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G8 climate discussion a tough story to sell
The G-8 Summit has come and gone. Did you miss it?
I'm not surprised. It has been hard to process international diplomacy through the haze of stories about Michael Jackson's legacy; Jon and Kate's divorce and, almost as frivolous, Judge Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark.
Hey, the new Harry Potter movie is coming out, who want's to talk about global warming?
I know how you feel.
But let's take a look back at what some will call a turning point in the fight against global warming. The hard part is figuring out which way we're turning.
Those who think we are turning the right way can point to the fact that, with American leadership, the influential international group agreed to significant, if far-off, reductions in carbon output. The developed nations agreed to cut emissions by 80 percent by 2050 saying the world overall should cut carbon output 50 percent in the same time frame. Perhaps more important, the agreement brings India and China into the framework.
Those who were disappointed by the summit point to the fact that vague language and distant goals will make it easy for the big polluters -- especially the United States -- to slip out of their obligations. Hopefully some of these errors can be mended when climate-change discussions resume in Denmark in December.
The BBC has done a good job covering this. You can go to their site and read the full text of the Energy and Climate Declaration, read about UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's surprisingly undiplomatic reaction, or review James Robbins' brief analysis.
Here's my analysis.
Until now, the industrialized nations have been like a bunch of boys, standing around a pond, peeing into the water. It's rude. It's dirty. But they don't care. After a while, the big developing nations -- China and India in particular -- show up. And they're peeing into the pond too. Why? Well, everybody else is doing it.
Then we realized that all this carbon -- or pee, if you want to continue with the potty-mouth metaphor -- is causing a global calamity. The industrialized nations turn to the developing nations and say, "Wow, we've got to do something about all this pee. Let's slow this down." China and India say, "Hey, you've been peeing here for decades and now you want us to stop? That's not fair."
Carbon-reduction agreements have been bedeviled by this, "You can't make us stop when we're just getting started" roadblock. The G-8 Summit made some progress on this front, bringing China and India into the discussions in a positive way.
But an even more positive development is China's self-interested move into green technologies. As the always inciteful Thomas Friedman writes in his New York Times column:
"Yes, you might think that China is only interested in polluting its way to prosperity. That was once true, but it isn’t anymore. China is increasingly finding that it has to go green out of necessity because in too many places, its people can’t breathe, fish, swim, drive or even see because of pollution and climate change."
China's challenge to us in green technology is a very positive development in the fight against climate change. Now we need to respond.
Comments
Background: I am an MAI graduate, PhD in physics from Cornell University, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Emeritus Reserach Director at Sandia National Laboratories and currently chief architect at a major computing company. I only pass that on to establish my bona fides.
Now as to your blogs, I am disappointed to see folks outside the intellectual smog of Washington, Boston, NY City, and LA who have bought into one of the greatest cases of mass hysteria in the history of the world. Evidence is becoming greater day by day that the human influence on climate is negligible. Most serious physicists who have looked closely at the data and the models are not satisfied that they support the current CO2-based warming hypotheses. Unfortunately, a relatively small number of government funded scientists around the world are in the thrall of the IPCC who have a clear geo-political motive. Those "political" scientists have the ear of the international community and are using it effectively to spread fear. At the same time there is a quiet revolution going on in the scientific community in which scientific societies are reconsidering the evidence. At this point, far more scientists who have actually looked at the known facts are skeptical of the IPCC claims than support those claims. Why is that important? It is important because we are about to put a massive millstone on the international economic system called cap-and-trade. C&T will be followed by other equally off-point legislation that hurt American economic well being and that have NO effect whatsoever on climate change. The ultimate irony is that most people who are looking at it in detail think that, overall, life on earth improves if we warm up 5-10 degrees F on average. Of course, as an "eskimo" from the North Country, I won't like it as well. I consider myself an environmentalist. As an environmentalist, I will concentrate my actions on things that matter like the Adirondack Conservancy and cleaning up stack emissions and preventing the movement of exotic insect species into our country. I will not support meaningless climate follies that have no impact except to hurt our naiton and human society in general and that will ultimately destroy the credibility of environmentalists when the facts are eventually all on the table-- as they will be within a decade.
Posted by: Adirondack Will | November 4, 2009 9:23 AM