Climate change – the intellectual framework emerges

06 November 2006

It's official.  Climate change is here to stay.  Recent weeks have seen a flurry of reports, speeches and calls for action from politicians in Europe, and at the level of the United Nations, with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change issuing its latest greenhouse gas emissions report on October 30.  The news, of course, is bad. Officials from the US have also been pronouncing.  Americans believe that technology can save the world, writes Stephen Gardner. At a high-level EU-US meeting in late October in Helsinki, Finland, the talk was of clean coal, biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol.  American officials could even see the business opportunities that cleaner fuel and better engines can offer.  “We want to research, find the successful strategies, and then rapidly standardise the approach so that markets can confidently sell the technologies,” said James Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Broadly speaking the discourse on climate change has split into three strands.  This is not new; these responses emerged soon after the problem of climate change became evident.  However as time goes on and more reports are published and pronouncements made, the discourses are becoming more polished. One earlier response to climate change, meanwhile – that of denial – has more or less been discounted, though it still rears its head from time to time, even in supposedly respectable media.  The European Voice newspaper, for example, recently published a climate-change-denying piece by a dubious and opaquely-funded Brussels think-tank, the Institut économique Molinari. So with denial discounted, the three responses to climate change are: Business as usual, but with better technology – this approach can broadly be described as the American approach but with adherents everywhere due to its attractiveness.  This line of thinking argues that we can carry on with the same lifestyles we have now: driving, flying, consuming. However we will do it with increasingly better tools.  Car engines will be better, fuels will be cleaner, emissions from power stations will be controlled – all through man's inventiveness.  What's more, all this endeavour can be marketed and profited from, especially in expanding markets such as China and India. The checks and balances approach – AKA the European approach.  It emphasises top-down regulation to cap emissions, cut car exhaust fumes, introduce congestion charging, and increase environmental taxes.  In traditional European Union style, there must be partnership, trade offs and compromise.  The Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, will ask for big cuts and limits, EU member states and industry will argue for competitiveness and seek to reduce those limits.  This regulatory approach, the EU hopes, can be exported to other countries, who look up to the EU's example.  This view also broadly suggests current lifestyles can be maintained, but with certain curtailments, such as more expensive flights, or higher environmental taxes, though this will be offset by lower direct income taxes. Doomsday scenario – needs little explanation; this school of thought notes that climate change is already happening and too little is being done too late to deal with it; increasing problems will be experienced in an ever harsher environment.  There's no way back. On an individual basis, depending on your psychology, you can choose the option you prefer: optimistic and can-do, controlling and systematic, or nihilistic.  In fact, climate change probably demands a combination of the above three approaches.  Better technology can play a part, and so can better regulation – the US can learn from the EU and vice versa.  But progress is undoubtedly too slow and there will be pain – and it could be significant pain.  Get used to it, because the storm clouds are massing and it's on the way. Stephen Gardner is Brussels correspondent for International Environment Reporter, published by the Bureau of National Affairs.

 

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