Real with consequences

This week’s Paris meeting on climate change will move a lot of electrons heralding action on climate change. But the outcome is guaranteed to be disappointing if you are worried about the consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels. The national pledges (known in the trade as “intended nationally determined contributions” or INDCs) will fail to stop global warming short of the 2 degrees (centigrade) that would be required to avoid a substantial increase in sea levels and worsening of the storms and heat extremes that have already become all too common. Some will say this is a good start, as it will stop global warming at perhaps 3 degrees.

I’m less patient. I was a United Nations young staffer in 1972 at the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. The “greenhouse effect” and global warming were already well-known then. So too were the difficulties of coming to grips with an issue that threatens global economic growth and pits already wealthy fossil fuel burning countries against aspirants from what we then termed the Third World. Who would bear the burden of cutting back on greenhouse gases? Would it be those who have already benefited from fossil fuels, or those who would like to do so in the future? And how will efforts to cut back on emissions affect prospects for economic growth worldwide?

The issue has gotten worse since then: China, not a “rich” country, has become a major contributor to the global load of carbon dioxide, overtaking the US in 2005. Its pledge in Paris will entail peaking emissions by 2030, or perhaps few years earlier. Still very poor India’s will continue rising to 2030, possibly making it a bigger contributor to global emissions than either China or the US. While the US has contributed a great deal to the problem to date, its emissions are already declining. Washington aims for a 28% reduction from 2005 levels by 2025.

But none of this will enable the world to escape the consequences of global warming. They are not all bad. Nor are they necessarily all induced by human activity. But a lot of them will require major adjustments, especially for land areas lying close to sea level. I won’t be investing in beach-front property for my grandson. It could well be submerged, or the beach carried off by storms, well before he inherits. More seriously: Bangladesh, Mauritius and other poor, vulnerable countries may well find themselves without the land they cherish, or suffering far worse consequences from tsunamis than they did in the past.

Nor are rich countries immune: remember Hurricane Sandy’s impact on New York City? Not necessarily caused by global warming, but still a clear harbinger of what is becoming more likely in the future, including in China’s prosperous coastal cities. Climate change is already costing the US Federal government over $20 billion per year. States and local governments are spending billions more to prevent the worst consequences.

No doubt the White House staff is busily working on making the Paris meeting a successful one for President Obama, who is wisely attending for two days at the opening (as invited by President Hollande). The main diplomatic drama will occur behind the scenes at the end of the 12-day affair. No one there will have forgotten the clamorous failure of negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, where the President was personally embarrassed. The obvious answer to the equity issues global warming raises is money. The President has pledged $3 billion to a Green Climate Fund for developing countries that has already topped $10 billion. That’s not small change, but it barely scratches the surface of the total financial requirements, as the Indians are quick to point out.

A key issue in Paris will be whether the voluntary national commitments already made will be legally binding. That’s what the French, and I imagine the Europeans more generally, want. It’s hard to picture, at least with respect to the emissions targets or financial commitments. Making them legally binding would virtually guarantee non-approval of any international legal instrument in the US Senate, where there is still a lot of skepticism about global warming. Some marginal, procedural  changes to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, negotiated parallel to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), may still be possible. The big procedural issue is when the next review of INDCs will take place: the US wants it in five years, to keep the pressure on, while developing countries prefer ten.

Somehow the White House will make the President’s two days in Paris sound like a resounding success. But no one should be fooled: global warming is not only real, it will also continue far beyond the point at which most reputable scientists believe it will cause catastrophic effects.

PS: a SAIS climate change guru read this critically, which inspired me to make some changes in the original. The changes are in bold.