Climate Change

Why is the US approach different from that of the rest of the world?

Talk to the Annual Meeting of Marshall Scholars, Carpenters Hall, London, 13 May 2002

What are the essential issues?

• We must distinguish natural from human driven change:
• natural change
• roller coaster of natural variations during the past 60 million years; wobbles during the last relatively stable 10,000 years: farming in Greenland in 10th century, extreme cold in New England in the 16th century, rising temperatures since 1880.
• until recently we believed that all climatic change was slow; now we know otherwise: evidence of cores from Greenland and Antarctic ice caps.
• human-driven change.
• Environmental change is accelerating because the human foot is on the accelerator. A periodical visitor from outer space would find more change in the surface of the earth in the last 20 years than he would have found in the last 200, and in the last 200 more than in the last 2,000.
• Since the industrial revolution we have been using the sky as a waste unit. As a result carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has now reached its highest level in 400,000 years, and is at a third higher than in pre-industrial times.
• Methane, a less abundant but far more effective greenhouse gas has seen its concentration more than double since pre-industrial times.
• The science of the carbon cycle is imperfectly understood, but there is a clear relationship between atmospheric carbon and global surface temperature.

It is notoriously difficult to distinguish natural from man made processes, but there is a growing consensus, expressed in successive reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that the human contribution is now having a significant if not decisive effect.

The Working Group I (Science) of the Intergovernmental Panel concluded in 2001 that

"… in the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the [human-induced] increase in greenhouse gas concentrations".

What changes will global warming bring about? Many uncertainties remain but world science, expressed through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the leading Academies of Science, including the US National Academy of Science is unequivocal. Average world temperature is rising; six of the hottest years of the 20th century occurred during the last decade.

What would a warmer world look like? Here the uncertainties, region by region, multiply. Efforts have been made by Working Group II (Impacts) of the Intergovernmental Panel to assess possible impacts by continent, but the results are inevitably sketchy. However interpreted, they suggest a different world and a correspondingly different distribution of human activity as people and the living organisms on which they depend try to adapt to change. Such change includes new patterns of rainfall and drought, more extreme events, and rising sea levels.

On a global scale effects include:

• Impacts on all natural ecosystems.
• Impacts on water resources, and in particular increased stresses in many poor countries.
• Impacts on food supplies. There will be increased crop yields in high and mid-latitudes countries, but decreased yields in lower latitudes.
• Impacts on human health. Micro-organisms respond rapidly to changes in temperature and moisture. Old diseases such as malaria could return and new diseases could arise.
• Then there are the jokers in the pack. There is the possibility of weakening of the Atlantic climate system, which could bring renewed glaciation as during the Younger Dryas. On the other hand there is the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect, as at earlier times in the earth's history, such as the end of the Palaeocene.

Not surprisingly, the scale of such changes have brought the world together as no other environmental hazard could have done. Early events were:

• World Climate Conferences 1979 and 1990
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports of 1990, 1995, and 2001

Following from the work of the IPCC, one of the main achievements of the Rio Conference was the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its broad objective was to stabilize "greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".

How this should be done has been discussed at seven successive meetings of the parties to the Convention. Recent meetings have concentrated on the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol agreed in December 1997. This committed thirty-eight industrial countries, including the United States, to a global carbon dioxide emissions reduction target of 5.2% by 2008-2012.

The sixth meeting or Conference of the Parties in Bonn reached agreement on the ratification of a watered down Kyoto Protocol, but now without the United States. The last meeting took place at the beginning of November in Marrakech. Major areas covered in the Marrakech Accords included such devices as:

• Clean Development Mechanism
• Joint Implementation
• Operating rules for trading in carbon emissions.

It is a curious paradox that most of this apparatus was introduced by the last US Administration while the present US Administration has pulled out of the whole Kyoto Protocol.

There is a further point of real international importance. Until recently the rest of the world, including India and China, regarded the problem as one for the industrial countries. But increasingly such countries realize how much their own future welfare is involved. The Indians fear for the regularity of their monsoon. Effects could be still worse in China. The Chinese claim to have reduced their carbon emissions in real terms over the last five years. But most of the poorest countries plan to increase their consumption of fossil fuels. However, a decision was taken at Marrakech to review commitments from other countries at a later date.

All this may look positive. But even if the Kyoto commitments were met (itself highly doubtful), greenhouse gas emissions would still be some 30% up on 1990 by 2010. Thus it is not more than a first step. But even that has not been taken by the biggest polluter of all. The United States, with less than 5% of the world's population but around 24% of its greenhouse gas emissions, is a major villain of the piece. Officials from the United States participated in the Marrakech Conference but they reaffirmed that it did not intend to ratify the Protocol.

Now we come to the strange question of why the United States should have chosen to opt out from the rest of the world. It is worth saying that even under the Clinton Administration there was a marked lack of enthusiasm or advocacy.

Understanding of the science is not a reason. The US scientific community, led by the National Academy of Sciences, is on the same side as colleagues elsewhere, and has made a major contribution to understanding of issues. I am sure they were equally dismayed at US efforts to replace the respected scientist Bob Watson as the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

I suggest the main reasons are as follows:

• The United States is a vast country, and for many Americans the rest of the world is so far away that it hardly exists. How many Congressmen have passports?
• In US history there has been an almost rhythmic rise and fall in interest and participation in international affairs. On the one hand the Marshall Plan helped fuel European regeneration after the Second World War. We are still saying thank you. That is why you are here. On the other hand there is a history of US equivocation towards international institutions. The United Nations was sited in New York to prevent any repetition of US attitudes towards the League of Nations in Geneva.
• Then there is a rather crude judgement of national self interest. Many Americans - but by no means all - believe that US economic growth, up to the skies like Jack in the Beanstalk is their God given right.
• The US has always been reluctant to accept binding treaty obligations, and to avoid commitments: for example
  • withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, but I was glad to hear the news of a US/Russian deal on nuclear warheads.
  • withdrawal from Kyoto
  • failure to ratify the Biodiversity Convention or to accept the Bio Safety Protocol
  • refusal to join the International Criminal Court
  • failure with Somalia to ratify the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
  • refusal to accept a new Protocol to the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention of 1972
  • George Bush Sr. had to have his arm twisted to go to Rio, and we have yet to hear whether George Bush Jr. will go to Johannesburg.
  • The current US way of life is founded on cheap energy. Although no one likes the idea of dependence on foreign oil and gas, the obvious remedies are virtually ignored:
  • gasoline prices are still lower than bottled water;
  • energy is everywhere wasted on an enormous scale;
  • so far there is no coherent alternative energy programme.
  • Vested interests are closer to the heart of government than elsewhere
  • the Global Climate Coalition & Exxon
  • the power of Congressional lobbies

Of course the United States is not alone in pursuing short term political expedients at the expense of long term strategy. The Kyoto Protocol has obvious defects. But it is more open here than in some other parts of the world. Recent US actions - or inactions - have caused widespread, almost unanimous condemnation.

But I do not want to suggest that Britain is a paragon of virtue. The most recent future climate scenarios of the UK Climate Impacts Programme paint an increasingly worrying picture about the problems we face. In the face of this daunting prospect the British Government has adopted a legally binding target of reducing its emissions by 12.5% below 1990 levels during the period 2008-2012. But experts believe that global warming is proceeding even faster than was first thought when the Kyoto Protocol was first signed. Thus the Government has also adopted a voluntary target of a 20% reduction by 2010 (DEFRA).

Means by which this will be achieved include:

• A climate change levy to encourage business to use energy more efficiently. This entered into force on 1st April 2001.
• A target to double energy generation through Combined Heat and Power of at least 10,000MW by 2010.
• Increase in public money available for energy efficiency and fuel poverty programmes.
• A requirement for electricity suppliers to meet a target of delivering 10% of supply from renewable sources by 2010.
• An integrated transport policy using, for example, road user charging and workplace parking levies.
• A new waste strategy to reduce reliance on landfill and cut methane emissions.
• A voluntary carbon dioxide emissions trading scheme launched in London on 2 April. So far 34 companies have joined the scheme, but it is too early to say whether any significant reduction in emissions will be achieved.

It is fair to add that business and industry have already begun to work out the commercial consequences for themselves. I have seen this for myself in the City of London and elsewhere, particularly among the larger companies.

So what can we do about the United States? Let me make some suggestions.

• I may be a ridiculous optimist, but I believe that over time in one way or another the United States, will come along with the rest of the world.
• Recently the US Administration has announced a climate change strategy. Unfortunately it is geared only to reductions in the rate of increase in carbon emissions, and still envisages a massive increase in absolute terms. Unfortunately, the United States seems to be pulling Canada in the same direction.
• There are many ways of engaging the Administration but only of course if it wants to be engaged. Methane was curiously sidelined in the Kyoto Protocol, but control of emissions and reduction could be more easily managed than carbon. There is a possible opening here recognized in the US strategy.
• We simply have to change our ways. That means the world as a whole. I don't like to think what future generations will think of us as they pay for the consequences of our actions or inactions.

Change usually takes place for three main reasons:

• First we need leadership from above by institutions or individuals.
• Secondly we need public pressure from below. The voice of civil society must be heard, especially at election time.
• Lastly - I am sorry to say - we often need some useful catastrophes to jerk us out of our normal inertia; big but not too big; small enough but not too small; quick but not too quick; slow but not too slow. In each case big enough to demonstrate the point.

I remember that before the Rio Summit of 1992 George Bush senior tried to reassure the American people by saying that no-one was going to change the American way of life. He was dead wrong. North Americans must change their way of life, as we in Europe must change ours. Otherwise Nature will do what she has done to over 99% of species that have ever lived, and do the job for us.