countdown to copenhagen
3 Nov 2009
Please Adjust Your Expectations
With leading climate scientists in agreement that the targets on the table are too low, there's doubt hanging over Copenhagen, writes David Spratt
Right now, the global community is supposed to be negotiating an agreement to contain greenhouse gas emissions to manageable levels. With less than five weeks until the Copenhagen summit, however, the major players are stuck in an elaborate game of 'chicken'.Maybe that's the nature of diplomacy, but some have already written off the December meeting's capacity to produce a detailed agreement. Sir David King and Lord Stern are among many luminaries saying no deal is better than a bad deal. British economist Jeffrey Sachs agrees, warning against "a toothless agreement that could be more posturing than progress".
Columnist David Roberts sees the negotiating process so far as akin to "an aquarium full of hamsters connected to rudimentary motors. There's a lot of frantic running, a lot of sweat and heat, but in the end, very little light".
A more significant — and worrying — assessment comes from European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso who cautions the "draft text contains some 250 pages: a feast of alternative options, a forest of square brackets... If we don't sort this out, it risks becoming the longest and most global suicide note in history".
Europe's leading climate scientist, Potsdam Institute Director Hans Joachim Schellnuber, says the chance of getting a decent deal at this "most important meeting in the history of the human species" is pie in the sky because rich countries like America are unwilling to sign up to ambitious enough targets. "In a sense the US is climate illiterate", he concludes.
The question of "ambitious enough targets" is one that has vexed climate negotiations. With climate scientists and commentators pessimistic about the possibility of reaching an agreement in Copenhagen at all, there's a growing consensus that the targets on the table are politically determined goals, and sit at odds with the science.
For two decades, climate negotiations have been focused on policy targets aimed at preventing global warming exceeding 2 degrees Celsius — which is said to be a level of greenhouse gases not exceeding 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent (ppm CO2e). This goal — preventing global warming exceeding 2 degrees — is one which is being carried to Copenhagen.
The research tells us that a 2 degree warming will initiate large climate feedbacks on land and in the oceans, on sea-ice and mountain glaciers and on the tundra, taking the Earth well past significant tipping points. Likely impacts include large-scale disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheets; sea-level rises; the extinction of an estimated 15 to 40 per cent of plant and animal species; dangerous ocean acidification and widespread drought, desertification and malnutrition in Africa, Australia, Mediterranean Europe, and the western USA.
As Schellnhuber, who is a scientific advisor to the EU and to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, points out, on sea levels alone, a 2 degree rise in temperature will be catastrophic: "Two degrees ... means sea level rise of 30 to 40 meters over maybe a thousand years. Draw a line around your coast — probably not a lot would be left." Just-published research on climate history shows that three million years ago — in the last period when carbon dioxide levels were sustained at levels close to where they are today — "there was no icecap on Antarctica and sea levels were 25 to 40 metres higher," features associated with temperatures about 3 to 6 degrees higher than today.
It's a grand illusion that that 2 degrees and 450ppm is a reasonable target, and one that Copenhagen will not dispel.
Yet 29 of the world's leading scientists — including Will Steffen of the ANU, who has been advising Penny Wong's department — have now specified less than 350 ppm CO2 as a "safe boundary" for the planet in the most significant peer-reviewed paper of the year. And it's not hard to argue that the target needs to be a good bit less than that. As Schellnhuber has noted: "Perhaps it will not matter whether we have 270ppm or 320ppm, but operating well outside the [historic] realm of carbon dioxide concentrations is risky as long as we have not fully understood the relevant feedback mechanisms."
Yet an agreement with teeth that would actually limit warming to even 2 degrees seems most unlikely at Copenhagen. A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme finds that the world will warm by 3.5 degrees Celsius by century's end — even if every country enacts all climate legislation it has promised to enact to date. It will require bold political leadership to reach an agreement, this year or next, which gets anywhere near a safe climate scenario. The alternative was sketched in grim detail at the recent '4 Degrees and Beyond' conference at Oxford.
Another way of measuring Copenhagen's success will be to examine its capacity to agree to actions that will allow global emissions to peak in the next decade or sooner — a move which is required to meet a 2-degree target.
Yet a quick look at what's on the table suggests this will not be the case. Even if Annex 1 countries agree to cut emissions 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and if the large industrialising nations moderate their emissions growth by 2 per cent, the overall result will still be emissions in 2020 that are 10 to 20 per cent higher than now. That's because global emissions this decade have grown 3.5 per cent annually, excluding the last year because of the recession.
The brutal reality, easily displayed by analysing recent work on the global carbon budget to 2050, is that even if global emissions reduce 2 per cent a year from now on, the carbon budget for 2 degrees will run out in 2030. Nothing on the negotiating table gets remotely near the figure suggested by Martin Parry of Imperial College London and co-chair of the IPCC's impacts working group that a 2-degree target "would require cuts of 6 per cent per year starting in 2010".
In view of the disparity between policy goals and science, it's easy to understand why the leading climate scientist in the United States, James Hansen, says that "We've reached a point where we have a crisis, an emergency, but people don't know that... There's a big gap between what's understood about global warming by the scientific community and what is known by the public and policymakers." Hans Joachim Schellnhuber also sounds a gloomy note: "we are on our way to a destabilisation of the world climate that has advanced much further than most people or their governments realise," he writes.
And in June 2008 Ross Garnaut wrote that "an observation of daily debate and media discussion in Australia could lead one to the view that this issue is too hard for rational policy-making in Australia. The issues are too complex, the vested interests surrounding it too numerous and intense, the relevant time-frames too long".
Is there any way to dispel the clouds of doubt hanging over Copenhagen? A good start would be a clear indication by the major participants that they will negotiate based on the science. They must accept that even those who have won political games in their own nations do not have the capacity to negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry.
Copenhagen — or more likely, a clean-up summit next year — can succeed if the scientific imperatives take centre stage. We face a climate emergency that requires emergency action. Pretending that the current approach to international negotiations can solve the issue is part of the denial about the climate catastrophe that awaits if the game isn't played very differently, very, very soon by politicians — and by people who have the capacity to exhibit truly transformative leadership.
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This is nothing we have not known for years. The truth is that, as ever, the weight of money that the psychopathic Right can bring to bear has carried the day, yet again, but for one of the last times. As we have seen, over and over again, with regard to tobacco harm, or the dangers of asbestos, or flogging infant formula in the poor world, as far as business and the Right are concerned, profit comes first.
The anthropogenic climate change denialist industry, learning from the tobacco harm denial industry, and even recruiting some of the apparatchiki of that enterprise, decided to follow the tried and true tactics of confusion and disinformation. So, utilising the millions at their diposal from fossil fuel interests and Rightwing bllionaire idelogues, they have paid for mountains of pseudo-science, disinformation and rank lies. Moreover, in their master-stroke, they called on the apparatus of the Rightwing media and its bestiary of cynical and amoral disinformationists, to rally the Rightwing rabble to the fray. Simply painting climate change as a ‘Left’ or ‘Green’ concern, was enough to have the Rightwing mob slavering, as if they had heard Dr Pavlov’s tocsin. Naturally, this being the Right, the habitual paranoid delusions of ‘Communist’ conspiracies soon emerged, along with furious denunciations of ‘one-world government’ and that bete-noire, transfers of money to the poor. Can the ‘black helicopters’ be far behind?
Of course we know this sort of Rightwing group hysteria and furious venting of rage and hatred from history. Indeed we can see it today in the Liberals all-too-easy resort to stoking the fires of racism and xenophobia over boat-people. It never fails, because the Right can always rely on that portion of the populace who are driven by hatred, rage and fear. The great difference is that this time, because the mentally challenged and morally insane fraction of the public would rather gain their scientific understanding from Andrew Bolt, Janet Albrechtsen and her new idol ‘Baron Monckhausen of that ilk’than from the scientific community (who they hate for being ‘know-it-alls’)and because our ‘democratic capitalist’ politicians serve only the money power, or else, we are stuffed. Talk of ‘tipping-points’ is ‘whistling past the graveyard’. They are long in the past. It’s the ‘point of no return’ we must fear, and it is nigh.
Mulga Mumblebrain’s self-indulgent hard-left rant might make him or her feel good, but it is not going to do any good where it most counts - in convincing the middle ground of Australian public opinion that we should take the mounting climate crisis seriously, for the sake of all our children. Mulga’s letter is a perfect case study of the dysfunctionality of much of the climate crisis public discussion in this country - such contributions only serve to alienate and frighten ordinary voters in the middle. If the choice is between Barnaby Joyce and Stephen Fielding versus Mulga Mumblebrain, a lot of perplexed and fearful ordinary people might legitimately prefer the former alternative, foolish as it is.
I commend David Spratt on his informative, sane and balanced article. Like me, David is aiming to persuade the sensible middle ground of Australian political discourse that there is still time to do something to protect our children. I like his optimism in spite of so many negative scientific indications. We have no alternative but to keep trying to get serious climate change policy options up for public consideration. Intemperate rants like Mulga’s here don’t help at all.
- "and by people who have the capacity to exhibit truly transformative leadership".
Fine sentiments in this article with which I concur.If wishes were fishes we would all cast our nets in the sea.However,it is most unlikely that we will get the required leadership from either Labor or the Liberals.Obviously a political revolution is needed.Can anyone see that happening given the conservative(as in backward) nature of the electorate?
There is a great talk fest going on about CCS,carbon trading and international negotiations.Fundamentally this is all about continuing business as usual whilst appearing to care and maybe do something.
When business as usual is no longer possible and that is obvious to the very last booster who can draw breath that is when we might see transformative leadership.But that will be just a tad too late.
Mulga Mumblebrain’s self-indulgent hard-left rant was to my mind right on the money. But then I expect nothing to change and a good rant will be all that is left to enjoy. Tony Kevin’s middle ground has a snowflakes chance in hell(and maybe soon on earth)up against the vested interests. When the advice of the vast majority of climate scientists can be casually dismissed in the large sections of the mainstream media then what chance the middle ground knowing what to believe.
Personally, I incline towards the wisdom of the sages rather than of the modern minnows:
Amongst the learned madmen may be numbered (I think) also those that determine of the time of the world’s end, and other such points of prophecy.
—Thomas Hobbes: The Elements of Law, 1640
GraemeF, vested interests in the end are open to reasoned argument because they have a self-interest here too, once they can be brought to see it. Vested interests are people, who have children and grandchildren too. We are not talking about monsters here. It is an issue of congealed, lazy and frightened minds. (Read Monbiot’s important latest piece in the Guardian on climate denialism). The role of New Matilda, it seems to me, is to reach out and persuade through reasoned ethical argument - not to abude and polarise people into hostile camps. If we are to respond effectively as a species to disruptive climate change, we need to be able to talk together with all the interests and views involved. There is too much at stake here for ideological name-calling.
tonykevin, I hold you and your work in very high respect, and agree in general with what you say.
While I have yet to read Monbiot’s article, I think it would be foolish to assume the benevolent mindset of all industry leaders, which COULD in some cases coincide with that shown by the Chief Executives of the tobacco industry, who all did not hesitate to inform an inquiry that they had no evidence of inconvenient research that was later proved they did in fact have.
Since we no longer have a middle of the road party like the Democrats to "keep them honest" we need a strategy. I wish I could think of one!
CSIRO SPRS (retired)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/02/climate-change-denia…
Monbiots article.
" The debate about global warming that’s raging on the internet and in the rightwing press does not reflect any such debate in the scientific journals."
But it seems to be working. More and more people are accepting the false information paraded as science because more and more of the bullshit is out there.
ecoeng, as our resident engineer on things not tree hugging, I have been trying to find out more on the Integral Fast Reactors. All I can find is the main proponents and therefore recipients of government funding, spouting the benifits of a reactor that will substantially reduce the half life of waste. I can find that Bill Clinton dropped the programme due to expense but I can’t find any serious criticism of the actual process apart from some rumours of fudging results.
Apart from stories of scary sodium, can you direct me to anywhere that has a laymans analysis of the pros and cons?
It seems to me that despite the costs that this system might be a solution to a lot of currently intractable waste that would otherwise have to be spent as munitions.
Tony Kevin, in my opinion, represents another denialism. The denialism of those with good intentions who still imagine, or pretend that they imagine, that the hard, psychopathic, Right is amenable to reason and persuasion. I invite any who entertain this delusion to read Janet Albrechtsen’s trade-mark denialist rant this week where she ‘exposed’the entirety of climate change science as a gigantic ‘scam’. Apparently, on the Right, and not just the loony extreme, the IPCC, all the Academies of Science of the planet, all the learned societies etc, are part of a gigantic conspiracy to befuddle the masses and institute one-world government.
While Kevin and the bien pensants of the polite Left are waiting for the public to see through this insane Rightwing paranoia, the fate of humanity is being settled. A typical Rightwing campaign of hysterical disinformation, outright lying and character assassination of the world science community, and even science itself, including the concept of ‘peer review’, has succeeded yet again. Only this time the result will not be over a million dead in Iraq, or vicious, racist, legislation aimed at destroying Aboriginal society or even billions in tax cuts and superannuation rorts for the rich. This time, quite plainly, the Rightwing victory means mass death on an unprecedented scale.
The easy, almost uncontested victory of the Right in winning the kulturkampf over anthropogenic climate change tells me two things. Once again the polite ‘Left’ have shown themselves too gutless to even tell the truth about the enemy. Where the hardore of professional denialists in the media and Rightwing propaganda are, in my opinion, plainly people of perfidious and wicked character, prepared to do anything to protect certain economic interests and to win the ultimate Pyrrhic victory over the Left and the detested ‘greenies’, their opposition still fights with one hand behind its back. They still call these creatures ‘sceptics’, when no scepticism is involved, simply ideological fanaticism so pathological that even the fate of billions becomes mere ‘collateral damage’. And secondly, we are reminded yet again that ignorance, paranoia and stupidity are far more widely distributed in our community than their opposites. The level of rank stupidity, crass ignorance and risible arrogance displayed by the denialist rabble would bring one to tears of mirth, if the consequences were not so dire, and, now, inevitable.
Thank you David for a well written article. Whilst people like myself will be disappointed by Copenhagen it will surely be overwhelmed by the disappointment and regret more widely felt later as, far from having addressed emissions and climate change, we learn that our leaders nutted out agreements aimed to do as little as possible over as long a time span as possible. The political pressure to do no more than the least our least developed trading partners are prepared to do and with loopholes that bulk coal carriers can navigate through looks to be overwhelming.
Given this is a global issue, resort to the standard tactics used to rouse people to sacrifice the good life now for the sake of a secure future - Nationalistic fervor, xenophobic fears, ethnic and religious hatred - look to be wholly inappropriate. At least to those urging action rather than inaction.
Of course early and concerted action would see us avoid having to make enormous sacrifices but ‘early’ was a decade or more ago and far from starting to put on the brakes we have governments more active in further developing and exploiting our fossil fuel resources than in any policy shift that might devalue them.
Whilst I agree with much Mulga says, I think that without unilateral efforts - without this getting well beyond a Left versus Right stoush - the results will go on being disappointing. There are people on the Right who take this seriously and over time I expect they will prevail. When they do they’ll have room for genuine alternative policy such as commitment to nuclear energy - although we may even see the ALP taking that plunge ahead of Coalition given the ground the Right has to catch up. All out attacks by the Left on the Right over this won’t win the hearts and minds of those with Right leanings and I think the Left, particularly within the ALP, has much to answer for their part in the ineffective policies currently out there.
The Greens are the only ones that treat this issue with the true seriousness it deserves but I think their unwavering anti-nulclear stance is an achilles heel as people like myself reconsider the options for serious emissions reduction and the risks that come with nuclear energy.
I’ll hope that solutions to the problems of energy storage and distribution inherent in renewables get resolved but the inertia - outright denialism mostly - of Australia’s energy sector will probably leave us unprepared and unable to avoid direct replacement of coal plants with nuclear as it passes from the realms of future crisis to panic stations.
Well, if the Four Corners programme (9.11.09) shown on Monday evening is anything to go by, Australia will be hard-pressed to contribute a united front, thanks to those all-knowing sages belonging to the Liberal Party.