With only nine months to go before the most important international meeting on climate change since Copenhagen in 2009, what are the chances of success at this year’s Paris talks? What might “success” mean? And can the mistakes and challenges that have befallen previous meetings be avoided and tackled? Nick Rowley, Professor, Sydney Democracy Network at the University of Sydney, and former climate advisor to Tony Blair, addresses these questions in the first part of an optimistic three-part essay on the prospects of a global climate deal.
Let’s first dispense with three pervasive myths that continue to make the task of achieving an adequate global response to climate change harder.
Myth 1: the international climate negotiations have failed
There is a widespread belief that more than 20 years of international climate negotiations have been a waste of time. They haven’t. Developing methods to account for atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, awarding funding for taking these measurements, reporting and verifying emissions reductions, and, in the case of the Kyoto Protocol, fashioning one of the most ambitious agreements in international law – none of this would have happened without the negotiating process provided by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Although the 1997 Kyoto agreement proved flawed, it led directly to multi-state policy responses such as the European emissions trading scheme and to national carbon-budgeting legislation such as Britain’s Climate Change Act, not to mention a plethora of policies and incentives to promote renewable technologies and infrastructure.
The frustration is not that the international process has failed, so much as that the success so far has been only partial, and nowhere near what is needed to reduce the risks of climate change effectively. Far from advocates and negotiators being to blame, the shortcoming is more due to the complexity of the problem, the power of fossil fuel interests, and the nature of the ever-changing globalised economy. Disappointment at what the international process has achieved should only be a reason for us to redouble our efforts, not give up on achieving a multilateral agreement on a problem shared by us all.
Myth 2: it’s mainly about just getting countries to sign up
Despite the climate problem having been defined by the media and many environmental groups as essentially binary (either you advocate climate action, or you don’t), it isn’t. The world has never had to address a problem of this magnitude – one that knows no boundaries and has causes that are closely linked to the post-industrial infrastructure that has done so much to drive economic growth and human betterment.
Let’s be grown-up about the magnitude of the task: we need to change our energy, electricity and transport systems at an unprecedented scale and with unprecedented speed, globally.
The change required in electricity generation, distribution and use is very much like the transformation in digital communications over the past 20 years. But there is one important difference. Unlike the world of possibilities opened up by the digital revolution, the amenity most of us enjoy from electricity will, at best, remain unchanged. To the end-user, the electricity created by solar cells or wind doesn’t feel, work, smell or look better than that generated by coal.
To continue the analogy, the energy revolution won’t deliver an electricity equivalent of upgrading your simple old phone to a sleekly designed smartphone with hundreds of new possible uses. It will be like having the same old land line but with different technology behind it.
Addressing the climate problem and measurably reducing the risk of climate change is a massively complicated, “wicked” problem. We’d like it to be straightforward, but unfortunately the British climate economist Lord Stern of Brentford was right when he memorably described the climate challenge as “a complex inter-temporal international collective action problem under uncertainty”.
If it were just about agreeing ever more ambitious targets and replacing “evil” fossil fuels with nice clean ones, success would be easy. But it’s not.
Effective climate policies have to do more than just price carbon: they have to change the way we develop our cities and land; ensure we value and preserve forests; and allow us to generate clean electricity and transport ourselves and all the things we buy and enjoy, in ways that no longer involve the combustion of fossil fuels.
Some countries are going to have to continue using coal for a considerable time yet; there remain significant technological challenges to using renewables for more than electricity generation (such as in making concrete, steel and aluminium), and notwithstanding the appeal of electric vehicles, the shift away from oil as the primary fuel for transport requires a lot more than changes to the private car fleet. Transport isn’t just about moving people; everything on the table in front of you was made somewhere else and fossil fuels were burned to get it to you.
Despite all the detailed analysis, august reports and newspaper column inches, climate policy remains immature. The first national climate policy was launched by President Clinton a mere 21 years ago. Developing policies with the scope and potency required is an unprecedented challenge that will see failure, learning and – as with all meaningful change – some measure of loss and cost.
Myth 3: we just need countries to “see the light”
There remains a misplaced hope among many advocates of ambitious climate policy that there will come a point when shards of truth and light and wisdom suddenly begin to cascade through a major international meeting. These hopes were first pinned on the Kyoto summit, then it was Montreal, then Bali, then famously Copenhagen, and now Paris.
I’ve described this view as a myth, but really it is a woefully naïve understanding of how political power operates and international agreements are secured. Given the complexity of the challenge – and frustrating as it is, given the risks posed to our climate – progressive incremental change is all that can be achieved.
It didn’t feel like it at the time, but I was fortunate to observe US President Barack Obama in Copenhagen. His performance as a negotiator trying to salvage some modicum of agreement out of what others had let become a train wreck, was almost chilling in its effectiveness. This was hard work, and doubly so when all that he could achieve was avoiding complete failure.
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For such a noted orator there was no rhetoric on leaving the Danish capital, just a cool-headed acceptance of where the politics of climate had thus far failed, and the need to re-double our efforts: This is hard within countries; it’s going to be even harder between countries … hard stuff requires not paralysis, but going ahead and making the best of the situation that you’re in, and then continually trying to improve and make progress from there.
The President wasn’t scripted, he was frustrated and tired. And he was right.
Much has changed in the five years since Copenhagen. The toxic confusion of domestic climate policy in countries such as Australia should not blind us to these important, and largely positive, developments.
So while I firmly believe it is wrong to expect a singular triumph or an outright disaster in Paris, there are reasons why I believe that this year’s outcome can be both significant and positive.
Editor’s Note
This is part 1 of a three-part essay on the prospects for a global climate deal at the Paris 2015 talks. It was first published at The Conversation (Australian edition) and republished here with kind permission from the author.
Nick Rowley is an Adjunct Professor at the Sydney Democracy Network at the University of Sydney.
He currently works as a strategic policy consultant to a mix of business and NGO clients in Australia and overseas. Over the past fifteen years, Rowley has worked at the centre of government on sustainability, climate change and broader policy and political strategy in Australia and the UK. In this role he has helped establish the seminal Stern Review into the Economics of Climate Change.
From March 2004 to January 2006, Rowley worked at 10 Downing Street as an advisor to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. In this role he oversaw all domestic and international climate policy and was part of a small team advising the British Prime Minister on climate change prior to the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in July 2005. From 2006 to 2009 he was the Strategic Director of the Copenhagen Climate Council: an affiliation of climate scientists, business CEOs and policy practitioners brought together to make the case for a more adequate global climate treaty in 2009. He was also also a director of Kinesis: a business focussed on achieving measurable emissions reductions for private and government clients. He has just been awarded the role of Adjunct Professor to lead a project on the future democratisation of decision making on the future of Antarctica.
James Rust says
It is ironic Nick Rowly traveled through snow in Copenhagen in December 2009 when a member of the UK Met Office said we wouldn’t see snow again in 2001. His optimism about Paris has to be as good a prediction as the UK meteorologist.
The three myths discussed in this article are still myths.
We have had no global warming in 17 years in spite of a 30 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Past history shows we are in the first 160 years of a 500 year cycle of global warming called the Current Warming Period. Even climate alarmists admit increased carbon dioxide was not a factor in global warming until 1950. The claim 2014 was the warmest year in recorded history (since 1890) is bogus because of adjustments made to temperature data by NOAA and NASA. Satellite data shows 1998, 2005, and 2011 were warmer years. It is hardly worth debating these temperature issues when were looking at changes of about 0.1 degrees C. Nature has not cooperated with climate alarmists because the U. S. has not been hit by a large hurricane since Katrina in 2005 in spite of all the false predictions global warming would be smiting the U. S. East Coast.
How long will these ill gotten demands to propel the planet back into the 19th century by abandoning our abundant, inexpensive, and geographically distributed fossil fuels of coal, oil, and natural gas that are the reason for the prosperity of the developed nations. China and India have observed the happenings of the past 100 years and will develop coal powered cheap electricity to lift their poor from poverty.
The Paris meeting is a sham and part of the annual waste of over trillion dollars to satisfy power grabs of the egotistical few.
James H. Rust, Professor of nuclear engineering
David Dirkse says
Prof. Rowley is realistic about the challenge to replace fossil fuels.
Predicting the future is impossible. A professor cannot do better than anyone else. What was predicted in my youth (by professors) did not come true, what is happening right know was not predicted.
By calculation however the only conclusion is, that solar and wind are not able to replace fossil fuels on another then Household scale.
Industry, transportation, agriculture is not sustainable with the current green technologies. Major innovations are required to prevent dramatic loss of prosperity while moving away from fossil.
There is a solid possibility, that the fossil fuel era will extend for a few more centuries, thanks to methane hydrates from deep sea. In the longer run the only option (to survive) is nuclear power. Thorium MSR and later compact fusion reactors.
And the climate? In the year 1000 is was much warmer with agriculture on Greenland. The earth did not collaps then.
Climate hysteria is religious mania.
A little more CO2 is good for plants and trees. Photosynthesis works better at a little higher temperature. CO2 greens our planet.