by Alex Evans | Dec 6, 2013 | Climate and resource scarcity, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, Global Dashboard, Global system
As the Center for Global Development’s Owen Barder and Alice Lepissier noted in their post from the COP19 climate summit in Warsaw last month, there was “lots of cloud and not much silver lining” in evidence there, what with Japan’s announcement of reduced emissions targets and the further diluting of the already dubious ‘pledge and review’ approach.
For me, though, the most depressing thing of all was the deafening silence among governments attending the COP about the issue of global carbon budgets. It’s a deep irony that, just as the IPCC publishes by far its most unequivocal analysis to date about the need to define (and then stay within) a safe global carbon budget, governments are less willing than ever to talk about the issue.
Part of the problem is that governments and other UNFCCC process hacks assume that a carbon budget is just too difficult to talk about. Not just because countries would have to agree on a way to share it out, but also, even more fundamentally, because of a sense that agreeing a carbon budget would depend on a ‘big bang’ moment at which all countries agreed on an allocation mechanism – and good luck with that.
This set Owen, Alice, and I thinking about whether there’s a way for some countries to go ahead with a carbon budget-based approach, but without all governments having to be on board at the outset: a high ambition coalition of the willing, in other words. (more…)
by Alex Evans | Oct 24, 2013 | Climate and resource scarcity
US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern’s speech at Chatham House a couple of days ago is worth a look if you follow climate change. But don’t expect it to cheer you up.
It’s a thoughtful piece that clearly sets out where the US is coming from with regard to a new international agreement. But here’s the key part – which comes right after he acknowledges developing countries’ concerns about retaining space to develop as “entirely legitimate”:
The nationally determined structure of commitments we have already discussed should satisfy this pragmatic purpose, since countries would make their own decisions about what kind of mitigation commitments were appropriate given their own circumstances and capabilities.
Sigh – here we are once again with the same old pledge-and-review crap of countries doing whatever they figure they can manage, and then hoping it will somehow magically add up to the right global outcome. As though the atmosphere will award ‘marks for effort’.
And if you’re wondering where this kind of approach leads us, well, this year’s IEA World Energy Outlook – published next month but extract available here – estimates that the net effect of commitments under the Copenhagen Accord will be 3.6-5.3 degrees Celsius of long term warming, most of it before the end of this century.
Oh, and despite the comprehensive nature of Stern’s speech, there’s one thing he conspicuously didn’t mention – the global target of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Go figure.
Someone explain to me again how the Obama Administration’s global climate policy is different from that of the Bush Administration?
