Is the problem really China?

The metric used to measure carbon emissions significantly shapes which countries are seen to bear the lion's share of the blame for anthropogenic climate change. If we look simply at total emissions, then China has recently overtaken the US as the world's major carbon polluter. But of course, such a measure is simplistic, as it takes account of neither historical emissions, nor relative population sizes. Once these are factored in, the list looks very different.

Much is made in some circles of the fact that over the last decade or two, the vast majority of the global increase in carbon emissions has come from China (and to a lesser extent, India). Yet this way of measuring things (enshrined in the Kyoto protocol) attributes emissions to the country of production, not the country of consumption, effectively enabling rich consumer nations to outsource their emissions. This not only gives them an artificial moral superiority based on being able to point to stable or falling emissions (despite rising consumption), but also means outsourcing the health problems associated with carbon-intensive industries. Of course, China has been benefitting economically from this arrangement, and so has been quite willing up to this point to become the world's factory (and increasingly, its banker). I am not exonerating China, simply trying to highlight some illegitimate ways it is sometimes made into a global scapegoat on this issue.

The US is a climate coquette

"[...] the U.S. flirts, it shows some leg, but it never ends up in your arms. The Senate never comes through - it didn't ratify Kyoto, and it didn't pass the climate legislation last summer. All the watering down was for nought - you might as well have done the right thing."

- Bill McKibben, "US Plays the Big Tease at Global Climate Talks".

Insightful analysis of the present Cancùn negotiations and a memorable image of US behaviour from Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org.

At the same time, the Climate Vulnerability Monitor has a new report claiming that "of all industrialized nations the US [along with Spain] will face the most [economic] harm from a warming world".

Is it anti-American to point out their leadership in failure and their leadership in loss amongst the industrialised world?

It doesn't have to be this way.
H/T Bryan and Jeremy.

Gillard's climate inaction and the Citizen's Assembly

As we "move forward" to an Australian federal election on 21st August, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has just announced the ALP's climate change policies.

I'm a little underwhelmed.

Still aiming for endless economic growth, no price on carbon until after 2012, same tiny target (5% down from 2000 levels by 2020. Most of the rest of the world uses 1990 as a benchmark, as agreed at Kyoto. Australia doesn't, or our "reduction" would be revealed as an increase), slight increases on fairly lacklustre funding for alternative energies, more coal power stations (as long as they are "capture ready", which is a little like building a car with a third pedal but no braking system and calling it "breaking ready"), and in what is perhaps the most telling proposal, a Citizen's Assembly held over twelve months to build a bipartisan consensus on the issue that will last longer than an election cycle.

This last idea could be dismissed as a populist move aimed to give sceptics a chance to bury the hatchet or at least air their grievances and vent some steam, but there is more at stake. The perceived need for something like this is based on the observation that in Australia, some kind of legislation involving a price on carbon enjoyed bipartisan support for the last few years until this collapsed suddenly around the end of 2009 with the election of Tony Abbott to lead the Coalition, who has described climate change as "absolute crap" and whose policies even manage to make the ALP look green (which is all the ALP need, basically). Gillard's speech compares the need for such a consensus (which needn't include everyone) to support for Medicare (Australia's public health system), which began life as a partisan issue, but which gradually won widespread public support until it is now politically unthinkable for either side to abandon it.

The Citizen's Assembly will be accompanied by the creation of a Climate Change Commission "to explain the science of climate change and to report on progress in international action". If people think that the CSIRO, the Australian Institute of Physics, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Socities, the Geological Society of Australia, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Australian Coral Reef Society, the Australian Medical Association and the Institution of Engineers Australia are all too political, part of a hoax, taken in by a fraud, in it for the money or whatever other argument people use to ignore the body of scientific opinion on climate change, then I am unsure what contribution another group set up by the government are going to make to building a community consensus.

Building a widespread understanding of the issue is important, and indeed, this was perhaps my largest disappointment with Kevin Rudd, that he abdicated his chance to lead the public debate on the issue, preferring to hang back and let the opposition shoot themselves in the foot over their internal squabbling on the issue.

It is also crucial to distinguish between the climate science (where expert opinion overwhelmingly acknowledges dangerous anthropogenic climate change) and climate policy (where expert opinion is more divided and where more deliberation on the goods of society is required) and to note that though we might agree (at least broadly) on the problem, proposed responses can vary widely for all kinds of legitimate reasons.

Exactly how the proposed Citizen's Assembly will work hasn't been spelled out in detail (or at least, I haven't seen where this has been done) and I can imagine a number of possible pitfalls to this approach. Nonetheless, I applaud Gillard and the ALP for trying something to raise the level of public debate on the ethics and policies of a good national response.

CPRS: Breaking the deadlock?

Disclaimer: I am no economist nor an economist's son. All opinions expressed to be taken with a pinch or three of salt.

The current debate in Australia over the Government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) seems bogged down, and has even reached a point where it has given Kevin Rudd the necessary trigger to request a double dissolution (though he seems unlikely to use it just yet). The danger is that the CPRS may continue to be blocked or watered down by the Opposition, delaying any significant carbon policy from Australia and contributing to the broader global impasse reached at Copenhagen. The even larger danger is that it might be passed in something like its current form and pitiful targets will be locked in for decades.

Back in 2007, "Professor Ross Garnaut was commissioned by all of the governments of Australia’s federation to examine the impacts of climate change on Australia and to recommend policy frameworks to improve the prospects of sustainable prosperity."[1] The Garnaut Climate Change Review was published in late 2008. Chapter Fourteen of the Review recommended that for an initial period there ought to be a fixed price on carbon at AUS$20/tonne (in 2005 dollars) without offsets or international trading. This was to reduce uncertainty during the period in which an international agreement was being negotiated and would give businesses something firm from which to begin their necessary modifications. Such a fixed period was to start in 2010 and cover until at least the end of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

I think that as an interim measure, this suggestion has merit. Undoubtedly, it is not perfect, but it may be a way of breaking the current deadlock and of avoiding a situation in which Australia ties itself to weak targets. I'm pleased to hear that the Government has entered into serious negotiations with The Greens about this suggestion, since it might represent the best that it is currently possible to do, while not closing down future improvements.

UPDATE: The dangers of carbon uncertainty from a US perspective.

Why I am pessimistic about Copenhagen

There is a great deal in the media about the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 which will meet in Copenhagen in just over two weeks. A number of people have asked me recently about my take on the matter. While I think that an international agreement of some kind is necessary to reduce global greenhouse gas levels (it won't happen simply by countries acting unilaterally on national interest), my expectations for Copenhagen are pretty low at the moment. Let me briefly outline some of my current perceptions.

• First, it is worth noting that an international treaty of this scale and complexity is a historical novelty. That doesn't mean it can't be done, but it does mean that we're in uncharted waters. I am certainly no expert on international law, but I am aware that the last decades have seen numerous innovations in this field. Yet any treaty that is developed will be something of an experiment, and one unable to be repeated.

• Second, there are deep divisions between the developed and developing world. This was quite predictable. The former have produced by far the lion's share of historical emissions and continue to be much higher per capita emitters than even the industrializing economies of China and India. And while responsibility is not equally shared, neither are consequences. The current effects of climate change are being felt most keenly in developing nations (perhaps Australia will be (or is) the first developed nation to be seriously affected through water shortages during more frequent and severe droughts). These divisions were visible at Kyoto and were part of the reason for the failure of that effort (when the US and other developed nations (e.g. Australia) refused to ratify the agreement that their own negotiators had reached. Despite ten more years of negotiation and massive progress in climate science, these deep divisions remain and were evident in the African bloc of 50 nations boycotting part of the most recent pre-Copenhagen negotiations in Barcelona. They did this due to a perception that the developed world was not really serious about making significant changes.

•Third, there are particular political difficulties associated with the United States. The US has been historically the largest greenhouse gas emitter and continues to be so if consumption of products made elsewhere is included (about a quarter of China's carbon footprint derives from the creation of products for Western markets). And yet for eight years during the Bush administration, it did all it could to stand in the way of any international progress on the issue, refusing to ratify Kyoto and suppressing the warnings of its own agencies. The Obama change-we-could-believe-in has revealed that the US Congress has little faith. There is basically zero chance of any US climate legislation being passed prior to Copenhagen and even when Congress does get around to addressing it, the issue has become increasingly partisan.* The significant Democrat majority in Congress provides no guarantees for Obama's agenda, as demonstrated in the heath care debate. The US is not the only nation to have internal political divisions over the issue, but some of the quirks of the US system ensure that legislation will have particular difficulty in being passed.
*It is quite refreshing to see that it is much less so here in the UK, where the Conservatives are in full support of Gordon Brown's aggressive stance and promising to not make this an election issue (which may be a political move to neutralise a perceived Labour advantage; the actual determination of a (likely) Cameron government to make this a high-priority issue remains to be seen). It is also quite partisan in Australia.

• Fourth, public opinion about climate change remains in some degree of flux (with the numbers who view it as a serious threat declining in at least the US, Australia and the UK). While elected representatives ought to make their own judgements based on wisdom and available evidence, rather than simply seeing which way the wind is blowing), it only seems to be increasingly true that too many politicians follow rather than lead public opinion. And public opinion in some countries seems to have shifted away from seeing climate change as a real and present danger for various reasons. First, the economic downturn is an immediate distraction from a long-term problem like climate change, and provides a convenient excuse for inaction until economic conditions are better. Second, there is a growing and highly successful misinformation campaign of climate change denial that is muddying the waters with outdated, pseudo-scientific and de-bunked claims (and not just about climatology). This is not to say that there are not plenty of bogus claims made by those who see climate change as a serious issue, but the noise-to-signal ratio on each side is not even close to being equivalent. Of course there is a difference between genuine scepticism and denialism. And of course we ought to weigh important claims that made upon our lives and are right to take most things reported by the media with a grain (or five) of salt. However, Andrew Cameron puts it well when he says, “Too little scepticism is gullible, but there comes a time when too much scepticism is a crippling disconnection from reality.” I intend to write more on this at some stage soon.

As crippling as these four point are, none is entirely insurmountable. Together, they combine to mean that negotiations at Copenhagen are unlikely to reach a binding treaty. Indeed, as a result of these and other obstacles, President Obama has recently stated the increasingly obvious: that Copenhagen will not deliver a legally binding deal. Despite all the momentum and build-up, the talks will now become just another stepping stone rather than a finish-line for climate negotiations. Will this matter? Is a bad deal worse than no deal? Will this cripple the possibility of a treaty or just delay it? All that remains to be seen.

However, I have three more reasons for remaining pessimistic that would still be true even if a miraculous 11th hour deal is reached in Copenhagen.

• Fifth, even the most ambitious targets on the table may well be too modest. There is currently around 387 parts per million of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The pre-industrial level was about 275 ppm. Twenty years ago, when the issue started to gain more widespread attention, 550 ppm was seen as an upper limit, but this was basically just a doubling of 275 and was not based on much evidence. The general consensus is currently to try to limit average warming to 2ºC (though even this would have significant negative effects) and most of the recent efforts have focused on stabilizing CO2 levels at 450 ppm as a means towards this (though it is difficult to be precise, it seems 450 ppm only gives about a 50% chance of staying below 2ºC warming). This is what is on the table at Copenhagen. Stabilizing levels at 450 ppm will be extremely difficult and will require massive shifts in economic patterns and expectations. The model proposed by Nicholas Stern in his Stern Report included "overshooting" 450 ppm to peak at 550 and come back down from there. However, more recent studies suggest that even 450 ppm may well lead to runaway warming as feedback effects gain pace and a number of scientists are now calling for a goal of 350 ppm.

• Sixth, I am not currently persuaded that the cap-and-trade market based system proposed as the mechanism driving emission reductions will actually work to reduce CO2 levels. From my limited understanding, a revenue-neutral carbon tax would be better and could also be the subject of international agreements. Solving ecological issues through extending the reach of market logic into more spheres of life seems a little like trying to put out a fire by pouring oil on it.

• Seventh, even if politicians fashion a binding agreement (whether in Copenhagen or some time next year) for 450 ppm, we are very unlikely to get there. The required changes are enormous, the momentum behind business as usual is too large. The economic assumptions of centuries (though note that they only arose during the period of modern industrialization) are too deeply entrenched. No leader is talking about anything other than economic growth as their primary goal. No leader is being honest about the fact that stabilizing levels at even 450 ppm would require massive changes on a scale similar to those experienced in Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union (the only example in recent history of a nation dropping its emissions at anything like the rate required). Of course, that was (a) unplanned, (b) lasted only a few years rather than decades, and (c) was still not fast enough.

In summary, the Copenhagen conference is an attempt to reach a novel international agreement in a short time frame despite deep political divisions between and within nations and lagging public support, an agreement which may well be too little, too late, using the wrong mechanism and obscuring the true size of the challenge. So call me an optimist.

Nonetheless, politics is the art of the possible and I do not see the conference as either hopeless or useless. Nor, despite my pessimism, do I believe that such pessimism is self-fulfilling. But these points will have to wait for another day since this post is already way too long.

Sooner than you think...

... the Arctic may be free of ice. Last year I remember hearing reports that by 2070, the Arctic ocean may have warmed enough to be ice-free in summer. More recently, I was shocked to hear that on new data, estimates had been moved forward to 2030. The IPCC bases its estimations on an averaged group of models, yet actual observed ice loss in the last few years has been outstripping even the most dire of predictions. In the last week, a report has come out arguing the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in five and a half years: the summer of 2013.

This report doesn't even take into account the data from 2007, which has smashed all previous records.

Of course, the situation is very complex and of course this is only one of a number of different models and of course modelling climate is very difficult. But if you're still not convinced about the reality, importance or likely implications of climate change, I'm curious: what would it take to convince you?

Some world leaders are still not getting the message. Recent reports from the Bali conference (FAQ on Bali conference) indicate that the US, Canada and Japan are all blocking moves to include references to binding targets from the framework document that will guide the post-Kyoto emissions strategy. Here is a global petition, already at 55,000 in just 12 hours, to be delivered on Friday to delegates at the conference.
Fifteen points for correctly naming the body of water in the image above. Hint: I have never been to the Arctic Ocean.

One year on

On this day last year (at about this time), I was diagnosed with cancer, specifically a squameous cell carcinoma of the upper aero-digestive tract (though it took a few weeks to get this specific). I first mentioned this (with more details) back here and set up another blog to keep those interested updated.

I thank God for many things: that I'm still alive (it really wasn't looking good for the first few weeks); for the love and support (and generosity) of so many people over the last year, particularly my wife Jessica; for a wonderful (basically) free public medical system in Australia; for my gradually returning voice; for being able to share my experience with others; and for the chance to reflect with a little more depth and urgency upon death, fear and hope (amongst other things); and for new birth into a living hope, which gives us so much to live for now.

Ten years on
In other news today, Australia has finally ratified the Kyoto protocol, almost a decade after signing it. This was a good first step for Mr Rudd after being sworn in as Australia's 26th Prime Minister yesterday: may there be many more.

Ninety-four years on
And yesterday (2nd December GMT), noted British theologian T. F. Torrance died old and full of years at the age of ninety-four. Torrance's The Trinitarian Faith helped deepen my understanding and worship of Father, Son and Spirit, and along the way undid many prejudices I held against the Nicene Creed. May he rest until resurrection.

Climate Clever-er

Apologies for the slight pause, and for the fact that this will be another Australian-specific post.
The Australian government has, until recently, been run by long-term climate change sceptics. But now, trailing in the polls and with a very concerned electorate, suddenly the (energy-efficient) lightbulb has switched on. Instead of major policy change, we have a $23 million ad campaign selling us the government's credentials and telling us to "be climate clever" by taking simple actions to reduce our domestic energy use, like switching off computers at the wall, using a clothesline rather than the dryer or buying more efficient appliances.

I don't buy it. Personal action is important, but so is policy with teeth. Why don't the big polluters have to pay for their environmental impact? Why do we still not have legislated emissions reduction targets?* Or concrete targets and genuine incentives for renewable energy? By trying to position itself as the sensible middle way between sceptics and 'doomsayers', the government seems to be doing the minimum necessary to give the impression that it cares about this issue without actually doing much. This quote put some things in perspective for me:

...voluntary action is great - but it is not sufficient. When we wanted to stop asbestos being used we just banned it – we didn’t ask people to voluntarily seek alternatives while continuing to subsidise asbestos producers. It’s far simpler to ban new coal fired power stations than it is to convince 20 million people to voluntarily buy green power. It’s easier and cheaper to simply legislate for high energy efficiency standards than it is to voluntarily change 50 million lightbulbs – one at a time. In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter how many energy efficient lightbulbs you install if the Government continues to approve new coal fired power stations and coal mines. It doesn’t matter how good you are at turning off your computer if our Government continues to undermine global action on climate change and the Kyoto protocol.

- Greenpeace Australia blog

And for those with a sense of humour, make sure you check out this clever spoof of the government's ad (for comparison, here is the original ad):
*The lack of specific short-term targets from the opposition doesn't make them much better on this score.
Five points for naming the potential victim of climate change pictured above.