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No cause for climate despair
EDITORIAL
Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £137, Europe €211, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $267. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1299 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2010 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
No cause for climate despair There are ways around the impasse over a global emissions deal THE prospect of an international agreement to halt dangerous climate change may seem more remote than ever following the talks that ended last week in Bonn, Germany. The delegates there appeared to be more interested in being cordial than in delivering on science-based targets (see page 8). Despite this, I believe progress has been made, and existing international agreements contain an important and hitherto overlooked mechanism that can do much to regulate carbon emissions. Such optimism might seem surprising. Many observers remain gloomy in the aftermath of the failure of last December’s Copenhagen climate summit to come up with a successor to the Kyoto protocol agreed in 1997 – the first time industrialised countries committed themselves to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The failures of Copenhagen were the result of serious organisational issues, accompanied by glaring and often naive political errors. These included the destructive negativity of the NGOs and the Danish government’s attempt to devise
“International agreements contain an overlooked mechanism for regulating carbon emissions” a climate agreement without the involvement of poorer nations. In the end, we witnessed the victory of unambitious realpolitik over correct, but wishful, thinking. Yet there are at least three positive messages from Copenhagen. First, despite the lack of agreement, we know the issue of climate change now has the full attention of the world. The anger of poorer nations is a powerful and lucid expression
Ben King/SSEE
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250
Profile David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, is director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, which will host its World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment this month
of their full appreciation of the scale of the problem. Second, the meeting’s disappointments have made plain the folly of attempting to craft a successor to Kyoto in a single, collective leap. Third, as a result of the negotiations, we now have a global target to avoid a dangerous 2 °C average temperature rise. Deforestation, which accounts for one-fifth of emissions, is now part of agreements. Most importantly, we have alternative ways to regulate carbon, thanks to national and regional commitments to emissions trading. The European Union already has its Emission Trading System, the largest of its kind in the world. The US may now introduce its own version: Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, is keen to join and wants to see Canada sign up too, forming a North American trading group. Another emissions trading market may emerge among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Harmonisation between parallel markets may be a challenge – not least for international trade policy – but in the long run it is likely to be easier to solve a coordination problem across a small number of commodity markets than across a large number of sovereign states. I have been sceptical about attempts to create multibilliondollar funds to help poorer nations adapt to climate change, since it is not obvious that the pledges of the developed world are credible. A better approach would be to extend existing trading schemes to these nations. This would encourage them to develop lower-carbon economies and generate income through taxes on high-carbon imports. It would also unify emissions trading, overtaking troubled efforts to devise a global trading scheme with a single carbon dioxide price. Regardless of the details of the mechanism, it is plain that one of the central challenges for climate policy is to find a credible way to meet the concerns of the poorest countries while offering the right development incentives. These factors, alongside the increasing confidence of the growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, will set the scene for a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2012, the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit in the same city that started the Kyoto process. Copenhagen’s failure to deliver a single universal deal opens up space for smaller regionally based deals. Coordinating these will be hard, but not as hard as what we have tried in the past. We are all custodians of a global commons, and we have moral responsibility to future generations to curb our greenhouse emissions. I am optimistic that Rio can deliver. n 19 June 2010 | NewScientist | 3
Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £137, Europe €211, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $267. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1299 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2010 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
No cause for climate despair There are ways around the impasse over a global emissions deal THE prospect of an international agreement to halt dangerous climate change may seem more remote than ever following the talks that ended last week in Bonn, Germany. The delegates there appeared to be more interested in being cordial than in delivering on science-based targets (see page 8). Despite this, I believe progress has been made, and existing international agreements contain an important and hitherto overlooked mechanism that can do much to regulate carbon emissions. Such optimism might seem surprising. Many observers remain gloomy in the aftermath of the failure of last December’s Copenhagen climate summit to come up with a successor to the Kyoto protocol agreed in 1997 – the first time industrialised countries committed themselves to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The failures of Copenhagen were the result of serious organisational issues, accompanied by glaring and often naive political errors. These included the destructive negativity of the NGOs and the Danish government’s attempt to devise
“International agreements contain an overlooked mechanism for regulating carbon emissions” a climate agreement without the involvement of poorer nations. In the end, we witnessed the victory of unambitious realpolitik over correct, but wishful, thinking. Yet there are at least three positive messages from Copenhagen. First, despite the lack of agreement, we know the issue of climate change now has the full attention of the world. The anger of poorer nations is a powerful and lucid expression
Ben King/SSEE
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250
Profile David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, is director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, which will host its World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment this month
of their full appreciation of the scale of the problem. Second, the meeting’s disappointments have made plain the folly of attempting to craft a successor to Kyoto in a single, collective leap. Third, as a result of the negotiations, we now have a global target to avoid a dangerous 2 °C average temperature rise. Deforestation, which accounts for one-fifth of emissions, is now part of agreements. Most importantly, we have alternative ways to regulate carbon, thanks to national and regional commitments to emissions trading. The European Union already has its Emission Trading System, the largest of its kind in the world. The US may now introduce its own version: Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, is keen to join and wants to see Canada sign up too, forming a North American trading group. Another emissions trading market may emerge among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Harmonisation between parallel markets may be a challenge – not least for international trade policy – but in the long run it is likely to be easier to solve a coordination problem across a small number of commodity markets than across a large number of sovereign states. I have been sceptical about attempts to create multibilliondollar funds to help poorer nations adapt to climate change, since it is not obvious that the pledges of the developed world are credible. A better approach would be to extend existing trading schemes to these nations. This would encourage them to develop lower-carbon economies and generate income through taxes on high-carbon imports. It would also unify emissions trading, overtaking troubled efforts to devise a global trading scheme with a single carbon dioxide price. Regardless of the details of the mechanism, it is plain that one of the central challenges for climate policy is to find a credible way to meet the concerns of the poorest countries while offering the right development incentives. These factors, alongside the increasing confidence of the growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, will set the scene for a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2012, the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit in the same city that started the Kyoto process. Copenhagen’s failure to deliver a single universal deal opens up space for smaller regionally based deals. Coordinating these will be hard, but not as hard as what we have tried in the past. We are all custodians of a global commons, and we have moral responsibility to future generations to curb our greenhouse emissions. I am optimistic that Rio can deliver. n 19 June 2010 | NewScientist | 3