Deferring Climate Action

Depending on one's perspective on climate change, last week's events provided either a series of predictable disappointments or a temporary breather, before our expected plunge into a world of constrained emissions. The statement on climate change from the G8 Summit in Hokkaido, Japan, and the subsequent "Major Economies Meeting" reflected only incremental progress since 2005's Gleneagles G-8 meeting and last year's Bali Climate Conference. And although the announcement that the EPA would effectively defer regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act until the next administration was overshadowed by allegations that Vice President Cheney had interfered with Congressional testimony on the health risks of climate change, the former should not have shocked anyone. On the heels of the latest failure of US cap & trade legislation, it was not in the cards for 2008 to be more than a transition year for action on climate change, and that view has been borne out.

Lacking the time or space to comment on all of the implications of these actions, I'd like to focus on the principal complaint I've seen concerning the G8's contribution, to the effect that their stated target of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 falls far short of what would be necessary to stabilize the climate. I would suggest that at this point setting any global emissions target and then starting to work towards it is more important than the absolute level of the goal. Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases at their current level would apparently require reductions on the order of 80%, but whatever target we set now for 2050 is unlikely to be the last word, and even more unlikely to be achieved with precision. We will ultimately either undershoot, because global emissions are now growing so rapidly that it will take longer and cost more to halt and reverse this trend than we hope, or we will overshoot, because the world will change so much in the next 42 years that a 50% reduction will prove to have been ridiculously timid.

Consider 1966, removed from us by the same interval as the world of 2050, and the sorts of predictions that were then current regarding the 21st century--predictions rooted firmly in the dominant technologies and institutions of the day. By now all air travel should take place in sumptuous luxury aboard supersonic aircraft. Rather than lumbering along with gasoline engines, our cars should zoom down the roads on nuclear batteries and occasionally even fly. Recessions and credit crises should be a relic of the past, as gigantic mainframe computers guide the economy with total accuracy. And don't forget the colony on the moon. For good or ill, we didn't get those outcomes. Instead, we got ubiquitous real-time information and communications via wireless PCs, cellphones and the Internet, and the beginnings of unprecedented medical and materials revolutions based on DNA-level biotech and nanotechnology. In addition, the world's population has grown by about a half billion fewer people than once expected, making some of our current problems less severe than they would have been. I see little reason to conclude that the next four decades will be any less surprising and prediction-thwarting than the last four. That doesn't mean we should punt on climate change and wait for a miracle, but it does suggest that focusing our first steps firmly on the next 10-20 years makes more sense than bogging down in arguments about a longer-term future we can't forecast.

Few things about climate change are certain, including the level of our emissions in 2050. However, at this point we do know that the roadmap set forth in Bali last December, and resting on the findings of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, continues to guide the negotiations on a new global climate agreement. Although the shape of the ultimate compromise between the developed and developing economies--the sine qua non of a meaningful successor to the Kyoto Protocol--remains unclear, the key parties at least seem to be willing to tackle it. And we know that on January 20, 2009, a new US administration will take office with climate change as a top priority from day one.

Warming Targets

Climate change policy is very much in the news these days, and it's been interesting to observe the intense focus by the media and commentators on the differences among various parties on this issue: the US, EU and China; the Administration and Congress; and the states and the federal government. As a practical matter, these differences must be bridged, or at least addressed, in order for meaningful action on climate change to occur. But while these gaps can't be ignored, they shouldn't blind us to the remarkable convergence that has emerged on the broader aspects of the issue--something that seemed nearly unattainable only a few years ago. It's also worth applying a little common sense to how we regard the remaining points of disagreement.

Although last week's announcement on climate change by President Bush is seen by many as too little, too late, it is noteworthy that he now embraces the idea of a global goal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, encompassing not just the current signatories to the Kyoto Protocol but all the world's large emitters. Unless the US and the large developing economies participate in a global effort to reduce emissions, the Kyoto process is doomed to fail, as the countries bound by it account for an ever smaller fraction of future emissions. Even the EU, which has implemented sweeping measures to manage greenhouse gases, will not meet its target to reduce emissions to 8% below 1990 levels without significant new steps. So while cynics might see the President's proposal as a gambit to undermine the mandate of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change--under the auspices of which Kyoto was established--it is clear that the focus must now be on the post-2012 period not covered by Kyoto, and on bringing the US, China and India to the table with the EU, in whatever venue they can all convene.

The differences between the US administration and the EU are magnified by the current G-8 meeting underway in Germany. The host government, supported by other EU members, has proposed a target of reducing emissions to a level that would prevent exceeding a 2 degree Celsius increase in temperature versus pre-industrial levels. Neither the US nor China will accept such a limit, for reasons that I find eminently sensible. While the appeal of the 2 deg. target is understandable, the inertia of our past emissions and present capital stock make achieving it look like a real stretch. Even at an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 400-475 ppm, a level we look almost certain to reach within the next several decades, a variety of climate models suggest we could exceed the 2 deg. goal. That goal has other problems, not the least being that we're already about halfway there. For that matter, it's not entirely clear that it makes sense to use as a baseline a period when temperatures were rebounding from the "Little Ice Age," a real phenomenon that was not invented by deniers of global warming. A goal based either on an absolute level of emissions or atmospheric CO2 concentration seems much more useful, given the range of uncertainties in the correlation between either of those and actual temperature.

Meanwhile, a draft House bill on climate change would derail efforts by states to limit their own emissions independently of a federal target, and China continues to point to inequities in per-capita emissions as a "get out of jail free" argument on emissions reductions. Call me naive, but I don't see how we are going to get past all these differences unless we start from where we concur: the planet is warming, due in large part to our emissions, and this is a global, not a regional or local problem. That much agreement seems finally to be in place, and we ought to build on it in whatever venue will move the ball down the field.