Op-ed: Climate change failure: underlying causes —M V Ramana

Climate change could cause far-reaching, irreversible and potentially catastrophic consequences for the world’s peoples. Dealing with it requires going beyond ‘business as usual’ scenarios or minor modifications thereof that have been advocated by advanced capitalist countries

Between December 1 and 12, the 119 countries that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol will gather in Milan, Italy, to discuss the future of the multilateral agreement to curb climate change. Though it is clear that climate change could cause far-reaching, irreversible and potentially catastrophic consequences for the world’s peoples, significant progress towards addressing these during the Milan meeting is unlikely.

There is now convincing scientific evidence that the Earth’s climate has changed on both global and regional scales as a result of increased concentrations of ‘greenhouse gases’ (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone). These gases trap the heat from the Sun, causing an increase in the average temperature around the globe. The most important of these is carbon dioxide, whose atmospheric concentration has increased from about 280 ppm (parts per million) in the pre-industrial era (1750 and earlier) to 368 ppm in 2000. Most of this buildup has resulted from activities in industrialised (developed) countries.

Together with other natural changes, the build up of greenhouse gases has resulted in a global mean surface temperature increase of about 0.6 Celsius during the 20th century, along with global mean sea level increases at an average annual rate of 1 to 2 mm. Other changes are region specific. For example, in the last few decades, parts of Asia and Africa have suffered from more frequent droughts of greater intensity.

If these trends continue, global warming will worsen. Using a range of climate models, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the globally averaged surface temperature will increase by 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius over the period from 1990 to 2100. Global mean sea level is projected to rise by 0.09 to 0.88 metres during the same period, but there would be significant regional variations in this. Further the impacts would have enormous variations. Think of Bangladesh where roughly 20-25 million people live within a one-metre elevation of the high tide level. Water shortages in many areas of the world are expected to be exacerbated, though in some areas water availability might increase. Several models predict that there will be more frequent extreme events — hot days, heat waves, high rainfall days — of greater intensity and duration.

Climate change will disproportionately impact developing countries. And within each country, it will be the poor, already living on the margins, who will be most affected. Concern about climate change, and what is done about it, is therefore not a luxury, especially in South Asia.

Serious efforts to address this problem started in 1988 when the United Nations set up the IPCC with the purposes of assessing the science, the impacts, and the economics of, and the options for mitigating or adopting to climate change. Their outputs were in large part responsible for 154 countries signing the UNFCCC in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.

Thanks to coordinated action by developing countries and NGOs, the convention acknowledged the differentiated responsibility for the problem, and maintained that the “largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries, that per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low and that the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs”. It called on developed countries to take the lead in combating climate change. Accordingly these 41 countries (including some that were added in subsequent years) were put under the so-called Annex I list and subject to voluntary emission targets. The developing countries were to stay out of this initial stage.

Not surprisingly, the developed countries did not quite live up to their promises. This set off more negotiations, ultimately resulting in the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which established ‘legally binding’ reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of at least five per cent below 1990 levels, by 2008–2012, for developed countries. Different countries had different commitments. The targets for EU countries, the US and Japan were eight per cent, seven per cent, and six per cent respectively. Countries like Russia that were transitioning to a market economy could not exceed 1990 levels. These don’t do much. Climate scientists predict avoiding major climate change would require far more drastic reductions.

Even these modest commitments were too much for the more polluting industries in the US and in 2001 the Bush Administration pulled out of the Kyoto protocol, jeopardising the future of the protocol. To come into effect, it has to be ratified by enough Annex I countries that between them account for at least 55 per cent of the total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990 from that group. Currently the Annex I countries that have ratified the treaty only contributed 44 per cent of the emissions. The US, which alone accounts for about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, is isolated on this multilateral agreement as well.

The Bush administration’s national energy policy (NEP) for the US also reflects the business interests that have caused it to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. The NEP calls for the construction of 1300 (yes, thirteen hundred) new fossil fuel and nuclear plants over the next 20 years, and an increase in oil extraction and refining. These business interests have opposed any commitments to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because that may affect their profitability.

Climate change is yet another sign of the deep ecological crisis confronting the world today. Dealing with it requires going beyond ‘business as usual’ scenarios or minor modifications thereof that have been advocated by advanced capitalist countries like the US. This is ultimately the cause for the impending failure of the UNFCCC effort. What is needed is a radical reorganisation of society and modes of production towards a system that puts people before profits, with due consideration for ecological sustainability. And this has to be done soon; now is a good time to start working on the transformation.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream

Home | Editorial