Europe’s posture on global climate policy

by | Oct 19, 2007


With Angela Merkel’s advocacy of a per capita based approach to future global climate policy, and now (as David reported earlier this week), the prospect of the European Parliament endorsing the same, Europe’s posture on post-2012 climate commitments is looking more interesting that it has done for months. I’ve just finished a CIC discussion paper on this area, which is published today: here it is.

The paper’s starting position is to wonder why it should be that although the US and EU camps have opposite assumptions about how urgent climate change is, they actually agree on two of the most fundamental issues on post-Kyoto climate policy: neither side is arguing for  a quantified ceiling on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and neither is arguing for developing countries to take on quantified targets.

Why this odd consensus?  The explanation I put forward is that although the EU ultimately believes developing country targets to be essential, it also judges that there is no political space for any discussion of them in the post-2012 commitment period.  Instead, the EU argues for a sub-global approach with targets for developed countries but not developing ones.

But, the paper suggests, this approach rests on a pretty questionable analysis of the likelihood of developed countries taking on tougher targets in the absence of developing country targets – and an over-optimistic sense of how much emissions abatement can be achieved in developing countries through an expanded Clean Development Mechanism.

The problem is – contrary to what EU states appear implicitly to believe – the political context for a discussion of developing country targets will actually become progressively more difficult the longer it is left unaddressed. If developing countries take on shares of an emissions budget within an equitable framework early enough, then they can make money from participating in a global climate regime.  But as the paper argues, this window of opportunity will only stay open for a limited time.

Except that now we have Angela Merkel livening things up – and proposing an approach that could potentially slice through the current Gordian knot.  The paper concludes with a few recommendations on how Europe can capitalise on the momentum that she’s generating, and build up a useful head of steam in advance of the December Bali climate summit and beyond.

Author

  • Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017). He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development. Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.


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