Representatives of over 190 countries at a climate change summit in Paris came to a historic agreement on 12th December… or so they tell us. Is it enough to save the world?
The stakes are high. The risk to the human race is that if global warming continues, extreme weather patterns will get worse until many parts of the world are uninhabitable – while others will be underwater as the warmer world melts the polar ice caps. The risk to the capitalists who run the world is that stopping carbon emissions threatens their profits and therefore their political hold over humanity.
What key points were agreed?
•Global temperatures Scientists had advised that the world was on the way to a three or four degrees Centigrade rise in average temperature and hoped politicians would agree to keep the rise down to two degree rise. The Agreement includes a commitment to keep the rise in average temperature “well below” two degrees and to try to keep it down to one and a half degrees. However, there is no agreement on how this will be done. •Verdict: Spin, not substance
•Greenhouse gas emissions Scientists had advised that the increasing rate of these emissions cause global warming. By decreasing emissions or by finding ways to absorb emitted gases, scientists believe the only safe solution is to emit no more gas than the planet can re-absorb. The Agreement admitted that emissions of greenhouse gases are continuing to rise. It committed the world to stop this increase “as soon as possible” and then to reduce emissions to safe levels by 2050. It is not at all clear that the world will survive that long without serious damage occurring: some scientists are saying that unless substantial reductions are achieved in the next five years (not 35) there will be serious damage to the planet. •Verdict: Spin, not substance
•Climate finance A key hurdle which has got in the way of agreement in previous years is the question of who will fund the measures which need to be taken to stop global warming. In Paris, the richer countries agreed to fund changes which the developing countries have to make if they are all going to meet their targets. There is a specific pledge to provide $100 billion of funds in the next five years (not legally binding, though), and a general commitment to find more money after that. International pledges to find money have been unreliable in the past. The Agreement does not make clear what will happen if one of the richer countries defaults. What will happen to the money? If the rich countries develop cleaner technologies and sell them to the developing countries, which they use this funding to buy them, the rich countries will just get their money back again. This doesn’t sound that generous and it’s also economically a bit risky as the strategy involves the rich countries manufacturing products and then paying for them themselves. •Verdict: Spin, not substance
•Time to talk The Paris Agreement covers what will be done up to 2030: it’s good to have a long term agreement, but only if it works. The Kyoto Protocol was seen as a great breakthrough when it was agreed in 1997: it brought little real result. What’s new about the Paris agreement is that progress will be reviewed every five years, with countries having to confirm they have kept their promises and having to make new commitments for the next five years which are larger than the previous period’s promises. This is a formula which is intended to keep the rate of progress increasing – but, critics point out, it is also a formula which enshrines slow progress. Countries will have an incentive to offer lower commitments in the initial stage to allow themselves wiggle room to increase their later commitments in subsequent stages, and so on. Although all countries will use one uniform system of reporting their achievements, the system has been watered down from the original proposal, after some countries found it too strict and asked that they be monitored in a more relaxed way. The commitment to improve performance, stage on stage, is supposed to be legally binding, but there is no explanation of what sanction would be implied if a country did not keep to its commitment. •Verdict: Spin, not substance
•Fuels Greenhouse gas emissions happen when people use fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil). Intergovernmental schemes to control climate change are unlikely to hold much sway with individual businesses while it is cheaper to use fossil fuels than renewable energy. Individual countries may need to legislate domestically to control the energy market – but there is little to encourage them to do this unilaterally, when they are also trying to keep the prices of domestically produced goods and services low so that they can compete internationally. While this international gathering was trying to reduce climate change, other international organisations are trying to keep energy production in private (profit-making) hands. A Paris summit that really meant business would have put energy provision in the hands of its constituent governments so that energy could be run as a public need, not a private commodity. There is another danger. Western governments have long been arguing that the need to move away from dangerous fossil fuels requires us to change over to dangerous nuclear fuels rather than safe sources of renewable energy. It is not that these governments don’t recognise the danger, though they may have misplaced confidence that they can minimise the risks. The real incentive for increasing the number of nuclear power stations is that they are the only way of producing the fuel necessary to produce nuclear weapons – which the richest countries believe secures their political domination of the world. •Verdict: Spin, not substance
What a bind Advocates of the Paris Agreement have stressed how historic it is that so many countries have agreed on something. Critics have pointed out that this unprecedented level of agreement was reached because so little of the Agreement is enforceable. One of the reasons why past attempts to negotiate agreements have failed is that participating countries have not accepted imposed targets. Some of the developing countries complained that the developed countries were dictating to them and were not allowing the developing nations the chance to reach the standard of living in the richer countries. The Paris Agreement has a very different system, allowing each country to set its own targets: this does not give countries any incentive to set targets at the necessary levels, though. Although the Agreement talks about limiting average global temperature rises to less than two degrees Centrigrade, some independent assessments of the individual targets offered to date (but not agreed, as they are set individually) will allow the temperature rise to creep up to nearly three degrees.
The Paris Agreement is a breakthrough – but so far there has been far more spin than substance. Fortunately, some of the politicians recognise this. In his address to delegates, Miguel Arias Cañete, European Union Commissioner for Energy and Climate Action, stressed that the Agreement was tbe beginning, not the end, of work on climate change, saying, “Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we have to act.”
We cannot rely on politicians to act: we’ll have to watch them every step of the way. Developed countries will be trying to maintain their power in the world. In particular, the USA could be a big problem if next year’s presidential election returns a Republican to office (particularly if it is the islamophobic Donald Trump): climate change deniers are still strong in that country. Developing countries will be trying to show their electorates they are delivering economic progress. Underdeveloped countries could be paddling.
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