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Climate change: threat and promise
Paul Rogers, openDemocracy
The scale of the global-warming challenge far exceeds the political will to tackle it. But there are signs of hope.
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The Stern report on climate change is welcome for its detail, its original analysis and its focus on economics. It brings a new dimension to the debate, and its acceptance by politicians in Britain – to an extent that would have been inconceivable even two years ago – itself reflects how far things have moved.
So far, so good: but the political commitments now being made are wholly inadequate to the scale of the problem. Even in the wake of Stern, and although scientific opinion is more united than ever on the realities of climate change, there is scarcely any real sense of urgency
(2 Nov 2006)
Public surprisingly ready to accept a ‘carbon tax’
Don Cayo, Vancouver Sun
It’s a big step from telling a pollster you’d pay the price of a greener planet to actually ponying up without complaint for gas and home heating and all those petroleum-based products you use and never think about.
But it’s still remarkable that an Ipsos Reid poll this week found that a small majority of Canadians, 52 per cent, endorse the idea of a carbon tax.
(7 Nov 2006)
Links to related stories (Grist).
It may be hot in Washington too
A big British report on global warming is really directed at the United States
The Economist
RARELY has a report with so many charts and equations in it caused such a stir. Sir Nicholas Stern’s review of the economics of climate change, published on October 30th, was all over the local media and much of the foreign press too. But the figures splattered over the report’s 600 pages were something of a red herring, for the report was more about politics than about economics-specifically, the politics of getting America involved in the global effort to mitigate climate change.
…Sir Nicholas, who says he had no views on climate change before taking the job, has come up with a report that looks perfectly designed to push America’s buttons. Most previous assessments of the cost of climate change to the world economy are relatively modest-in the order of 0-3% of global output. Since the costs of stabilising carbon dioxide concentrations by switching to alternative fuels are, most economists reckon, around 1% of global output by 2050, it might be worth doing something about climate change even on the basis of those figures.
But rich countries tend to do relatively well from those forecasts. Some-especially those in northern Europe-actually benefit from a bit of warming. The brunt of the costs falls on poor countries, because they are hotter and relatively dependent on agriculture. Rich countries just about manage to put up with the sufferings of poor countries now. A bit more is unlikely to move them to curb their emissions.
Sir Nicholas, however, comes up with quite different figures. By feeding into his model both some recent science on the increased risks of dramatic climate change, and the possibility of such catastrophes as a rise in sea level big enough to flood London and New York, he calculates that the range of possible outcomes lies somewhere between 5% and 20% of global output over the next century or two. At those sorts of levels of overall economic damage, the impact on the rich world as well as the poor world is huge.
…Sir Nicholas’s policy prescriptions, as well as his analysis, seem designed to draw America in. Although most economists argue that a carbon tax would be the most efficient solution, Sir Nicholas is neutral between a carbon tax and the other ways of raising the cost of emitting carbon
(2 Nov 2006)
China to Pass U.S. in 2009 in Emissions
Keith Bradsher, NY Times
China will surpass the United States in 2009, nearly a decade ahead of previous predictions, as the biggest emitter of the main gas linked to global warming, the International Energy Agency has concluded in a report to be released Tuesday.
China’s rise, fueled heavily by coal, is particularly troubling to climate scientists because as a developing country, China is exempt from the Kyoto Protocol’s requirements for reductions in emissions of global warming gases. Unregulated emissions from China, India and other developing countries are likely to account for most of the global increase in carbon dioxide emissions over the next quarter-century.
(7 Nov 2006)
