aubrey Meyer assures us they’re thought of this already, so I could be completely off base). But basing on land size means that small, dense nations (like Palestine) which have low carbon footprints would be penalized, while Canda (where I live), which is a large, sparsely populated nation, but a heavy carbon emitter (goddamn tar sands) would be rewarded, which makes no sense at all.
Hi Dethe,
i dont see that your point and my point are totally exclusive. i simply was developing your point, as is my right as a commenter (?). i agree that the per capita allocation of emissions could have unintended consequences. i think your concern is countries raising their birth rates to get more emissions rights. My concern is similar, if not identical. i don’t believe that countries should be rewarded simply by having a large population. The only way you can measure a large population is by comparing population to a country’s land area. But also, surely you can only allocate emissions rights according to land area, not according to head counts? Or am i missing something?
With respect, dont quite understand argument about Palestine or Canada. If the Palestinians have a low carbon footprint, then i cant see that they would be excessively penalised. Canada has a large area with a relatively low population. Canada may get more emissions rights because of their large land area (using the hypothetical land area allocation system), but it may be that they fairly quickly squander these because of the tar sands etc..
We have one planet, with one atmosphere, one climate, and one species currently hell bent on fouling it up for themselves and most other life forms. 6 billion of them and counting. But its not the population that’s the problem, its the high polluting few that give Earth a problem. Billions of poor people don’t pollute atall, in comparison.
Our own atmosphere has a safe upper limit of CO2, many think this to be around 350ppm. We are at 388ppm now.
So we need to cut back on emissions, and it could be regarded as a bit of an invisible air-fill (a la land-fill) situation. What everyone expects is a fair share of the air.
So Bono, and C&C are surely precisely RIGHT.
As one citizen of this planet, I don’t expect to be told that i have any more or any less right to air-space than anyone else. Not here on in…
And as a parent, I’d expect my children, when they are adult, to have the same air share and pollution rights as anyone else on this planet, no more no less.
No other solution is fair, from the perspective of one global citizen.
But more important, no other solution is practical, or ultimately agreeable – not without force.
Hence for me it’s C&C or bust.
Nice article, Alex and I agree with your points, especially point 2.
I wouldn’t underestimate the power that individuals like Bono have, both in mobilising other high profile names to pitch the same message and to get the same message to the public in ways politicians can only dream of.
Well said Jeremy, I completely agree.
It’s mind-blowing how many amazing people are fully signed up to C&C, and how many have been for years. (eg Archbishop of Canterbury!) The more you look into who is supporting it, who has endorsed it, and who is campaigning for it, the more you find its an utterly irresitible force for good. And the immovable objectors are falling aside. Because you can’t really argue with fair air shares.
There is a Facebook group called ‘C&C is beautiful’ where some high profile backers of C&C can congregate and chat if that is of any interest. Just search for the title and join.
What garbage. Why reward failure and backwardness as if it some desirable state. This is charity, no more or less, and if we are going to give it we better keep control of the purse strings and make sure it is spent properly, otherwise it will just be frittered away like most of the aid given to poor countries with bad governments. Limking it to the untested theory of anthropogenic global warming is a sham.
have tried to do a little more research on C & C but only have limited time. Am simply a lay person trying to get my head round the concept – but then in a democracy a lay person’s understanding is important. Despite a little research, still do not understand how emissions entitlements would be allocated. However, i am presuming that land area:population of country would be taken into account in the C & C scheme? C & C proponents say that it is a simple scheme, but i think it’s quite complicated, and whilst i wouldn’t claim to be the most intelligent person in the world, i don’t think i am the most intellectually challenged one either.
Really, my reason for questioning C & C is quite crude: if it’s the ideal solution, why don’t more countries buy it?
In my researches, I came accross this website: http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/CCSimpol.htm
It seems, from this, that what is required is a system that is:
“i Realistic (relevant to countries with different national circumstances);
ii. Robust (capable of being adjusted in the light of experience), and;
iii. Durable (will not become irrelevant after a few years)
But for any such framework to be effective, it would be necessary for it to achieve a wide global acceptance and to deliver results in terms of significant emissions reductions. The Government is committed to finding a solution to the issue of climate change that meets these criteria.”
Humour me whilst i play Devil’s Advocate, but wouldn’t the implementing of C & C be incredibly complicated? It would require masses of global education, for a start. Secondly, how would individuals sell their entitlements if they live in the middle of the countryside and have no access to the internet?
Thirdly, those of us living in cold countries need heating. It is not our faults. I know that such considerations are thought of in the C & C scheme, but i feel that this implication immediately undermines the concept of per capital emissions rights. Equally, we use more energy at different times in our life cycle. This isn’t reflected in the per capita concept either. There may even be justifiable gender differences in the way we use energy – again the blanket per capita idea does not illustrate this. Moreover, the type of job we do may determine how much energy we need. Thus adjustments to the original per capita idea might again mean the system falls foul of the governments requirement for the system to be realistic, durable and robust.
Also, isn’t mixing aid with carbon entitlements a little moralistic and presumptious? I would conjecture that this built-in political weighting is likely to put certain countries’ backs up.
So, i am very much in favour of reducing emissions, but i just wonder if C & C is the most valid and elegant way of going about it? Forgive me for my considerable ignorance on this matter.
C Ellis – Implementing ‘anything’ to do with UNFCCC, involves complications i.e. so your point is true for ‘any’ proposal.
Perhaps you want to compare achieving the objective of the UNFCCC [safe and stable ghg Concentrations in the atmosphere *] with a wider range of proposals, procedures and ‘process’ [e.g. COPs 1-15] so as then to then take a view of how complicated or simple C&C may or not be.
Many think it is simple and to the point and some think it is too simple . . . . there are those who think its too complicated . . . and then there is ‘real life’ . . .
One of the world’s most active, independent and intelligent ‘climate-contrarians’ [Dick Lindzen] said to me once [at a nice pasta-supper next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 2004] “Aubrey – its obvious if you want * [above] you have to have emissions contraction – if you to have that you have to have convergence – *I don’t just think humanity has the wit to organize that!*” [He may well be right, but its worth a shot . . . ].
Cheers
A
Try here for some C&C background and support [at the back]: – http://www.tangentfilms.com/GCIEAC10nov09.pdf
There clearly is support for C&C, as this letter to Chris Huhne and the signatories to it shows: – http://www.gci.org.uk/politics.html