I feel like I ought to introduce myself, since Dave just upgraded me to contributor, but maybe I've already been introduced. I'm the "more inconvenient truths" guy!
But I take the point. The expiry date has passed. I won't say it any more. Not much anyway. All I ask is that nobody say "tipping point" either. Or "building momentum." Nobody imply that technology is going to save us. And I won't say "inconvenient truth" ever again.
Actually, there is this one other little thing. I've managed to convince myself that the entire climate movement can be divided into two schools: the "building momentum" school and the "inconvenient truth" school -- and that the trick is to find a way to straddle the two sides, to help "get the ball rolling" without sacrificing the "right speech" end of the deal.
Here's an example of an "awkward thought" I've been on about this week.
David Miliband, the vigorous young Laborite who is now the U.K.'s Environment Minister, has been somewhat less coy about the situation than most U.S. politicians. Here's what he had to say (in Newsweek International) in February of this year:
If all industrialized countries took on emissions-reduction commitments of 60 to 80 percent, according to the U.N., and if they purchased half of their reductions in the developing world, and if the carbon price were at least $10 per ton, then the global financial flows would be of the order of $100 billion per year.
This sort of money could help bridge the gap between high- and low-carbon development. It could help fund the extra cost from carbon capture and storage technology that reduce emissions from coal-fired power stations by 85 percent. It could make the difference for governments choosing between "cheaper" fossil-fuel power plants and more expensive hydroelectric projects. It could help make solar power a reality.
Now there are at least two interesting things about this quote. One is Miliband's off the cuff estimate that industrialized countries would purchase "half of their reductions" in the developing world. The other is the absurdly low carbon price that he's using to do his admittedly back of the envelope calculations.
Still, he's at least giving us something to work with, something solid enough to support a few observations:
First, "half of their reductions" is a lot. It means that a lot of money would be flowing to the developing world, money that, as Miliband notes, could be used to support a rapid clean-energy transition and therefore make a truly global crash program possible.
Second, it also means that the actual physical emissions reductions projected for the rich world would only be half of what's now being advertised. Not 20 percent by 2020, but 10 percent, not 60 percent or 80 percent or 90 percent by 2050, but 30 percent, or 40 percent, or 45 percent.
Third -- and this starts getting at the real problem -- it means that the rich world is going to feel like it's in crash program mode -- after all, it's making these huge payments as well as these huge reductions -- when it's not, not really, and even as the South is running smack into the wall of an exhausted global emissions budget. Which is (and I'm not going to start drawing graphs here) just what's going to happen, because we're now so late in the game that, all else remaining equal, there simply isn't enough remaining atmospheric space for the South to develop to anything like the economic level that the rich countries currently enjoy. Not without blowing the global emissions budget. Not without a truly heroic effort (as in "crash program") to break the link between carbon emissions and economic development.
The problem is that, particularly in the U.S., we're not talking -- at all -- about what's going to have to change. We're barely even talking about the fact that, even as the South hits the wall, it's going to be suffering huge impacts. Because (grim irony here) the poorest people in the world also happen to be the ones that are most vulnerable to the coming droughts, the rising waters, and all the rest of it. And please recall that, even as the South hits, and crashes through, the emissions wall, it's going to be staring across the development gap at a rich world that, though far more energy efficient than it is today, is still, well, rich.
But maybe I should just shut up.
Calling all radicals: Unite for Kerry-Boxer
Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair
Comments
View as Flat
Rune Posted 11:08 am
28 Mar 2007
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Mike Frew Posted 9:15 pm
28 Mar 2007
i like this rambling train of thought post. it leaves the mind free to stumble across all kinds of scenario.
maybe this in between ""building momentum" school and the "inconvenient truth" school" school is another school altogether. kinda like skipping school and sitting in the park watching the river. you skip math and absorb ecology. anything's possible.
we clear?
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:48 pm
28 Mar 2007
Why do you believe that less-developed nations are capable of developing further?
Why do you believe that there exist, or soon will exist, rich or industrialized nations?
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randino Posted 9:31 am
29 Mar 2007
Randy Cunningham.
Randy Cunningham
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Gar Lipow Posted 11:55 am
29 Mar 2007
Of the poor nations to have any path open to stop being poor we in the rich nations are going to have to do two things.
First, we are going to have cut our emissions a lot. Monbiot thinks that to cut down to the point where per capita emissions are equal, the U.K. will have to reduce emissions by 90%, the U.S. by 95%, over the course of around 20 years. You can quibble about the exact numbers , and I think especially about the time frame. (A lot of climate scientists think 30 years may be adequate.) But the point is we are going to have to make big cuts in the rich worlds emissions, our own emissions, not that of the poor nations.
Secondly, we are going to have to pay the poor nations to cut their emissions in some cases or not to raise them in others. If you look at global warming from an economic view, we have used up a global sink - the ability of the atmosphere to absorb greenhouse emissions. As Tom puts it, the atmospheric space. But even when the rich nations start seriously reducing their own output, the poor nations are not going to accept "oh the path we took to develop is closed. We used it all up. Too bad". The poor nations intend to become rich ones. If want them to forgo the high-carbon path to that, we are going to have to pay them to take the low-carbon route.
It is a practical necessity because either the rich nations or the poor nations by themselves can put our civilization over the dangerous 2 degree red line. Global weirding can only be stopped if both rich and poor nations control their emissions which means we need a deal both rich and poor can accept. And it would be immoral to do otherwise: the limited atmospheric space for greenhouse emissions that could be used safely really was a global property of all humankind. Since a small percent of humanity has used that great natural resource up, we morally we compensation to the rest of the the human race.
We wrecked the plumbing in the flat we share with the poor nations. In all fairness, we ought to pay the full bill for repairs, and not ask the poor nations to bear part of that cost.
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