Durban – Conference of Parties – An Ethical Problem:
Durban – Conference of Parties – An Ethical Problem:
This week is the start of the Conference of the Parties in Durban, South Africa. The Conference of the Parties' (COP) are the annual meetings that are part of the governing body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Two years ago, November 2009, I was planning a trip to the Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen. Before Copenhagen there was great energy, with some notion that the Copenhagen meeting would lead to a breakthrough on international climate change agreements. Of course, that did not happen and while there was spin that the meeting was a success, most people that I know were not enthusiastic about the outcome. (The Copenhagen Accord) My take of the outcome was that there was symbolic political recognition that global warming needed to be addressed, but no substantive steps were taken to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Plus, the political, economic and technological realities are that we will not see international agreement on reducing emissions anytime soon. It will be much longer before there is any real reduction of emissions.
In 2010 the COP was in Cancun, Mexico. What were the results of that meeting? In my opinion, we continue to meet and that is good. There was continued recognition that we needed to curb our carbon dioxide emissions and there were voluntary commitments to do that. (Here is an All Things Considered interview with Todd Stern) The voluntary targets focused on keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius, which is both an ambiguous and impossible goal. My dedicated readers might recall that last year in my climate change class I decided it is disingenuous to continue to talk about limiting warming to 2 degrees, and I started my students reading the papers that look at the 4 degree warmer world (see this entry).
What do I expect at the start of the COP-17? There is no doubt that the chronic economic turmoil since 2008 has deflated interest in climate change. We want economic stability, and in a growing population economic stability means economic growth. And for the most part economic growth, still, means burning more fossil fuels. With this, the Durban meeting is welcomed with record high growth of carbon dioxide concentrations – we can say that we are ahead of the curve (in Washington Post, and World Meteorological Organization Greenhouse Gas Bulletin).
Ahead of the curve is where I expect we will stay for a while. It is interesting to think about where we would be without the Kyoto Protocol and the countries which made some effort. We would likely be way ahead of the historic emissions curve. We simply do not have the alternatives in place, yet, that allow us to wean ourselves from fossil fuels.
There are, in fact, substantial resources going in the installation of renewable energy resources. According the Bloomberg New Energy Finance there are now more initial investments in renewable energy than in fossil fuel energy (Press Release and Report). Europe is the leading market for money spent on these projects, and China will take over the lead in a couple of years. With this seeming shift in our energy infrastructure, in 20 years the amount of energy produced from renewable energy will be 15.7 % of the total.
One of the reasons for the rapid increase in renewable energy is because solar panels are becoming cheap. There is a large manufacturing base, much of it in China, and this is rapidly reducing the cost of solar energy. This has set off much consternation in U.S. solar industry (interesting story on Talk of the Nation). Also as people really start to think about solar energy and move away from the naïve arguments that have driven the discussion for a decade, it becomes clear that solar can fit into the existing energy infrastructure. Solar can be placed on houses, and it can scale to large solar fields that can address peak energy capacity in Texas.
Growth – this growth in renewable energy use is hopeful, ultimately, for the climate change problem. Alternative energy takes care of part of our required economic growth. But it does not take all of the growth, and it does not displace the existing capacity for decades. Again, for the present time we, at best, aim to not get too far ahead of the historical emissions curve.
For now long trains of coal lumber along the rails from Colorado and Wyoming to Texas and the Gulf ports. Growth – we require growth for economic stability. We require growth to have an economy for growing populations. Growth – we require growth to support our investment strategies and credit-based businesses.
But back to Durban and the Conference of the Parties: There is a big issue for Durban. Back in 2009 for the meeting in Copenhagen, the big ticket item was supposed to be what would follow the Kyoto Protocol? Effectively the Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2012, and for the countries that have made the attempt to reduce CO2, there would be interest in having some standards, some policy that follows. It would provide order, stability, continuity. It is unlikely that anything global will come from Durban. The way the U.N. works, I think that it is more likely that the Conference of Parties will cease to be in their current form than there will be any sort of global policy – even as a guideline.
More and more climate change moves to an issue of ethics and opportunity. In my course ethics is always a tough issue. In the climate change problem ethics often arise in the sense that the Island Nations which are being flooded are not the ones responsible for the rising seas. More generally, the rich CO2 emitting nations are not the ones that suffer the consequences most severely.
Ethical issues, however, are far broader that this simple rich-poor tension. One of the roles of environmental policy is to represent the ethical values of society. Ultimately, climate change, the control of emissions represents the importance that we give to consumption. This became even more clear to me in a recent article on the decline of the birthrate in Brazil in National Geographic. Brazil is an example of what is practically a truism, which is that economic development is associated with the reduction of birth rates. This is part of the mantra of those who advocate economic development as a precondition for addressing climate change (for example, The Skeptical Environmentalist by Lomborg). In that National Geographic article it is stated, however, that reduction of the growth of population is to allow more consumption, more use of energy, by a smaller number of people. (Note that Bjorn Lomborg is reportedly changing his evaluation of the climate change problem in a forthcoming book - article in Guardian.)
This consumption of much by a few is, of course, consistent with our history. While we point to growing population and growing CO2 emissions, the historical increase in CO2 emissions is only associated with a relatively small part of the population. And when we think about displaced consumption, meaning that much of the manufacturing in China and the developing world is to support consumption (cheap consumption) in the developed world, there is no reason to believe that economic development leads in any direct path to addressing the climate change problem. We can rest assured that we will pursue economic development more aggressively and directly than we will pursue mitigation to climate change.
In this framing, therefore, climate change is first and foremost a problem of ethics; that is, it is a problem of consumption, equitable consumption, excess consumption. If we have an imperative to consume, and I believe that as a whole we do, then we must have renewable energy; we must have resources whose use does not deplete and degrade the world.
This frames, strongly, both our history and our future. We will have to manage the climate. We are averse to geo-engineering, but we engineer a warmer and warmer climate every day. At the forefront we need to think about how to manage our waste, because there is little evidence that we are going to stop making our waste. Therefore, we must know how to remove carbon dioxide from the air and safely place it back into to the Earth. Likewise, at the forefront is the development of adaptation strategies that, globally, include less land, more extreme weather, and displaced people. All of these things are possible, and those with the foresight and the acumen to take advantage of opportunity will benefit. The benefactors will be those who look at the knowledge and are smart about using it – not the ones that look at the knowledge and deny its existence.
r
Prior to the Durban meeting the WMO issued its Provisional Statement of the Climate.
Here is the sub-title of the document
2011: World’s 10th warmest year, warmest year with La Niña on record, second-lowest Arctic sea ice extent. (and the link)
Figure 1: From WMO Provisional Statement. Temperature difference (anomaly) calculated for 1961-1990 average. La Niña years are marked. La Niña years should be cooler that average based on natural variability. 2010 was the warmest La Niña year on record, and the 10th warmest year on record.
Reader Comments
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Nice!
Perhaps a distraction for us?
It was for me :)
Be well all, Gnight>>>>
Although it has been many years, I did take an Oceanography course. Google, "Oceanography".
Since you like Google so much, let me do a little Google search for you. Link and Link and Link
Please raise your hand, if you have any questions. ;-)
Ossymon
Gotta love it when fathom speakers...oh snap, did I say that?...Hmmm? Fathom speakers??? I like that( I'll put that one in my book)...Anyway...Gotta love it when fathom speakers infer, imply, and otherwise aggrandize themselves well beyond the short bus crowd such as you and I.
Careful though, sounds like a setup to me.
Good night, Ossqss. I always enjoy your company!
Dem ain't whales.
Are you lonesome tonight?
Let me take this opportunity to say something to you that my good friend ossymon would love to say to you but never would.
EDITED
I do enjoy our deep conversations, shepherd. Would you like one fathom or two?
"Careful though, sounds like a setup to me." - You can hear me typing??? Set 'em up, for last call!
My! You certainly are very articulate! Did you learn this at Bible study?
Nice try. Others saw what you posted as well. You are aware that there are lurkers here, are you not?
Yes. Life does go on. Good night shepherd. Sleep well.
Do you remember the saying, "When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging!"?
I'll sleep like a baby.
You'll sleep like an old woman.
Do you remember the old saying, "There ain't no in between"?
Seems as though you are between a rock and a hard spot. How is that, for an in between?
My conscience is clear.
And that's "rock and a hard place", fathom speaker.
We all have our sayings. You have probably said enough already.
BTW, do you always talk that way to an "old woman"?
I would prefer that you did not get banned. I think more people should know the true you.
I'll let you know when I've said enough.
No, I never talk to old women in this manner.
Just men who act like old women.
Good night, shep. Sleep well.
Oh, so NOW you want to make up?
You might, but others don't. The graphic isn't needed for all of your posts. You could link back to it instead, e.g.
I know this will be hard for you to hear, but people will tend to be less open to your ideas with that graphic being repeated so much. Even once per post is still a lot.
Well, well, so theshepherd is a mean drunk. I am so not surprised.
Don't be a co-dependent, Some1Has2BtheRookie. If he gets banned (probably more like when at this point), at least he'll have more time for AA or some form of counseling.
Ah, well...
.."Say La vie", say the Old Folks...
On a related note, the climate talks in Durban are proving to be about as effective as a front-running Presidential candidate quoting Pokemon in an "I quit" address. That is, not at all. As with previous attempts at doing something to save humanity, deep-pocketed Big Energy interests have managed to convince enough people that entire economies will collapse if polluters aren't allowed to continue filling the air and seas with as much untreated, unfiltered garbage as they wish to maintain their massive and obscene profits. (Durban climate change summit) Small and/or developing countries are most at immediate risk from climate change, and feel they should receive help in dealing with things. But those small countries have little money and small voices, so it's easy for the big boys to bully them around, effectively silencing them.
ExxonMobil is fiddling while the world burns. Lovely...
Nice try. I never used such language. I have more respect for others and for myself.
Hey, he spelled "Marine" right though.
Semper Fi
Yeah, I think you're probably close there. I've been thinking that a minima maxima problem needs solving to determine just exactly how many people we denialists can kill off before our profits begin to diminish, but we're just too stupid to know how to solve such a problem. So, I figure 50% is probably a good number. We should probably wipe out about 3,500,000,000 people.
I figure that at those levels we should still be able to get $15 a barrel for oil and 45 cents for NG. Oh gee, maybe I should run those numbers again.
Donald Trump to Host Climate Change Debate
Yes, The Shepherd and I will be debating who has the lower IQ, Cyclone or Neo during the first segment and who has more monikers, Neo or SaintSimon during the second segment.
Sapa | 06 December, 2011 12:21
Countries should rise above national interests when negotiating about what needed to be done to deal with climate change, he said.
"This event is not like the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup tournament that we proudly hosted, where only a few soccer teams qualified, with one ultimate winner," Zuma said.
Speaking during the high-level dialogue and round table on global sustainability in a changing climate, Zuma said all countries had qualified to participate in the COP 17 talks and all should emerge as winners.
"According to your programme, you will continue with extensive deliberations on possible solutions for what we need to do now and what we agree to do in the future."
It was important for countries to think beyond their national interests during negotiations, no matter how difficult that may be.
Developing countries feared their economic development could be hampered by countries that had contributed immensely to the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The global emissions of greenhouse gases from developing countries were growing rapidly, Zuma said.
"The developed world must continue to take the lead. On the other hand, the developing countries must show a willingness to take their fair share of responsibilities."
South Africa believed that without a multilateral rules-based system there would be no guarantee that countries would honour their commitments to reducing emissions that caused climate change.
The discussion was attended by scientists, heads of states and Jean Ping, the chairman of the Commission of the African Union.
Zuma said it was important that the level of ambition on dealing with climate change should correspond to the demands of science.
"Any agreement on a future response should also take into account what science prescribes, as well as the outcome of the 5th report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
Before Zuma's address, Professor Johan Rockstrom, chairman of the 3rd Nobel Laureate symposium on global sustainability, painted a gloomy picture of the effects of climate change.
He said there would be huge chaos if climate change was not addressed, and poor countries would be the hardest hit.
Rockstrom said it was unfair that the developed countries, which were regarded as major contributors to emissions, would be the least vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Climate change would increase drought in Africa, which would lead to poverty, and the monsoon rains would be disrupted, making people unable to predict the weather.
Well Shuck's,, "spit",
..dere's ya problem
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