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Climate change: a post-COP15 diagnosis

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In Brief

Not surprisingly, interpretations of the outcome from COP15 range from an outstanding success to an utter disaster, and everything in between.  Political leaders claim a big step forward towards climate protection, while the vast majority of the NGOs who flocked to Copenhagen blast the outcome as, at best, a wasted opportunity.

In many ways, views on the outcome of COP15 were strongly conditioned by expectations, especially for those who thought that the Copenhagen conference would ‘seal the deal’ for limiting anthropogenic climate change to a temperature rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But a comprehensive, final agreement was never really in the cards, even months before the meeting itself. The real question was whether COP15 would make enough progress to build unstoppable momentum towards a much tougher, legally binding agreement sometime in the next 6 to 12 months.

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In judging COP15, it must be remembered that this was by far the most complex negotiation that humanity has ever attempted. What important messages did we learn from the effort?

First, we learned that managing the global commons is really complex and difficult. The atmosphere is owned by no single country or group of countries, and yet affects all of us. The climate system, which includes not only the atmosphere but also the oceans, land and cryosphere (snow and ice), is claimed in part by 192 human jurisdictions (and many more at sub-national level) and is partially managed in piecemeal fashion by some of them. Yet the climate behaves as a single, complex system at the scale of the planet. We are nowhere near having the institutions and governance arrangements necessary to build effective stewardship of the climate system.

Second, we are paying a big price for not dealing effectively with equity issues, which is coming back to haunt us. Large and stubborn gulfs separate groups of people within countries, and separate the wealthy countries, the emerging economies and the poorest nations on Earth. I suspect that humanity will never be able to act as an effective steward for the global commons until these persistent inequities are significantly reduced or eliminated, once and for all.

Third, the enormity of the risk we are taking has not really sunk in yet. We are running the very real risk that we could rapidly drive our own life support system into a state much less amenable for humanity’s well-being. In a worst case scenario, unabated climate change could lead to the unravelling and then collapse of globalised, contemporary society, driving a rapid and uncontrollable drop in population, rampant disease and massive suffering, shattered economies and broken societies, and causing a wave of extinctions and ecosystem disruptions in the natural world. The global patient – human society – has been diagnosed as having the symptoms of a serious and potentially fatal disease, and yet is acting as though it is a mere headache – a couple of aspirins, a glass of water, a good night’s sleep and everything will be okay in the morning.

So what is the scorecard from Copenhagen? It was a step forward, but not nearly as big as many hoped for. The ultimate criterion is whether the momentum continues to build through 2010 towards a much more comprehensive and effective agreement. The science is absolutely clear and growing even stronger – unabated climate change means serious, and perhaps even existential, risks. Has COP15 delivered a big enough push to switch society onto a no-carbon, sustainable pathway? The jury is still out.

Professor Will Steffen is Executive Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute.

4 responses to “Climate change: a post-COP15 diagnosis”

  1. Thanks for a useful and comprehensive assessment, especially for pointing out the need to address equity concerns. Too often, climate change mitigation policy has been looked at in isolation from other factors. In particular, the macroeconomic and developmental consequences of climate change mitigation policy have been given insufficient attention.

  2. But the hacked Hadley emails seem to cast doubt on the integrity of the data and the reliability of the computer models. Before one seeks a new enclosure movement of the global air commons (cui bono?) perhaps the science itself needs to be double checked. Economists recognise the power of incentives. Have we got the science we were paying for?

  3. The difficulties in managing the enormous task of dealing with the externalities and free riding of climate change issues were increased by the industrialised countries demanding targeted reductions in developing, especially emerging economies. This is in light of their greed and ignorance or deliberately using offensive tactics as defensive tactics.

    Kyoto bypassed this difficult equity issue by requiring industrialised countries to have a reduction in targets and no targets for developing countries in order to achieve the Kyoto Protocol.

    At Copenhagen, the developed countries did not mention or deliberately ignored their very unfair advantages of several times higher of their per capita emissions over the developing countries and the need for them to reduce their current levels of emissions. Instead, they were placing demands on developing countries.

    Why did they not acknowledge the fundamental principle of equality of each and every human being in terms of the right to equal per capita emissions?

    Why did they not adopt the user pay or polluter pay principle?

    Why did they not use the clear economic principle of addressing externalities?

    It begs anyone’s belief that the developed countries are serious about climate change, serious about human rights, serious about poverty reduction in the world, serious about a fair deal.

    They might just think that the developing world is intellectually incapable to understand the climate change issues.

    They just want to keep the developing world “developing” perpetually forever, so they can enjoy the advantages they have, by starving the need of the developing world of their equal per capita emissions rights and their rights to improve their living standards.

    That was the fundamental cause of the failure at Copenhagen.

    What lies ahead post Copenhagen? It depends on the actions of the developed countries and the ball is clearly in their court, because notwithstanding the extremely unfair state of the negotiations to developing countries, major developing economies have pledged significant reduction measures.

    If they continue to act selfishly, ignorantly and arrogantly, it is unlikely to make real progress on climate change.

  4. Global governance will never be possible until big corporations stop hijacking international negotiations. Governments from rich capitalist countries defend the interests of corporations, not of their citizens.

    This is what we saw in the COP-15 and that is why I am engaged in a movement for real solutions for climate change, for community-based solutions, for climate justice and for democracy.

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