Brinksmanship has become so
commonplace at environmental
summits that much of the
pre-conference posturing is actually
a
matter of jockeying for position.
Delegates from various countries
argue for months over details, but
wait until the very last minute before
settling on a final position.
So while a great deal of negotiating
remains to be done, the odds are
good that the upcoming meeting of
signatories to the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change will
result in a binding agreement, which
should include binding limits to the
amount of greenhouse gases
released by developed countries.
To be sure, many differences remain
among the principle actors. The
European Union (EU) has proposed
that by the year 2010 emissions
should be reduced to 15 per cent
below levels emitted in 1990
considered the benchmark year. The
US wants the targets for 2010 to be
equal to 1990 levels. Host Japan,
meanwhile, has put forward a
compromise position of five per cent
below the benchmark.
The US proposal has been
lambasted as rather stingy by
environmentalists, especially since
all
developed countries were supposed
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
to 1990 levels by the year 2000
anyway under voluntary guidelines.
Americans tend to have distinct
feelings of reverence for the private
automobile, and consider petrol taxes
to be akin to blasphemy, hence their
contribution of roughly 25 per cent
to
global warming.
The Europeans, on the other hand,
can be accused of grandstanding.
They have asked to be judged as a
single entity and two of the EU's
biggest members, Germany and
Britain, have benefitted from good
timing on this issue: the former East
Germany was largely
de-industrialised soon after 1990,
and much of England's coal industry
was scrapped. Japan, meanwhile, is
a victim of bad timing. It has long
promoted energy efficiency and
nuclear power, and will find further
cuts in fossil fuel use more difficult
to
achieve.
So there will be a good deal of
parlaying in Kyoto, but observers
would be wise not to get too caught
up with the numbers being thrown
around. Even if the US and Japan
agree to the stricter cuts proposed
by
Europe, that would still not be
enough to halt global warming,
according to the best scientific
estimates. That would require at least
a 20 per cent cut below 1990 levels
as proposed by a group of island
states who fear being overwhelmed
by rising sea levels and the
proposed limits would not affect
developing countries, who now
account for about a third of the
world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Herein lies another key issue: what
will be the role of developing
countries in combatting global
warming? Currently, they need not
even make voluntary cuts in their
emissions. But the US is demanding
''meaningful participation" from
developing countries or at least
from
some of the richer ones in return
for
its agreement to adopt binding limits.
In particular, American businessmen
fear that energy-intensive industries
will flee to countries like China and
India, where they will be free to use
all the fossil fuels they want. But
there is also an environmental issue
here: China, after all, is the second
largest producer of carbon dioxide
(India is the fifth largest) and is
expected to overtake the US in total
carbon emissions over the next two to
three decades. Developing countries
have so far rejected such demands.
They argue, quite rightly, that
developed countries are largely
responsible for the buildup of carbon
in the atmosphere and fear, rather
hysterically, that industrialised
countries are trying to strangle their
development with environmental
rules.
In fact, developing countries should
agree to take some kind of step in
Kyoto, if only a vague one, to show
their commitment to solving this
problem. Perhaps it could come in the
form of an agreement to start talks
on
what their ultimate responsibilities
should be, or even an agreement to
phase in some voluntary emission
limits.
In this vein, a senior Thai
environment official recently
suggested that a grouping of richer
and bigger developing countries
such as China, India, South Korea,
Singapore, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina
and Israel should somehow be set
up to undertake commitments
separate from other countries in the
developing world.
This makes a lot of sense, of course,
since it is ridiculous for the
convention to treat all developing
countries the same. Growing
industrial powers like China are in
a
completely different position from,
say, poor countries in Africa, and the
interests of small island states like
the Maldives are directly opposed to
major fossil fuel producers such as
Saudi Arabia.
Thai environment officials are due to
announce their policies for the
climate change summit this week,
and it would be courageous of them
to come out in support of
differentiating between developing
nations. But it is more likely the South
will try to stick together in Kyoto,
at
least publicly, in an effort to force
the
North to accept mandatory emissions
limits.
Developed countries should agree to
these limits, and not only because it
would be fair, or because they need
to show leadership (both valid points)
but also for a more practical reason:
industrialised countries are in a far
better position to develop sustainable
alternatives to fossil fuels.
Currently, the two main alternatives
for energy are hydro-electric dams
and nuclear power plants. These
technologies generate far more
opposition in developing countries
like Thailand than fossil fuels do,
which is probably why you don't hear
too many Thai grass-roots activists
talking about global warming.
Forcing rapidly industrialising Asian
countries to limit greenhouse gas
emissions now would essentially
push them to go nuclear. China is
already doing so for other
environmental reasons its reliance
on coal-fired power plants has led to
terrible air pollution problems.
There are energy production
alternatives out there which could
potentially be more popular and
environmentally-friendly solar
power, wind power, hydrogen fuel
cells but at the moment they are
all
too expensive or impractical.
Reducing their cost requires putting
these technologies into mass
production, but first they need to be
developed more, and Japan, Europe
and North America are the only
places that have the R&D base to
do
that.
One way or another, limiting
greenhouse gas emissions should
eventually raise the cost of using
fossil fuels (to use
''economist-speak", it should
internalise the externality of global
warming). Since building new dams
isn't really viable in most developed
countries, and nuclear power is
highly unpopular, developed
countries facing emission limits will
hopefully be pushed into developing
more renewable energy sources. In
fact, the draft US proposals for Kyoto
include a US$5 billion budget for
developing clean-energy
technologies.
Of course, the stricter the emission
limits, the greater the incentive to
find
alternatives.
But whatever those limits are, the
mere fact that they are binding will
constrain the market for fossil fuels,
and forever change the world we live
in.