Yes my darlings – just when we thought we might have to do something about our rampant consumerism, carbon-soaked lives of empty e-bay moments, along comes relief. In the cheery, uncontestable voice of UN reason. Dear Yvo de Boer, no less than the head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, says we don’t have to in any way alter our tack-filled lives, oh no, we’ll just “pay” those poor struggling countries full of desperately grateful poor people to do it for us!!!
What a fabulous idea! The man’s a genius. We already dump our toxic wastes in their funny little countries, steal their water, chop down their forests, so why not “pay” them to not emit those nasty carbon fume thingies that the scientists have got themselves into such a tizz about, and you & I can continue to zoom about in our gorgeous new model Toyotas, relax in front of the new plasma screen, groove away listening to our Ipods & giggle with our Facebook mates on the Net, all courtesy of some nice little probably brown person somewhere else doing it all for us. God bless them.
And think – we’re going to “pay” them. Of course we will darling. Of course. Right after we’ve bought that lovely little 4 metre runabout we saw last week in the paper. Well you can’t expect us to go without…really!! What next – I suppose you’ll be suggesting we should worry about workers in some horrid little factory in China.
Cross-posted at Bernice Balconey’s Baloney
Yvo, you’re a genuis. Now why didn’t our PM think of that?
With that hundred mill or so that Brough’s department didn’t spend on our ungrateful Blacks last year, we should be good for a few Gigatonnes of toxic crud in Gabon or Guinea or somewhere like that.
The locals will just love it.
Ok… I know some leftists and environmentalists hate this idea. But can someone explain to me how cutting our own emissions by x is any better for the environment than another country cutting its emissions by x? What’s more, the other country would only enter the deal if it made a profit out of the venture. Such a policy would effect wealth redistribution from the richer countries to the poorer ones and thereby help the world’s most impoverished people get access to education, health and welfare.
I think that people mainly oppose these policies for aesthetic reasons. It strikes us as repulsive that the privileged can simply toss out a few coins and have an appreciative surf scurry along to take care of the menial duties. But I doubt the environment minds. And if I was the surf, I reckon I’d want the coins.
I HATE it when I do that! serf…
You really are a dill Bernice. The basis for this proposal is that the bulk of the low cost opportunities to cut emissions are in developing countries but the opportunities to pay for cuts are concentrated in wealthy countries. Hence developed countries offer to buy out these rights on terms acceptible to developing countries.
This is not a new proposal by a UN bureaucrat. It is the basis for almost all proposals to reduce global emissions by means of international trading schemes. You are out of touch with current debates and this results in this supremely stupid post.
Why don’t you make a cursory study of these issues before you post?
Why not explain to the world why a deal that the developing countries accept is adverse to them?
The reason is that your own narrow-minded prejudice does not allow it.
I don’t recall anyone attacking you in such an unacceptable manner hc, at least on this forum. If your arguments alone aren’t up to the task please do noy resort to vile abuse like this. How old are you, anyway? I had the impression you were a mature bloke.
Bernice,
China is obviously in no way a backward country in the manufacturing sense and they seem to be very concerned about the quality of their emissions. For starters they recognise that overpopulation , because people emit CO2 and use more CO2 generating resourses, needs to be curbed. They also have embarked on a campaign to reduce CO2 emissions by building new nuclear power stations.
A Chinese doctoral student( forgot his name) who learned his trade at UNSW and who runs the biggest photovoltaic making factory in the world hopes to use his product to replace power grids in China and elsewhere.
It is true their fossil fuel use is rapidly increasing but they have at least the makings of plans to cut emissions in the long term so there is really no need for a sweetener from developed countries.
“It strikes us as repulsive that the privileged can simply toss out a few coins and have an appreciative surf scurry along to take care of the menial duties. But I doubt the environment minds.”
Hey I don’t scurry for anyone and certainly not for menial tasks.
For a slab or baggie maybe but not for menial things.
Don’t worry Helen, HC is just jealous of our organisms.
If it is a question of “aesthetics” then how come people of wealth and power never go for their holidays in the middle of an oil refinery or other major industrial plants—-why not take a holiday at Bhopal, Chernobyl or Love Canal or Minimata.
Or why dont we holiday at our local garbage dump or next to open sewers or sewerage treatment plants, or perhaps to the kind of places described in Planet of Slums by Mike Davis. Think of the entrepreneurial possibiities for “packaged” holidays.
Or why dont we holiday in the midst of a gigantic mine–Freeport in Irian Jaya for example. Or in the middle of whats left over when forests are clear-felled.
One of the compelling reasons why this simply wont work HC is that the lowering of greenhouse gases emissions that can be achieved by effectively buying developing countries’ reductions is not going to achieve the cuts necessary to prevent climate change of such a magnitude that both our sorry arses, or those of our children or their children will be very sorry indeed.
Carbon dioxide levels are now 27 percent higher than at any point in the last 650,000 years, & according to the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), could reach 450-500 ppm by 2050. This has not come about because Mars is closer, or the sugar plum fairy took up smoking, it is as a consequence of human activity utilising carbon-based fuels, & by that releasing carbon dioxide in enormous quantities into the atmosphere.
We cannot stop climate change – it is now inevitable. But we can attempt to moderate its severity by taking every action possible to reduce our production of greenhouse gases. And it is known, proven & provable that the most extravagant consumers of energy & therefore most producers of greenhouse gases are us – the privileged white folk in the OECDs. For us to fail to act & act now, is to fail our children, our futures, & our planet.
This is one of my arguments against a complete ban on Australian hardwood logging.
All it leads to is more pressure on Indonesian, PNG and other “cheaper” nations resources. It would be nice to stop logging, mining, waste disposal etc, but the fluidity of international capital pretty well means exporting the pollution anyway.
China would be a case where some environmental restrictions in the wealthy west have seen that pollution exported to the Chinese. (i realise wages are a huge component of this as well)
Short of restricting trade to companies/countries that adhere to Australian standards what could be done though?
I suppose the opposition to this is based not on the science of it, but on a rusted-on hostility to Western levels of consumption per se. It is just not fair that we have what they do not.
Now the climate scientists are more than capable of setting a greenhouse gas emission reduction target. They’ve called for our Government to set one ASAP as I recall. Once we have that, we should be adopting the least-cost path to achieving it. Developed societies have far more resources than developing ones, so it makes sense for us to subsidise cheaper reductions in places like China and India. This will probably be insufficient across the global economy to get us there, so we’ll probably have to make changes to how we do things in Australia, the US, Europe, etc. as well. But if we don’t, what is the downside, other than the avoidance of environmental penance that is apparently demanded of us? So long as these proposed transactions are voluntary, is the relative poverty of participants relavant? Not really, because if the governments of poor countries adopt the view that it is not their job, however compensated, to clean up after 200 years of industrialisation in the rich countires, they won’t sign up. That’s not an unfair perspective, by the way.
Still, would a little critical analysis allow for 20 lines of angst-filled sarcasm and trite observations on the need to act? No, which is probably why we got none from Bernice whatsoever.
Cheers
BBB
Presumably another thing you would counsel us non-brown folk against is wasting CO² on blog posts deriding our penchant for technology?
Curious it is not that pointing out the scientifically proven need for the West to reduce its levels of consumption & thereby reduce its levels of greenhouse gases emissions is treated as a demand, penance or prejudiced, but allowing the market, the market which I seem to recall got us into this jam in the first place, to buy us out of this, is of course rational. Curious.
But there is also another missed problem with this nifty little solution – our consumerism is subsidised by the production of cheap goods in places such as China, where resource utilisation, pollution controls, working conditions may allow importers to land glorious cheap baubles for us at present, but when nations such as China begin to impose these desired controls, there goes your supply of cheap consumer goods. Perhaps some other lucky place will turn itself into an open cut of polluting manufacturing opportunities – as is indeed happening – but then that means that the market, our mythic handmaid of salvation, has simply shoved its capital into new opportunities to
polluteproduce. I suppose eventually we’ll run out of new places, ah but the market has of course been allowed to do what it does so well.& personally I’m also rather uncomfortable with an authoritarian state such as China, with no democratic process for its citizens to engage with these issues by, is obviously able to meet the requirements of the market in a way western style democracies can’t or don’t have to. As can also be said for Burma, or Vietnam or even India. But the tone would seem to suggest that how you get there matters not – just get there. Yes?
Curious it is not that pointing out the scientifically proven need for the West to reduce its levels of consumption & thereby reduce its levels of greenhouse gases emissions is treated as a demand, penance or prejudiced, but allowing the market, the market which I seem to recall got us into this jam in the first place, to buy us out of this, is of course rational. Curious.
Only that it hasn’t been scientifically proven that the West needs to reduce its consumption, nor did the market get us into this situation.
Hey Bernice, I just noticed the URL for your blog: “http://bbb-bernice.blogspot.com/”
Obviously I’m flattered by the invitation, but I suspect your readership would be less than impressed with a BBB/Bernice joint venture!
Cheers
BBB
Well said, Bernice.
It is of course this kind of myopic thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.
Bernice – your aspirations are rather low.
I’m after at least 18 meters with two thumping great MTU diesels.
And I don’t feel at all guilty about it.
Bernice, places like China and India are rapidly increasing their CO2 emissions because they’re busy buying cars and building new power stations. It’s much cheaper to build new clean infrastructure than retrofit old infrastructure to make it clean.
Of course, industrialized countries will have to cut CO2 emissions, but what’s wrong with also subsidising developing countries to install slightly dearer clean tech rather than cheaper dirty stuff?
Furthermore, horrid as parts of China’s industrial infrastructure are, might I suggest a more careful evaluation of the alternatives? Subsistence farming is not exactly birds singing in the rice paddies…
& nor will subsistence farming feed over 6 billion people. One of a number of key points is that by simply buying a reduction in the future increased greenhouse gases emissions from countries currently the world’s global industrial manufacturer or rapidly industrialising WILL NOT be enough. Of course to build more coal power power stations in China is stupid (mmm – & we’re exporting the coal for that…) or India or anywhere else & to replace with cleaner alternatives – good. But its NOT ENOUGH.
I have no more interest in improving my poor skills in macrame or goat cheese making than obviously most of the earlier correspondents, & while I personally don’t think I have a god given right to consume wilfully & without limit, I can not ignore the simple facts that greenhouse gases emissions have to be reduced by all. Its not a philosophical choice – its that small matter of survival.
Indoor air pollution, from cooking with low grade fuel (vegetation, dung) is a big health problem in developing countries. It kills millions each year. Helping communities switch to cleaner fuels is the type of program funded by wealthier countries as a cheaper means of meeting their obligations under Kyoto than domestic action.
Sure, you need to get the programs right, but putting money into clean energy in poorer countries benefits in two ways. You not only get greater emission reductions per dollar spent than it would in wealthy countries that already have sophisticated energy systems (and reducing emissions is a good thing isn’t it?!), it also helps those communities get better and safer energy sources.
Personally Bernice, I’d rather spend my money on that than funding profitable Australian coal companies to investigate carbon sequestration or help fund a new Australian windfarm – which is pretty much what’s happening so far in terms of domestic action. I reckon other countries with existing energy infrastructure that’s old and polluting might benefit more from new windfarms than we would.
David: our energy infrastructure is old and polluting. We get pretty much all our electricity from coal – in the case of Victoria and South Australia from brown coal.
In need at least two new TVs, as welll. Can’t decide between the better quality of Plasma or the tax-deductibility of LCD Monitors. Then I need another two surround sound systems. I think Sony for the kids and Bose for me.
Again Bernice go and read about the Clean Development Mechanism proposed under Kyoto that allows developed countries to claim credits for GGEs they eliminate as developing countries increase the size of their energy use.
Your argument does not make sense. Without these buybacks developing countries like China will not accept restrictions on their carbon emissions. And it is countries like China that will contribute most to GGEs.
The global warming problem will only be overcome with a massive transfer of resources from developed to developing countries. Attempts to denigrate this process by pointing to the claimed inequity of such voluntarily agreed-to buybacks makers things worse.
You did not respond to a basic question: Why are developing countries adversely impacted on when they make a voluntarily-agreed to deal?
I’m also tossing up between a BMW 335i or the M3 to replace the 5.7 litre V8 Commodore (yeah, yeah, I know I’m a cheapskate – should have got the 6 litre V8 in the first place.)
Why are developing countries adversely impacted on when they make a voluntarily-agreed to deal?
We are ALL adversely impacted upon as the amounts of greenhouse gases emissions reductions being discussed that will be ‘purchased’ by the OECDs will not be enough. We have to reduce our emissions, & our consumption. Its not simply about holding emissions levels at the current, or reducing future increases – current levels are not sustainable.
It is that lingering sense that there is somewhere else that all of this can be shoved to. Or a bit of an effort is enough.
Bernice,
I think it is common ground that developed countries will need to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. No doubt de Boer knows it will not be possible for all developed countries to ‘buy’ 100% of their respective emission reduction targets from developing countries.
All he is saying is that we should look for the least-cost solution. This should not be controversial. You seem to be objecting to the very concept of developed countries spending their money to offset carbon production in developing countries, as if the global warming problem were merely a series of country-specific greenhouse effects. If we are all to sign up to an international response to global warming, why shouldn’t that response take into account the cost differentials in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and then exploit those differentials? This is why people react to your post with terms like demand, penance and prejudiced. Your position appears to go beyond the question “How do we solve this as an international community?” to “In what ways do rich countries need to transform themselves?”, which is really only half the issue.
Cheers
BBB
I really think you are confusing the issue of ‘are the global reductions enough?’ with ‘whatever the level is, can we pay other countries to do some of the reducing provided the net reduction is the same?’.
I agree the present reductions are not enough.
But I think opposition to the second one is silly. What’s intrinsically bad about reducing emissions where it is most efficient? What’s so bad about poor countries being given the opportunity to demonstrate their superior efficiency at reducing emissions and make some money out of it?
If it costs us 10 units of money to reduce x emissions but a poor country can do the same reduction for only 5 units, what is so bad about paying the country 7 units to achieve our x reduction? We save money, they make a profit, and the overall consequence to the environment is the same.
This applies no matter what the level of x (emissions targets) is – a figure which I believe should be much higher.
Bernice, all the people were saying is that if the developed world could do deals – which the poorer countries would have to agree with – to reduce carbon emissions, then they should. If its cheaper, and a win/win, and it works, then we should do it.
But I also agree that the rich countries/people should do more to reduce emissions.
I’m curious about what most people on Larvatus think about this.
Bernice,
In the medium term there need to be cuts to emissions everywhere but the major potential growth in emissions is from developing countries. Cuts in emissions there can be readily made for the next decade or so because energy efficiencies are very low there so low investments yield big cutbacks in forecast emissions. .
Greenhouse gas emissions are a global public good – it doesn’t matter where you make the cuts. Make cuts in developed countries wherever you can but buybacks from developing countries and the fostering of more efficient energy technologies there is important – you get lots of cutback for your $.
The ‘rich’ ‘poor’ dichotomy you evoke is wrong. You can simply give low carbon quotas to developed countries to force them to purchase reductions from developing cdountries. Some even suggest zero quotas on countries like China until say 2017.
This means that the clean-up effort is paid for exclusively up to that time by developed countries.