Shrinking the carbon economy
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The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was agreed in 1992. By the UNFCCC’s Kyoto Protocol, adopted at the third session of the Conference of the Parties, in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, the developed countries nations agreed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions relative to levels emitted in 1990.
The objective is, of course, to stabilise the rising concentration of greenhouse gas (GHG) in the atmosphere before this becomes “dangerous”. However, the Kyoto agreement is partial, not going far enough to meet scientifically assessed needs for GHG emission reductions. International convergence Unlike Kyoto, Contraction and Convergence (C&C) - the basis proposed by the Global Commons Institute (GCI) for international agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions – addresses the problem in its entirety. GHG concentrations have been rising for the last 200 years in response to emissions from industry and land use change and are influencing global temperature upwards. At present these trends are towards dangerous rates of climate change as the emissions accumulate in the atmosphere.
The contraction of future emissions globally is required to stabilise concentrations. Climate scientists have called for an emissions level that is at least 60 percent less than the level in 1990. This means that, at rates to be agreed, an international convergence of future shares to this contraction – both gross and per capita – arises by definition.
With C&C, GCI has formalised the options. An example of this can be seen in the diagram. Why the delay? Since such a process is required to achieve the goal of the UNFCCC, and the risks from failure to do this are great, why is there delay? Damage from already altered climate is increasingly apparent, and we are caught in long-term trends that augur worse to come.
The first reason is that the economic wealth and growth we have come to take for granted have been dependent on burning increasing amounts of coal, oil and gas. The GHG emissions from this – weighed as carbon – amount to over 6 billion tonnes a year. This trend continues to rise at 2 percent a year, whereas a fall at around 2 percent a year is required to lessen danger. To deal with this, there is no choice but to substantially decrease dependence on fossil fuels by pursuing clean sources of energy such as solar and wind power. The second reason is that, within this expansion, there has been a marked global economic divergence. Two thirds of the world’s population have only 6 percent of purchasing power in the global marketplace. Most of these people are in the poorer countries. Their GHG emissions still barely register in the global accounts, and they are the most vulnerable to the damage – such as droughts and floods – that global climate change brings. As trends worsen, the growth becomes increasingly uneconomic. To deal with this, the UNFCCC gave rise to a subsidiary agreement – the Kyoto Protocol – in which the wealthy countries are required to lead the technological changes by example, not require emissions control of developing countries, and to assist poorer countries in coping with the opportunity costs that climate change is already causing. However, the United States, the world’s largest emitter of GHGs – 35 percent of accumulated – has refused to support this agreement. The rules are such that now, unless the Russian Federation does support it, the protocol will not be ratified. Per capita shares Under President Clinton the US said that unless the agreement was global it wouldn’t work. The US Senate unanimously passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution in June 1997 to make the point. Since then, President Bush has also accepted arguments saying that controlling emissions must be subordinate to the growth of the US economy.
So in the US and globally, GHG emissions and concentrations, and consequential damage, will continue to rise. This is locking us deeper into the trends towards dangerous rates of climate change, not to mention the trends of increasingly uneconomic growth. As early as 1990 GCI proposed the C&C basis to prevent this deadlock. We presented the first detailed proposals in 1996 and have sustained our effort ever since to increase awareness of C&C. C&C’s main virtues are that it is simple, easy to understand and not random. Governed by the goal of stabilising GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, the model will calculate any rate of contraction. Applying the simple moral within this logic, the model will also calculate any rate of convergence to equal per capita shares globally. Backers and advocates Encouragingly, the uptake of C&C has grown. The proposal has an increasing number of high-level backers and new advocates. Institutions such as the European Parliament, the UK’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the German Advisory Council on Global Change, and large insurers such as Munich Re support and advocate C&C. Very senior figures in the World Council of Churches and the Anglican Communion also positively advocate C&C. The Africa Group of Nations led C&C at the UN climate negotiations in Kyoto in 1997 and are said to be preparing to present it again for the post-Kyoto period. In the UK, Parliament is considering draft legislation for the application of C&C, and the government has shown increasingly willing to consider C&C as the basis of its international strategy for avoiding dangerous climate change. These developments are important to the run-up to the UK's chairmanship of the next G8, its Presidency of the EU, and the UK general election next year. Unless we prefer disaster by international bluff and blackmail, C&C is what the situation requires. Aubrey Meyer is founder and Director of the Global Commons Institute, London. Endorsements of C&C can be seen on the GCI website. --- OneWorld Guest Editorials represent the viewpoint of the authors and not necessarily that of the OneWorld Network. Read and comment on previous Guest Editorials. If you would like to write or suggest a future OneWorld Guest Editorial, please contact miles.litvinoff@oneworld.net or ladi.olorunyomi@oneworld.net. |
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