Bali– A Small Tentative Step
The Bali agreement on global warming recognized the need for “deep cuts” in emissions, but avoided any firm agreement on number and targets. Instead, participants agreed to a roadmap for more talks by 2009, encompassing representatives of 187 countries, where the numbers will be hammered out. Key on the agenda will be the burden sharing between developed and developing countries. Even this vague conclusion was only accepted grudgingly by the US delegation, with public qualms emanating by the White House, and the great fear is that the Bush administration will try to derail future talks.
The core US objections center on references to the emissions targets and what it feels is the need for the developing world to shoulder a greater amount of the burden. And while it is true that emissions in places like China are skyrocketing, the US still remains the greatest “sinner” in this area, as the chart below (reproduced from the Financial Times) shows.
In the background, the key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, representing the world’s collective wisdom on the subject, dominated the discussions, and instilled a sense of urgency and frustration. The panel, drawing on the work of 3,500 scientists, declared that evidence of climate change was “unequivocal”, that the burning of fossil fuels was to blame, and that a baseline 2 degree warming would have catastrophic implications (droughts, floods, storms, sea level rises ), especially for the poorest and most vulnerable countries. The UK-mandated Stern Report shows that, by not acting, the costs of global warming will amount to 5 percent of global GDP each year, which could rise as high as 20 percent. Acting to curb emissions will instead cost 1 percent of GDP. And yet so many Americans seem blithely indifferent to this predicament, refusing to pay at any cost, putting their faith instead in quacks and charlatans, clutching at straws in defense of the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.
The EU has been leading efforts to get countries to agree to target reductions. It had already set its own target of reducing emissions by 20 percent by 2020. At the conference, it persuaded Canada, Japan, and Russia to set their own emissions targets. They too feel that the developing world should do more as part of a global deal, but (unlike the US), they will not use this as a convenient excuse for doing nothing. Note that the developing countries are not opposed to targets, but feel that they need an element of financial aid. This is eminently just, given the role of the developed world in creating the crisis that now exists. And besides, when did did a lack of virtue in your neighbor justify a lack of virtue at home?
Bali opened the door. What happens in the future depends critically on the role of the US. It needs to look outside its own borders and narrow interests and take a more global perspective. It needs to recognize that morality centers on the recognition of our common humanity. Will it do the right thing? Let’s pray.
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putting their faith instead in quacks and charlatans
Oh, the irony. I better go buy some “carbon credits” from the guy who invented the Internet and is now saving the planet one costly carbon credit at a time.
“It needs to recognize that morality centers on the recognition of our common humanity. ”
Morality centered on common humanity is flawed unless it recognizes Christ as the telos.
Look on the bright side, the 1990 to 2004 chart you show underlines that the US has reduced its CO2 emmissions from 1990 to 2004 despite a population growth of nearly 15% during that period.
Now we haven’t reduced as much as Europe (with virtually flat-line populations) but we are doing rather better than Canada (whose population is growing, though somewhat slower than ours.)
I would be curious to know what exactly it is that they’re estimaging could be done to curb emmissions for 1% of GDP. Yes, I’m sure that the rate of increase could be slowed somewhat for that, but it’s unimaginable that you could globally _decrease_ carbon emmissions to below their current annual levels for such a small investment.
The only way we’d truly “turn around” global warming (assuming that it even is primarily caused by human activity and is not mainly the result of natural global climate/solar cycle trends) would be by either forcibly keeping the undeveloped world undeveloped (gravely immoral) or by listening to the “humanity is a disease” brand of environmental advocates and reducing the world’s population by about five billion (even more gravely immoral).
Luckily, responsible analysis from current trends (assuming the warming trend to man made and to lack natural check factors) suggest that the changes can expect over the next 100 years would be on the order of 12-24 inches in sea level. And with a hundred years of human development to figure out what to do about that, I’m sure we’ll come up with something other than turning off the extra lights in Al Gore’s mansion.
What’s still missing is proof that human emissions are causing the bulk of the warming. The only way we will have an impact on warming is if we are the main cause.
Despite the IPCC declaring it absolute, there is much debate among experts. I am curious anytime someone says that there is a “consensus” when there clearly isn’t and something it not open to debate.
What’s still missing is proof that human emissions are causing the bulk of the warming. The only way we will have an impact on warming is if we are the main cause.
Despite the IPCC declaring it absolute, there is much debate among experts. I am curious anytime someone says that there is a “consensus” when there clearly isn’t and something it not open to debate.
This is a gross misunderstanding of how science proceeds. Conjecture, not consensus, is the path of science. If we waited for a thorough-going “consensus,” then we would never have left geocentricism behind. Anyone who thinks there is no “proof” of human impact on climate change likely has no idea what that “proof” would look like, much like the atheist who denies there is any “proof” the existence of God.
I am curious anytime someone says that there is a “consensus” when there clearly isn’t and something it not open to debate.
Again, TeutonicTim, as I said to you in my post on global warming, much of the scientific knowledge that we have accumulated in every field is based on hypotheses and there is not much consensus on a lot of issues that you or me would consider trivial or factual, but in fact is not. No one disputes that the earth is round, but those are not the kind of issues I’m referring to, but rather the most complex ones and that includes global warming.
By the time we get the “consensus” you are looking for (which is not realistic, based on the complexity of the empirical data available), it may be too late.
You guys are funny. I’m not claiming consensus. The IPCC is. Science is furthered by debate, testable hypotheses, and results that support those hypotheses. Not by some bumbling international body stocked with political cronies.
Also, who’s to say the warming we’re experiencing is a bad thing?
Tim, get out of your bunker and see what is happening. Not a bad thing? It’s a very bad thing to a whole host of developing countries prone to flooding, droughts, and severe weather events. There are Pacific islands whose very existence is in peril. There are huge population centers in low-lying areas (such as Bangladesh) that could simply be wiped off the map. And this is no even close to the worst case scenario. Like I said, get off there and see what is happening. And read the Stern report.
Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions.
Where were these places 1000 years ago when the global temperature was warmer than it is now? To think that humans can yet control the climate and weather itself is a grand delusion and an exercise in arrogance.
Tim,
What reason do you have to suppose that the warming 1000 years ago didn’t cause flooding, droughts, and other calamities. I don’t think we were keeping statistics of such things back then.
I’m pretty sure most places kept detailed records back then…
As a matter of fact, it’s called the medieval “optimum” for a reason. It caused one of the most beneficial increases of human diet quality and health levels due to increased crop growing areas and increased good climate.
Since the UK started keeping nationwide temperature records only in 1914, I really doubt we have any reliable records from a 1000 years back.
Also, this decade is set to be the hottest one on records dating back to 1850. When eight years in the last decade are in the world’s ten hottest ever, I think that is cause for concern. Nobody is claiming we control the climate but its certainly realistic that 6 billion people and their activities have some impact on the environment.
unremarkablepolitics.blogspot.com
But they’re not. NASA issued a correction and the 1930′s was the hottest decade and contains the most hottest years…
Also, “dating back to 1850″ was it our preindustrial age and fraction of the current population’s greenhouse emissions that caused that time to be hot?
I like to think of this as the following: Early humans see temperature changes, and blame it on what they think is the cause. Should the people in the 1850′s blame it on horse drawn carriages?
ignore the “early humans” part. I was going to give a different example and didn’t edit all the way…
“it’s called the medieval “optimum” for a reason. It caused one of the most beneficial increases of human diet quality and health levels due to increased crop growing areas and increased good climate.”
In Europe, maybe. But Europe is not the world, and most of the projected negative effects of global warming fall on other parts of the globe.
Also, the question of whether global warming is good or bad is seperate from the question of whether global warming is caused by human activity or not. Best not to confuse the two issues.
Theoretically sufficient warming could change the current weather patters in sub-Saharan Africa and return it to a much more agriculture-friendly state such as it was in before the last ice-age, though our ancestors were still at the hunter-gatherer stage at that point.
However, by that point you’d see a lot of other changes in the world we’d consider negative.
On the flip side, at glacial maximum you would walk from France to England, from Russia to Alaska, and the Black Sea was dry.
And that’s just in recent earth history. Regardless of what’s causing current changes, the planet will be just fine. It’s just us rather plentiful primates who might find ourselves highly inconvenienced by having places previously wet dry, or previously above water under water.
I think it’s important to keep those issues together, as do the people who think we need to “take action”. If we’re not causing it, how the heck can we “fix” it?