Nepalese police check what’s coming out of the exhaust in Katmandu, one of Asia’s
most polluted cities.
A lake near Bhopal (India), dried up by the current heat wave.
A study of the Antarctic ice cap of Vostok shows a close correlation, over
400,000 years, between levels of atmospheric gases and surface temperatures. |
At
the seventh international climate conference that opens in Bonn, Germany on July
16, scientists will confirm their alarming forecasts while political leaders are
likely to give them the cold shoulder. Why?
Since the 1992 Earth
Summit in Rio, nine years of negotiations on global warming have led virtually nowhere.
Yet something has changed: the scientific community has gained extensive knowledge
about the scope and causes of global warming, putting them in a more legitimate position
than ever to alert governments. Meanwhile, public opinion is paying increasing attention
to the problem. But, as Benjamin Dessus, a French expert and member of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), writes: “we’re standing before a real paradox: public
will is still falling short, as though knowledge cripples action instead of prompting
it.”
Global warming is no longer a matter of controversy. The 20th century recorded the
highest temperatures in 1,000 years, with an average increase of 0.6°C. The last
two decades were the hottest of the 1900s.
A series of phenomena accompanies rising temperatures. For example, almost all the
world’s glaciers have shrunk, while the thickness of the polar ice cap has decreased
by 40 percent (from 3.1 to 1.8 metres) in 50 years.
Scientists have yet to establish clear links between global warming and the increase
in natural disasters such as droughts, storms and floods. But as the French physicist
Hervé Le Treut says, these episodes “illustrate what might happen if global
warming continues.”
Is the current warming part of the cyclical phases that the planet has always experienced,
or have greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities created new conditions?
Almost all experts now defend the second hypothesis. Atmospheric levels of the main
greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), are steadily on the rise, increasing from 280
parts per million (ppm) at the dawn of the industrial revolution to over 360 ppm
today. Forecasters say the figure will climb to between 540 and 970 ppm by the late
21st century.
Drought
and disease
The
scientific community has been sounding the alarm for a long time. The first world
climate conference took place in Geneva in 1979. Nine years later, the World Meteorological
Organization and the United Nations set up the IPCC, an international network of
over 3,000 researchers and experts that published reports in 1990, 1995 and 2001,
each more alarming than the last. When the latest one came out in early 2001, Klaus
Toepfer, director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said that “the scientific
consensus now sounds the alarm in all the world’s capitals.”
The new report upwardly revised previous forecasts, predicting that temperatures
will climb between 1.4 and 5.8°C by 2100–an increase that has been “unprecedented
for 10,000 years”–and that ocean levels will rise between 10 and 90 centimetres.
The report’s second section focuses on global warming’s economic and social consequences.
Areas where cholera and malaria are endemic will spread, harvests will decrease in
tropical and sub-tropical regions and drought will strike arid and semi-arid zones
more frequently.
Global warming will worsen the imbalance between north and south because it will
have a greater impact on poor countries, and because “those with the least resources
have the lowest ability to adapt.” By 2050, according to estimates, the world’s population
will have grown by three billion people to reach nine billion inhabitants, and electricity
consumption will be 1.5 to 2.7 times higher than it is now. The fossil fuels responsible
for the greenhouse effect will still account for 75 to 80 percent of total energy
consumption, nuclear power four to seven percent and renewable sources (wind, sun
and water) 20 percent at best.
A number of climate-related changes are expected (models do not exist for these phenomena
at the present time). The most alarming one involves ocean currents, which are responsible
for temperature exchanges between the planet’s cold and hot regions. Two Swiss researchers,
Thomas Stocker and Andreas Schmittner, say that the Gulf Stream–the circulation of
current in the North Atlantic–could be interrupted when atmospheric CO2 levels reach
750 ppm. That is precisely the figure that forecasters say will be reached during
the course of the 21st century.
Specialists suggest combining technological solutions to stabilize greenhouse gas
emissions. They range from using more efficient devices (low-voltage lamps, for example)
to developing cogeneration (the combined production of heat and electricity) and
using renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. Industry has already
cut its emissions worldwide (they still account for 19 percent of the total), but
transportation has increased them by 75 percent.
Dessus says that the future depends less on technological breakthroughs than on priorities
when choosing infrastructures. Put simply, will the Chinese and Indians choose the
automobile or the train civilization? And, he adds, debate over transportation infrastructures
must apply to energy and telecommunications networks as well. It is better to invest
in small fossil energy deposits (coal or oil) intended for local consumption, which
would be more energy-efficient than setting up heavy infrastructures, even if they
are used for transporting cleaner energy.
Symbolic
targets
Of
course, scientists realize that their role is not to make political decisions. At
the 1992 Rio summit, the participating countries signed the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change. This document is based on two principles: economic
development in southern countries must not be hampered, and gas concentrations must
be stabilized at levels that will not dangerously disrupt the climate. Industrialized
countries were asked to make an effort. The 156 nations that ratified the convention,
including the United States despite its recent shift into reverse, are still bound
by their signature.
Since then, six conferences on the climate have tried to make headway. The only specific
commitment dates back to the 1997 Kyoto Conference, when the industrialized countries
gave themselves until 2012 to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent.
The convention will not enter into force until it is ratified by at least 55 countries
accounting for 55 percent of emissions. So far only 33 nations, all from the developing
world, have ratified the protocol. France is the only industrialized nation preparing
to follow suit. Moreover, no major polluter has met its target. France, for example,
was supposed to stabilize its emissions, but they have already risen by two percent.
These targets, which have only a symbolic meaning for the environment, were supposed
to usher in a new period of political commitment. They will not be met. The six international
climate conferences that have taken place over the past nine years can be considered
failures. As observers have stated, each country has put its national interests first,
buckling under pressure from corporate lobbies. President George W. Bush’s decision
to renounce the Kyoto Protocol is a telling example. Commentators have pointed out
that his political career, like that of vice-president Dick Cheney, has long been
linked to the U.S. oil industry.
Thinking
in millennia
In
France, the government coalition of socialists, greens and communists has withdrawn
its planned ecotax on industry consumption of fossil fuels one year before the June
2002 legislative elections, showing that the brisk pace of democratic politics is
out of step with the slow rate of planetary changes. The oft-mentioned precautionary
principle is still given lip service. “Every serious attempt to tackle the greenhouse
effect will have immediate costs, whereas the benefits won’t be apparent for a long
time,” writes John W. Anderson, an American environmental journalist with Resources
for the Future. “To the extent that these potential benefits boil down to a catastrophe
that might not occur, their impact will never be obvious. The costs, however, are.”
Only negotiations on nuclear weapons can compare with the scope and gravity of the
current climate talks. With the first, however, there was a sense of urgency. When
it comes to global warming, it’s as if solutions to curtail the problem can be put
off until later. In the meantime, greenhouse gases are accumulating in the air. Even
if emissions were reduced, it would take years (between 50 and 50,000 depending on
the type of gas) for them to disappear from the atmosphere. As IPCC president Robert
Watson has stated, “the time it takes to check environmental damage can’t be measured
in years or decades, but in centuries and millennia.” This inertia–combined
with the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere–should be taken as a
motivation for immediate action. But the opposite has happened. Negotiators wrongly
interpret it as an additional respite.
The discussions that began in Kyoto on trading “polluting credits” is a good illustration
of that viewpoint. The “umbrella group” (the United States, Australia, New Zealand,
Japan and Russia) has imposed the idea of market transactions by creating the right
to purchase pollution credits from countries falling short of their quota, and to
borrow against their future quotas. Behind this approach lies the idea that technological
innovation and the market’s creative capacity will provide solutions in time. Seen
from that angle, countries see no point in imposing heavy legal constraints on themselves.
As President Clinton said, “the American way of life is not negotiable.”
A
plea for equity
The
industrialized countries have the tacit conviction that market-driven technological
progress will provide the answers. That is why they tend to reason in terms of tons
of CO2 per share of GDP.
For example, the Chinese release 3.93 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per $100 of
GNP produced, Americans and Germans 4.6 and 7.7 times less, respectively. Seen from
the developed countries’ point of view, their model of energy efficiency is the best.
Why should it be changed?
On the other hand, developing countries and many non-governmental organizations argue
that international negotiations make no sense unless they are grounded in equity.
That is why they would rather base calculations of CO2 emissions on the number of
inhabitants. Anil Agarwal, of the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi (India),
has figured that a single American releases as much greenhouse gas as 25 Indians,
33 Pakistanis, 85 Sri Lankans, 125 Bangladeshis and 500 Nepalese. He suggests allocating
the same emissions quota to every human being.
This is where the public debate comes up against humanity’s oldest moral dilemma.
Should a tree be judged by its fruit, as implied by the U.S. position, which emphasizes
energy efficiency? Or on the contrary, should the same rights be granted to all,
as Agarwal argues? It is doubtful the issue will be settled at the Bonn conference. |
