[A-List] Why Climate Change Can't Be Stopped

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Environmental advocates have finally managed to put the issue of global
warming at the top of the world's agenda. But the scientific, economic,
and political realities may mean that their efforts are too little, too
late.

by Paul J Saunders and Vaughan Turekian

Foreign Policy (September 2007)


As the world's leaders gather in New York this week to discuss climate
change, you're going to hear a lot of well-intentioned talk about how to
stop global warming. From the United Nations, Bill Clinton, and even the
Bush administration, you'll hear about how certain mechanisms -
cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions, carbon taxes, and
research and development plans for new energy technologies - can fit
into some sort of global emissions reduction agreement to stop climate
change. Many of these ideas will be innovative and necessary; some of
them will be poorly thought out. But one thing binds them together: They
all come much too late.

For understandable reasons, environmental advocates don't like to
concede this point. Eager to force deep cuts in greenhouse gas
emissions, many of them hype the consequences of climate change - in
some cases, well beyond what is supported by the facts - to build
political support. Their expensive policy preferences are attractive if
they are able to convince voters that if they make economic sacrifices
for the environment, they have a reasonable chance of halting, or at
least considerably slowing, climate change. But this case is becoming
harder, if not impossible, to make.

To be sure, scientific studies and news reports make it clear that
climate change is already happening, with greenhouse gas emissions as a
significant driver of this change. Arctic ice has now melted
sufficiently to open up the fabled Northwest Passage, provoking public
jockeying between Russian and Canadian officials over potential oil and
gas deposits. At the same time, the US Department of Interior is
considering placing polar bears on the endangered species list as a
result of global warming. Extreme weather events have become more
common, such as flooding in Africa and forest fires in the western
United States.

New emissions limits in the United States and other major emitters such
as Europe's key economies and Japan may slow the processes driving these
events. But the mounting scientific evidence, coupled along with
economic and political realities, increasingly suggests that humanity's
opportunity to prevent, stop, or reverse the long-term impacts of
climate change has slipped away. In fact, while greenhouse gas intensity
(emissions per unit of gross domestic product) of both developed and
developing economies has decreased significantly over the past decade as
a result of greater efficiency measures, overall greenhouse gas
emissions have nevertheless continued to rise. That's because as
economies grow, they consume more energy and produce more carbon
dioxide. And, obviously, each country wants its own economy to grow.

While some might argue that great reductions can be made in greenhouse
gas emissions using current technologies (particularly by increasing
efficiency), this is still debated within the scientific community. This
argument assumes, among other things, that companies replace their
current capital stock with the most efficient available today -
something that is not likely to occur in the near future even in
developed countries due to its considerable cost. For this reason, even
if the Bush administration has been slow to publicly admit that
human-induced climate change is real, it has been fundamentally right to
focus on developing new technologies that might sever the relationship
between energy consumption and emissions.

Unfortunately, given the scale and complexity of modern economies and
the time required for new technologies to displace older ones, only a
stunning technological breakthrough will allow for reductions in
emissions that are sufficiently deep to stop climate change. According
to Britain's Stern report, stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in
the atmosphere at 550 parts per million - twice pre-industrial levels, a
level at which most believe there is already a higher probability of
major climate disruptions - would require stopping the global growth in
emissions by 2020 and reducing emissions by 2.5 percent per year after
that. The longer it takes to stop the growth in emissions, the deeper
the eventual cuts need to be.

And while the United States leads the world in investment in new energy
technologies, spending nearly $3 billion in 2007, it would be
irresponsible for us to count on an energy technology miracle to save
the day. Excitement over increasingly "green" business practices is
likewise misplaced; companies will do what they need to do to increase
their profits and - when the cost is modest - to improve their images.
This has reduced emissions and will continue to do so. But without
meaningful international agreements that create both unrealistically
tight limits and market mechanisms, the cuts will ultimately be marginal
rather than decisive.

Without a technological or economic miracle, it would take a political
miracle to reach an international agreement that would mandate the
necessary emissions cuts to reverse the momentum behind our evolving
global climate system. But once again, realities get in the way. The US
Congress is too divided to pass legislation sufficiently tough to make a
major difference. And although some hope that regional or state-level
cap-and trade systems could sharply reduce US emissions in the absence
of federal action, this is also unlikely because states face many of the
same problems that challenge national governments. First and foremost,
any state that imposes emissions limits that are too tight in comparison
with its neighbors' are likely to simply export their emissions without
it resulting in a major overall reduction.

The international political environment also makes truly significant
emissions cuts very unlikely. In 2010, according to the US Energy
Information Administration, developing countries will emit nearly twenty
percent more carbon dioxide than developed countries. Indeed, only in
China (and perhaps India) would emissions limits or cuts make more of a
difference than in the United States.

By one estimate, China has already surpassed America in emissions to
become the world's leader and, with sustained high growth rates, will
open the gap even further. In fact, if China grows at eight percent for
the next nine years, its economy will double in size - and its
greenhouse gas emissions can be expected roughly to double as well.
Moreover, as China's economy expands, it is turning increasingly to
carbon-laden coal for electricity. And although China's energy intensity
(energy consumed per unit of economic output) has decreased by nearly
five percent per year for the last two decades as a result of greater
efficiency, it is still nearly seven times that of the United States,
according to the World Bank. At this rate, China's growth trajectory
could add the equivalent pollution of another present-day United States
to the climate system in a little more than a decade.

Dollar for dollar, the most efficient way to cut global greenhouse gas
emissions would be, in theory, to invest hundreds of billions of dollars
to improve China's energy efficiency. But Congress would never support
such an approach. After all, which members of Congress would vote to
undercut the competitiveness of US companies, especially in the face of
a weak domestic economy, public anger over outsourcing, China's currency
value, and the US trade deficit with China? More broadly, how long will
voters in Europe and Japan, which have done the most to limit emissions,
be prepared to make sacrifices for the global climate if they believe
they are alone in doing so?

A realistic look at climate change suggests that it is time to change
the debate. In 2005, a paper published by the UN Environment Program put
average global economic losses due to "great weather disasters" at $100
billion per year, and projected that it was increasing at about six
percent per year - enough to double every twelve years, and to total $2
trillion for the period from 2007 to 2020. Policy makers in the United
States and elsewhere must start hedging their bets and prepare us to
live in this new world. This emphatically does not mean giving up on
efforts to slow climate change, which could still measurably reduce the
costs of protecting the people and infrastructure most vulnerable to
higher temperatures and new weather patterns. Nor should it suggest that
the task of adaptation will be easy or cheap. World leaders will face
many of the same dilemmas that complicate the current debate: Developed
countries, which have produced most of the human-origin carbon dioxide
in the air, will be in the best position to cope with climate change and
developing countries will want them to bear a disproportionate financial
burden for its consequences.

Still, we do have some of the tools we will need already. International
lenders like the World Bank have only begun to invest in projects that
reduce greenhouse gas emissions; they need to give greater emphasis to
projects that limit developing countries' vulnerabilities to climate
change. The scientific community will need to do a much better job of
predicting climate impacts at a regional and local scale. Governments
will need to support this process, to collect and assess the information
that results, and develop their own plans. Riding out the consequences
of a warming world will be difficult, and we need to prepare now.

_____

Paul J Saunders is executive director of the Nixon Center and associate
publisher of The National Interest.

Vaughan Turekian is chief international officer at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science and has a PhD in atmospheric
geochemistry. They served together as aides to the under secretary of
state for global affairs during the Bush administration from 2003 to 2005.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3980


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