My 4 day stopover in Hong Kong happened to coincide with a public lecture by Prof. Lord Nicholas Stern, formerly Chief Economist of the World Bank and Head of the UK Government Economic Service, and the author of the seminal report for the UK government in 2006 known as the Stern Review. He is a very accessible and quite humorous speaker and I liked him immediately, especially when he stressed in his opening comments that the two big issues of the 21st century are world poverty and climate change, and any attempts to address one must address the other, or fail. As an economist, he takes it as a given that economic growth is a good thing, but his stance is that low carbon growth, rather than being a brake to the economy, can be a strategy for economic growth.
This lecture was subtitled “The Key Elements of a Global Deal on Climate Change”, which he is promoting as a desirable outcome of the 2009 post-Kyoto talks in Copenhagen. He started by giving the background to the figures he advocates as the benchmark to aim for. Currently there are ~430 ppm (parts per million) of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In 1850 there were ~280 ppm, with most of the increase in the last 50 – 60 years, and currently we are adding 2 ½ ppm per year and growing. Therefore by the end of the century, it could be up to 750 ppm or more. At this level there is a 50:50 probability of a 5 degree increase in temperature. To put this in context, 5 degrees lower than at present occurred in the last ice age, and the land that is now London was under ice sheets. In the Eocene period the temperatures were 5 degrees higher than now, and there were “alligators at the North Pole”. In other words, a 5 degree increase would mean a complete rewriting of the physical geography of the earth, sea level rise would be inevitable, and there would be big movements of populations leading to huge conflict. It's clear that “business-as-usual” is not OK.
The acceptable upper limit he advocated in the Stern Report was 450 – 550 ppm, but climate scientists now believe they underestimated the damage and impacts of those figures and currently believe it is more like 450 – 500 ppm. We need to start now, because the sooner we start, the easier it will be. In the Stern review he argued that investment of only 2% of GDP could hold emissions below 500 ppm. He is optimistic that we can do this; it could be less if we learn very quickly, but it could also be more if it is handled badly.
He outlined 6 key points that he believed a global deal must cover, in order to address the scale of change required, ensure it didn't damage the world economy, and be equitable between first and third world countries.
1. The need to hold greenhouse gases below 500 ppm means cutting global emissions by 50% by 2050. With the expected population increase to 9 billion people in 2050, this means emissions need to be reduced to an average of just over 2 tonnes per person per year, which is what India emits now. Currently the world average is 7 tonnes/person/year, with the US and Canada on 20 tonnes/person/year. For this reason, rich countries need to cut emissions much more substantially than poorer countries, and is why the UK and other European countries are committing to 80% reductions in emissions by 2050.
2. The developing world needs to be allowed to plan for low carbon growth.
3. Bring in carbon trading and carbon taxation, allow efficient companies to sell their carbon allocations to businesses who need more.
4. Cut deforestation by 50%, as deforestation accounts for 20% of emissions, and has huge effects on water flows, land erosion, biodiversity and livelihoods.
5. Sensible sharing of technology.
6. Assistance by the rich countries to pay for developments in poorer countries for adaptation to climate change. The rich world is responsible for 70% of CO2, therefore needs to pay for the extra costs of the developing world.
In his closing comments on the current global financial crisis he said we did not recognize the risks of the house price rise boom built on top of low equity loans, and the neglected or ignored risks have come back to bite us. Similarly, the longer we ignore the risk of CO2 emissions affecting climate change, the worse it will be. We need a fiscal boost to grow out of the financial crisis, with serious investment in areas of clean technologies.
I asked him a question about how he saw the issue of diminishing oil reserves impacting on decisions about reducing climate change, and his answer was along the lines of, yes we will need to burn coal as an alternative to oil, but we are learning how to capture and store the carbon, for instance in building materials. As an economist he clearly believes that we can find our way out of our problems through economic growth and technological advances, albeit with a strong environmental focus. Part of me would like to believe that could be so, although the future seems unlikely to me to not include severe reduction in our consumption and expectations of lifestyle.
No comments:
Post a Comment