We Need to Come Together on the Solutions…Progressing to Copenhagen Global Warming Negotiations
- Jake Schmidt
- International Climate Policy Director, Washington, DC
- Blog | About
- Posted April 6, 2009 in Solving Global Warming
We have just completed the first week of international global warming negotiations for 2009 -- held in Bonn, Germany. This is the beginning of the serious negotiations in the lead-in to Copenhagen later this year where the world has committed to reach an agreement. And there were related events occurring in London, UK (the G-20 meeting) and Washington, DC (the Waxman-Markey discussion draft).
This week negotiators were immersed in the details of the international agreement on global warming. And not surprising there were differences of opinion, bold negotiating positions, and posturing. So not everything you hear about this meeting or the statements of countries should be taken as definitive signs of their positions in Copenhagen. Consider some of these the "opening bids".
So those dynamics and the short timeframe to Copenhagen have been starkly in front of me this week.
Coming together with solutions so the boat doesn't sink. Any climate negotiations contain debates about how much action developed countries undertake, how much action do developing countries undertake, and what incentives are provided to help developing countries achieve greater emissions reductions? And that dynamic definitely emerged this week.
So I've been thinking about this debate a lot and here is an analogy I've come up with (I'm sure there are imperfections):
Imagine two people in a rowboat in the middle of a body of water. One person (the bigger one) causes a hole in the floor of the boat...water is now coming into the boat making it start to sink. Sometime later, the other person (the smaller one) causes another hole in the floor of the boat. Water is now coming in even faster and the boat is going to sink very soon. Of course the bigger one is making the boat sink faster and they were the first one to cause a hole in the boat...starting the sinking process. But the smaller one is also in the boat that is sinking. When the boat sinks both are going into the water...together. So they have a choice...argue over whose fault it is that the boat is sinking or work together to scoop out the water as fast as possible and plug the holes.
That is the situation I believe we are in as we are trying to address climate change. The boat is sinking...we have to plug the holes and scoop out the water together or else we both will go into the water.
We need the political leaders at the highest level to come together before Copenhagen for a strong agreement. These climate negotiators will need their leaders to point them in the right direction if we are going to get a strong agreement. It can be done as this meeting witnessed a large number of countries stand up for the world's tropical forests and demand that efforts to reduce these emissions are included in the Copenhagen agreement .
There are a lot of very difficult political decisions that will need to be agreed before and during the Copenhagen meeting. And these will require decisions "above the pay grade" of climate negotiators if we are to have any chance.
A number of venues are emerging for these leaders to start to send the signal that there is space for a strong agreement...that countries are ready to set aside their differences and get into the business of designing the strategy to stop the boat from sinking. These world leaders will be meeting a number of times, including at the Major Economies Forum just announced by President Obama, the G20, the Summit of the Americas, and a number of key bilateral engagements (that will bring together countries representing most of the world's global warming pollution). I hope that time is used wisely.
World Leader's Want an Agreement in Copenhagen. At the recent G20 meeting in London the leaders of the largest 20 economies in the world (and the world's biggest emitters) agreed to the following direction for their negotiators:
But this week suffered a bit from the "twin US dynamic". There is a clear recognition that the US is back. But we are also feeling the impacts of the US negotiators not quite having a specific position -- as it is still early in their term. So that dynamic has played out a bit this week and explains some of the strong positioning of countries and their posturing. They are putting forward their strong opening bids and since the US doesn't have a counter proposal, the opening bid just lingers. I'm optimistic that this dynamic will change quickly as the US will be working to start to outline a position.
The other dynamic that is playing out is the reality that these negotiations are now for real...and countries know that. No longer can they hide behind the fact that the US won't do anything -- as became painfully clear under the past Administration. Those days are thankfully over as the US is moving towards implementing policies to deliver clean energy and global warming solutions.
Greater clarity will emerge in the coming weeks. Countries will be asked to put forward their proposals for the Copenhagen agreement by end of April in order for them to be included in the draft negotiating text. And with the Major Economies Forum holding its first meeting in Washington, DC April 27-28 all countries will have to "start to show their cards". What do they really want? What are they proposing? How much give is there in the current negotiating position? And most importantly, what can we agree in Copenhagen to put the world on the path to solving this challenge?
The rest of this week will help feed into those conversations, but we'll need to quickly get past the posturing and into structuring the strong agreement.
After all, we'll need the leaders of these countries to make the tough decisions for the fate of their country and the world. That is what they are paid to do and that is why they are elected (or appointed) to this position.
And it is becoming painfully clear to me that we'll need the strong leadership of President Obama to change this dynamic. I believe that with this leadership and with Members of Congress the world can still come together and stop the boat from sinking.
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Comments
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. — Apr 6 2009 07:24 PM
The whole ship looks to be in trouble, boats and all. Our whole social system is tied in to the problem. Up to now the the financial community has had the main fixing but this is like cleaning the carburetor when a car has run out of gas. And it ran out of gas because there is a big leak in the gas tank. First fix the leak; that means start believing we can not have what we want until we can pay for it, and perhaps start thinking in terms of real needs that are a bit scaled down from the big cars and houses we came to think of as the "American Dream." Then fill the tank; that means open our minds to innovation that will create products to put in our factories, so workers can have incomes to eventually enable them to fill realistic expectations. Then clean the carburetor; meaning get the gunk out of it that has accumulated from years of running on borrowed money and product hype.
And the car is mired in a swamp that comes from having fouled our nest by excessive energy consumption due to both carelessness and self indulgence; that swamp being primarily the accumulated effect of overloading of the world's capacity to use carbon dioxide, and the accompanying effect of bogging down future growth.
If we are careful and think things through we might fix things in a way that we could end up with a better system overall. The right solutions to these critical problems should be tightly interwoven, and that might get the whole job done.
I sense that the economy is going to drive every country in making decisions for some time to come. I imagine Pres. Obama knows that we have to come quickly to a functioning economy where industrial production is activated and the financial world is set right to support the industrial system. I include housing as part of our industrial system.
The actions of our president in demanding restructure of the auto industry shows that he intends to do just that as far as that auto industry goes. A fix to the financial community seems to be needed first. Perhaps by pretending to not know just how deep the financial crisis goes, that community has sofar avoided a forced restructuring fate like the auto industry is getting. It seems that it will be necessary to brutally deal with obligations due to credit default swaps and derivatives in order to reestablish a financial system that enables industrial vitality. Assuming this is credibly set in motion, we can get on to the question of how to restructure the automobile industry and the housing industry.
It seems that we have overly high expectations. Pres. Obama seems reluctant to say this; of course it will not be a popular message. The glaring fact is that we are no where near as wealthy as we thought we were. We got used to the idea that we deserved to dream of houses and cars far bigger than we really needed, and the financial world was happy to oblige. So how do we reset expectations? A comment recently heard was that Pres. Obama is trying to convince us that everything will soon be allright. He must realize that it will not be the same as before, so he must be thinking of ways to ease us into reality. It might not be something he can do, but the credit crisis could eventually work out to reset expectations. Certainly, credit card defaults will result in less purchasing actions of expensive items.
Europeans have tended to accept smaller cars and housing arrangements. That might be a way of thinking we could adapt to, though American conditions are quite different. Curiously, Europeans seem to choose suburban living when they are able to do so. We came to our suburban living system from an agricultural living system; and still retain our desire for independence and space. If we were to rely on my sense of how things will be, we conclude that the future will continue to be suburban. The American Dream might not be so gilded, but it will continue to provide for individualized housing and personal transportation to go with it. So downsizing our life styles intelligently could be technically possible and politically viable if it respects this concept.
In the context of making things affordable, in the housing world it seems we should think in terms of not only smaller, but also, far better insulated, energy efficient structures. There is opportunity to configure these as energy systems that are far superior than the present unorganized assemblages of hardware.
And personal transportation, still could be based on personal cars, but these could be smaller to suit the way cars are actually used, and energy efficiency could be vastly improved by rethinking very basic concepts. Yes, I know of ways to do such things, but the task for the moment is to plan things such that we will get a lot of ideas going. Then there could be real products that would compete first for American buyers and then could possibly become competitive overseas.
Power generation now depends heavily on the cheapest fuel which is coal. Electric vehicles seem inappropriately popular since they inevitably will exacerbate the use of that cheap coal. I have to suggest however, that the only way electric cars can be a redeemable alternative is if they are concurrently designed to use a very small amount of energy. This is an important issue which seems to be getting quickly cast aside by promoters of electric systems. This is an example of solutions that might not be as they seem and need to be thoroughly considered.
A part of the problem even extends to our electric system. We want to act quickly to stimulate the economy, but it may be that pouring great funds into rebuilding the grid is a poor choice of actions. Sure it is simple way to get a project going quickly, but there could be distributed power generating concepts that would depend on a grid built differently than that currently planned for the expansion.
In the same sense that individuals can not spend as they once did, it seems public expenditures should also examined in light of ability to pay as we go. We should not take the highly hyped but very expensive solar thermal, solar pv, or windmills without serious question. Also, trying to tax coal to the point that it is not the economic fuel choice seems like an impossible sell politically. They may be the most effective way to go but I am not sure and I think they should be compared to less expensive alternatives. Past financial assumptions may be no longer valid. As I say it is critical that we get this right, and getting it right means looking at every reasonable innovative possibility. The need for urgency would limit this to fairly simple things that did not require advancements in science. In short, they would need to be in the realm of engineering, though we have to think well beyond standard handbook systems. But we need to take at least enough time to think things through and get things right.
Hopefully, influential people will bring carefully considered concepts to be put in place with government encouragement, where the outcome of doing things in a new way will result in dramatic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. The real challenge is to find concepts that will enable satisfactory life styles and still use fuel in a way that does not excessively create such emissions.
Pres. Obama has shown himself to be an amazingly insightful leader, capable of getting us through a lot. He seems to show capability to bring together a lot of information and to work out large picture solutions. If things are carefully considered, this team might be able to bring us the right kind of change.