European leaders have agreed to cut greenhouse emissions 20% by 2020, with a commitment to increase the target to 30% if matched by other countries.
But, in a sense, announcements like these, worthy at one level, are also pre-game manoeuvers for one of the most difficult, and important, negotiations the world has faced: the framework for whatever is to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. Serious negotiations can’t really begin until the disaster that is the Bush Presidency slinks off into history in January 2009. But considerable thought is already going in to the question: if cuts are going to have to be made, who is going to be responsible for making them, and in what ratio? Simply allocating percentage cuts across the board has the appeal of simplicity, but isn’t going to make less-polluting countries happy. Should countries like France, who have already largely decarbonized their electricity supply, be faced with the same kind of percentage cuts as the United States? And what about the wildly different historical contributions of various nations?
One proposed formula for allocating the necessary cuts is known as the “Brazilian proposal”, and dates from the Kyoto protocol negotiations back in the mid-1990s. As the UN explains it, the Brazilian proposal was:
A proposal by the delegation of Brazil made in May 1997 as part of the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol. It included a formula to set differentiated emission reduction targets for Parties based to the cumulative impact of Parties’ historic emissions on the global average surface temperature.
Put simply – the more you were responsible for the problem, the more responsible you’ll have to be for the solution.
Simple in concept, rather more difficult in practice. Calculating how responsible particular countries are for global warming is not a simple task; it requires the consideration of a number of different greenhouse gases (let alone things like albedo changes); suffice to say that it all gets quite ugly. So, it’s not all that surprising that the proposal was flick-passed to the MATCH working group, a collection of scientists from around the world, to determine what the relative contributions of the various nations of the world are to the greenhouse effect.
While the mathematics of calculating relative contributions is somewhat complicated (translation: I don’t understand all of it off the bat, though I probably could if you gave me long enough), according to an acquaintance very familiar with the calculations, the mathematics itself is not that tricky. What is tricky is getting country-by-country data, preferably as far back as possible, deciding how far you actually do go back for calculation purposes, and coping with “nonlinearities” – the less dramatic versions of the “tipping point” idea. And how do you attribute emissions for countries that have changed boundaries and leadership over the past 100 years – not such a big deal for the third world because their emissions haven’t been an issue until very recently, but potentially a big issue in, say, eastern Europe.
There are preliminary results already, but they’re not all that interesting for Australia, because they only break the world down into large regions. The key information for us – the country-by-country results – comes out later this year.
When it gets down to it, the way that CO2 reductions are determined by country will undoubtedly come down to realpolitik rather than exact mathematical formulae. But the numbers (which Australian scientists will have made a not insubstantial contribution to calculating, by the way), will inform the negotiations. And whether the Brazilian model, contraction and convergence, or some other scheme (possibly one that favours the developed nations more) is adopted, will make a big difference to the magnitude of emissions cuts that will face Australia in the coming decades.
I wonder if the contribution of massive Third World immigration into First World Western countries will factor in the responsibility for global emissions? It seems that any emissions reduction policy based on a nation’s historical contribution must take immigration into consideration.
As Merkel cogently asks,
Of course Australia will be arguing that our relatively high emissions per capita means that we should be allowed a more lenient target for emissions reduction because our economy and way of life are so heavily dependent on cheap fossil fuel energy and energy-intensive industries – as we argued at Kyoto in 1997 and at Rio in 1992.
Yeah.
What people don’t seem to realise is that a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions in Australia would still leave us emitting more, per capita, than France does right now.
and would be still more than 165 other countries including:
Malaysia
Sweden
Switzerland
China
Thailand
India
wbb: the point with choosing France (or Sweden) as examples is that they’re prosperous Western countries whose citizens live lifestyles not that dissimilar from our own.
You’re not going to get the average Australian to commit to big cuts in emissions if it means living like the average Chinese or Indian.
I understand, Robert. I just like to occasionally see China mentioned in some other context than that it is bldg a new coal power station every 5 minutes.
There is another approach to this what-you-will-be-cut-to in emissions and it was mooted by the Germans at the recent EU gathering to thrash out a common policy for 2020. In agreeing to a 20 percent cut overall, Chancellor Angela Merkel (any relation Robert?) was said to have been prepared to put Germany out front by offering 40% as a way of compensating those EU members with little enthusiasm for the 20% figure.
Of course her thinking was that Gemany could make money with alternative energy advances to compensate for the generous double-your-number offer. It would be interesting to see how this would float on a world wide basis. Come on Johnny, stick your neck out, write your own epitaph.
And Canada is thinking along those lines too, it might seem. They are dead keen on their hydrogen fuel cell technology and are set to announce similar compulsory CO2 pollution cuts as the UK.
On the European decision, a decision in principle only has been made. It is now up to the EU Commission (Brussels) to come up with a plan of reductions for each country, which would then have to be brought back to a conference of the heads of government. The EU Commission has no head of power on this so the whole thing is voluntary and needs to be done on a consensus basis.
The Deutsche Welle report put it this way:
The EU plans to complete the task of allocating targets this autumn, I’d say to put maximum pressure on the G8 in June.
So France can have its nuclear and Poland and the Czech Republic can have their coal. But the EU still has a negative stance towards nuclear:
So Angela Merkel’s plan to save the world is working just fine so far. The next step is a meeting of the G8 environment ministers. You can sign a petition here, but I have to say I don’t know this AVAAZ mob.
You’d have to say, I think, that what we are seeing is due in no small part to German diplomacy. It would have been a daunting task to get an agreement with the French and the Eastern Europeans having such different perspectives. But as pablo says Germany is after first mover advantage.
It will be interesting to see how she handles George Bush this time. Maybe a kick in the groin.
Frau Merkel must be a severe disappointment to Washington at this point.
Robert, on that ‘contraction and convergence’ scheme, it is interesting to note that there seems to be a notion of economic convergence in terms of GDP per capita embedded in the scenarios used by the IPCC in forecasting emissions and temperature change. This seems to generate great heat amongst economists.
But in principle we should be thinking of world equity. One reason we might use to claim special consideration is our dispersed population.
From memory last year someone on Phillip Adams program said that if Australia needed to get down to the world average of the emissions allowable, we’d need to reduce by 95%. That is if we go right down to the level the planet can absorb, which 60% worldwide by 2050 doesn’t get you to.
Which brings up the issue of what these targets are based on. I’d like to have a look at it after I see George Monbiot’s Heat. Monbiot says:
Broadly I think the situation is that the temperature has gone up by 0.8C since pe-industrial times and is now increasing by 0.2 per decade and rising. If we stopped emitting overnight the temperature would most likely go up another 0.5C from what we have already done. Staying below 2C in the next 30-50 years would seem to require quite urgent and drastic action.
On emissions, Stern quoted our 2000 output as 42GtCO2 equivalent (77% CO2, the rest methane etc) and doubling by 2050 in a business as usual scenario.
He quotes the absorptive capacity of the planet as 5GtCO2 equivalent.
A meeting of the G8 next week seems not a bad idea. Or should it be the UN General assembly?
I think these targets are pragmatic in terms of what the people who know think that other people will accept without throwing up their arms in despair. I wish someone would persuade me otherwise.
wbb, I wonder whether Angela Merkel
and our Robert Merkel are related.
There might in any case be a meeting of minds, if they can find a common language. He’s an engineer, she’s got a PhD in physics and worked in quantum chemistry. She was Minister for the Environment and Reactor Safety, so they could have a good chat about nuclear power.
It would be interesting to get the Prime Minister’s take on the global per capita CO2 emissions as distinct from the global per country CO2 emission figures. On CO2 emissions, his current position is that unless hundreds of millions of chinese peasants who cook on charcoal stoves and read by candle light cut back on their green house gas emissions, Australians should not be required to use solar power electricity or increase the ethanol/fuel ratio in their SUV’s.
In my opinion if Australia was characterised as one person in the form of John Howard, on the issue of global CO2 emissions he would be seen as the bank robber who stole to support his life style and when caught protested to the court that it would be unfair for him to have to give up the proceeds of his crime as it would mean a drop in his living standard.
I’m pretty sure I’m unrelated to Ms Merkel. But if I have to have a conservative politician as a namesake, she’d probably be top of the list.
I agree that ultimately we will have to go further than the targets that have been pushed for so far. But, then again, I don’t think it will be nearly as difficult to make cuts, assuming the political will is there, as is claimed.
Just on the last point, Robert, a UK spokesman yeaterday (Milliband?) pointed out that they would meet their Kyoto commitments while growing the economy by 40%. And in a sense as alternative technologies mature it becomes easier.
But air travel is out of control over there with cheap fares. Not large as a proportion now, but the significance will grow over time as other areas are cleaned up.
Four possible approaches to global emission reductions are discussed in the following article,
Höhne, N., Phylipsen, D., Ullrich, S., Blok, K. Options for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, Climate Change 02/05, 2005
which can be obtained from
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VFV-4B2H99K-5/1/5affaac3fcbbd833389a46c2a31c759d
This research is also discussed on pages 474-475 of the Stern Review. All of these approaches have a certain amount of convergence of per-capita emissions. All of these approaches also would require high greenhouse gas emitters like Australia and the US to reduce their emissioins by significantly more than 60% by 2050.