Copenhagen reality check #1: 25% by 2020 isn’t in the ball park
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Columnist David Roberts sees the Copenhagen climate change conference 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”. The dim light that does exists flickers on a target for Australia and the developed economies of reducing emissions by 2020 to 25% below the level of 1990. In Bali two years ago, the European Union proposed a framework that included global emissions peaking in 10–15 years and for developed countries to achieve emissions levels 20–40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The United States, supported by Australia and others, strongly opposed this. In a flood of tears and acrimony, the final Bali session sat through the night to produce a compromise that mandates “deep cuts in global emissions”, with footnote references to the 2007 IPCC report which talks about the developed economies needing to reduce emissions 25 to 40% below 1990 levels to have a reasonable chance of holding warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The Garnaut report quietly dropped the 40% end of the range and mischievously took 25% by 2020 as being a 2-degree target. The Rudd government followed in these footsteps and went for a 25% target, with highly conditional qualifications, in the revised CPRS in May, abetted by the ACTU-led Southern Cross Climate Coalition in May. Now 2 degrees isn’t the sort of target anyone with grandkids should aspire to. 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. You can bet your house that Copenhagen will not conclude with a 25% mandatory target for all the developed economies, but is it what we need to do, or is the whole of the Copenhagen process wrapped in an enormous delusion? In September, researchers from Oxford and Germany’s Potsdam Institute, produced figures on a carbon budget to 2050. In essence, they estimated how much carbon in total can be put in the air to 2050 if the aim is to not exceed 2 degrees. From there it’s not too hard to work out what each country needs to do, and that what’s the Potsdam Institute Director Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber did in his recent presentation to the “4 Degrees and Beyond” conference in Oxford. Assume the present population, and divide it into the total carbon budget and you get a budget per person to 2050. [This is based in the assumption that each citizen of the planet has an equal right to the budget, a proposition disputed by many in the developing world who rightly point to the historic carbon debt on which the developed world built their economies]. Nevertheless, by taking the per capita allocation to 2050 and comparing it to a nation’s current annual emissions per person, you get a clear picture of national responsibilities, and that’s what Schellnhuber did in a single chart:
Australia, like the USA, is top of the pops for per capita emissions. If we maintain that rate, our carbon budget to 2050 runs out in five years. Five years!! Or put in another way, as the chart illustrates, Australia and the USA would need to be at zero emissions by 2020. Just follow the black line. Not 25% by 2020, but 100% by 2020 for Australia. That’s the science, unadorned. God forbid the politics. David Spratt is a climate policy analyst and co-author of Climate Code Red (Scribe 2008). |
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8 Comments
Does anyone really seriously think, considering our current political behaviour, that we will have any chance at all of keeping temperature rise below 2 degrees? Or 4?
As much as I dearly want action to be taken, I can’t even see us making 15% cuts by 2020 let alone 25% … let alone 100%.
We need to start modeling and planning for how to cope with large global temperature change as well as doing our damnedest to cut our emissions. I can’t say I can see many politicians coming out in favour of such planning though, more’s the pity.
I agree with Whatiris. Having reviewed the current draft of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) otherwise known as the Copenhagen Treaty I have some misgivings about potential commitments from both a financial and governance perspective.
The draft treaty states in part that “the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties”… “shall appoint a board” to manage the financial mechanism and the related facilitative mechanism”. The document goes on to state that “Mandatory contributions from developed country Parties and other developed Parties … “should form the core revenue stream for meeting the cost of adaptation”, … and that “Assessed contributions of at least 0.7% of the annual GDP of developed country Parties” shall be payable, “taking into account historical contribution to concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere”.
Signing the treaty in its current form would commit $7 billion per annum to an unelected body with countries like Zimbabwe and North Korea having equal votes whilst contributing virtually nothing. What is the Government’s position on this matter? I am struggling to find any concrete reference to Australia’s position and would like to know where Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong propose to position us in relation to Copenhagen.
Of course the 7 billion is in addition to the cost and the ETS or any other carbon reduction proposals within the country. Whether one a the climate control advocate or sceptic, we need to know both the numbers and the governance processes associated with these proposals.
It is quite obvious that any carbon permit trading scheme involving Third World jurisdictions will be a governance nightmare, with the potential for an unholy alliance of carpetbaggers and corrupt Third World governments to create a situation worsen the GFC.
Furthermore the taxpayers and consumers of Australia have not being acquainted with the long term impact on their standard of living of any carbon reduction proposals as politicians on both sides are in denial concerning the eventual impact. I await further developments with interest.
I agree with Whatiris. Having reviewed the current draft of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) otherwise known as the Copenhagen Treaty I have some misgivings about potential commitments from both a financial and governance perspective.
The draft treaty states in part that “the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties”… “shall appoint a board” to manage the financial mechanism and the related facilitative mechanism”. The document goes on to state that “Mandatory contributions from developed country Parties and other developed Parties … “should form the core revenue stream for meeting the cost of adaptation”, … and that “Assessed contributions of at least 0.7% of the annual GDP of developed country Parties” shall be payable, “taking into account historical contribution to concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere”.
Signing the treaty in its current form would commit $7 billion per annum to an unelected body with countries like Zimbabwe and North Korea having equal votes whilst contributing virtually nothing. What is the Government’s position on this matter? I am struggling to find any concrete reference to Australia’s position and would like to know where Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong propose to position us in relation to Copenhagen.
Of course the 7 billion is in addition to the cost and the ETS or any other carbon reduction proposals within the country. Whether one is a climate control advocate or sceptic, we need to know both the numbers and the governance processes associated with these proposals.
It is quite obvious that any carbon permit trading scheme involving Third World jurisdictions will be a governance nightmare, with the potential for an unholy alliance of carpetbaggers and corrupt Third World governments to create a situation wors than the GFC.
Furthermore the taxpayers and consumers of Australia have not being acquainted with the long term impact on their standard of living of any carbon reduction proposals as politicians on both sides are in denial concerning the eventual impact. I await further developments with interest.
Yep, I agree with the comments listed above. The environmental movement do themselves no favours when they hit the “Oh my god” button. Shock tactics don’t work in the boardrooms and parliaments of the world. For any meaningful plan to successfully mitigate climate change, they need the US (and to a lesser extent, Australia) to be part of it. By coming up with reduction figures that would destroy the economy of the US (and by proxy, the rest of us), they remove themselves from any real debate. Yes the world might be doomed, but it might not be as well. Lets get a plan together that doesn’t begger us all and starts the long gradual process of removing carbon emissions from the atmosphere..
@Scott - Problem is, what I’m saying is that not only is it probably too late to avoid very severe economic effects through timely mitigation but that we lack the will even to acknowledge that this is the case.
What the scientists are saying when they outline savage cuts necessary to avoid significant climate change is “here’s how we could avoid really serious climate change.” They’re also implicitly saying “if we’re not prepared to make those cuts, we’d better start thinking about the consequences.”
Unfortunately at present we’re considering neither the cuts nor the consequences.
Hey Scott, since when is peer-viewed science “shock tactics”? It’s simply what we have to do to achieve what the politicians say there want to do: keep warming to 2 degrees. Now the best promises of all governments around the world at present, if implemented, will mean warming of 3.5 degrees, so the current debate is delusional. At least we have the right to know that. And 2 degrees in the end will probably wipe out most of us and most species over time. That’s not shock tactics either, just a sober assessment of where we are and where we appear to be going.
The world seems to have divided into two camps. Those who are willing to start doing whatever it takes right now, immediately, regardless of the personal or communal pain. This might be what Scott calls the environmental movement. Then there is the other camp. The other camp is not willing to do anything just yet. It might do something tomorrow, maybe, or after Copenhagen maybe, or when some of its number are finally convinced next year or next decade or when the waves start breaking on the front lawn. It contains those who are concerned about what will happen to the world economy, the next election, the housing market, employment, the cricket, the poor and just about every other cause or effect that is out there (out here). It’s a pretty big camp including every single person who is not willing to start doing whatever it takes beginning immediately, right now, today. It also includes every sceptic, denier, wingnut or ratbag and all those hangers-on who don’t know where they stand, don’t want to stand up and aren’t willing to join the “environmental movement”.
“If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs, then perhaps you have misjudged the situation.”
- C.S. Friedman)