Climate is difficult for action on environment

IRELAND’S fifth attempt at a climate bill is passing tortuously through the Oireachtas. The four aborted attempts reflect the failure of Irish politics to grapple with the major global problem of the 21st century. Few countries have passed significant such legislation: there is a lack of public enthusiasm for unilateral action when short-term economic issues dominate the political agenda. Paul Harris’s book, What’s Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It, encapsulates the difficulties of reconciling local, national and international interests in resolving the stalemate in global climate negotiations.

It seems contorted to link climate politics to the 17th century peace treaty that ended the Thirty Years War of religion in Europe. But the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, is the root of the modern nation state as the sovereign negotiating body for its subjects. Harris has identified this as the basis for the international logjam in the climate negotiations of today.

Responsibility for greenhouse-gas emissions has been defined on a national basis. This has pitted developed nations with a bad historical record of emissions against developing countries aspiring to the same consumerist lifestyles.

Consequently, ever since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed, in 1992, its optimism has been diminished by the changing balance of power between developed and developing economies, culminating in the ‘car crash’ Copenhagen conference of 2009.

What’s Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It is a carefully researched and well-presented work. Although many of the arguments are repeated laboriously, and the text would have benefited from the pruning of 80 pages, it is a worthwhile contribution to the climate politics debate.

Harris is in a unique position to examine the topic. Apart from having a lengthy and distinguished record of writing on the subject, his background in US foreign policy, and his position as professor of global and environmental studies in the Hong Kong Institute of Education, provide him with a window into both the historical driver of the problem, namely the western capitalist system, and the psyche of the key future player in the drama, China. Indeed, the text largely revolves around the ‘you go first’ stalemate between the US and China, and how this particular game of ‘chicken’ might be broken.

The book comprises two main components.

In the first, climate change is handled as a doctor would diagnose a patient.

The symptoms of the ‘cancer of Westphalia’ are analysed. The evolution of the malignancy is traced through the inactivity and obstructionism of successive US administrations, with scathing criticism reserved for the wasted years of the of the George W. Bush presidency. The reputation of the US as a ‘laggard’ or a ‘spoiler’ in global climate politics is due to the influence of powerful interest groups and the unwillingness of political leadership to confront them. The drought of 2012, and Hurricane Sandy, may be opportunities to change the prevailing sentiments, but What’s Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It appears to have been written just too early to digest the impact of these events. Neither can it handle the potentially game-changing sentiments expressed by US President Barack Obama in his recent keynote speech on the topic.

In the absence of movement from the US, the author advocates that China should make the first move. Of course, this is partly a recognition of the enormous growth of Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions, from 2.2 tons per capita, in 1990, to 6.8 tons per capita, in 2010.

This places Chinese per-capita emissions on a par with many developed nations, and in excess of countries such as Italy or France. Those of us who have attended the various annual Conference of the Parties meetings have witnessed the Chinese negotiators sheltering behind the carbon-intensity statistic (CO2 emissions per unit of output); but even this is increasingly untenable.

By the early 2020s, China’s per-capita emissions will be double that of the EU and its historical emissions will be commensurate with its share of global population.

As Harris says, China holds the key to global sustainability.

Having diagnosed the causes of the problem, halting the spread of what Harris calls “affluenza” is the basis for the second half of the book. The author reiterates the principles of climate justice as a counterbalance to state-centric considerations.

These are well-explored, if somewhat idealistically. Hard-nosed negotiators, however, seldom come to the table with a human-rights perspective at the top of their agenda. While a global system of “greenhouse development rights” would offer a just and fair way to proceed, the self-interest of the nation state is unlikely to relinquish its pragmatism any time soon.

However, Harris makes one intriguing argument. One ethical principle that has become embedded in climate politics is that of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ — shorthand for recognising that developing countries have a legitimate right not to have their development stifled by the inability of the developed economies to address their historic responsibilities for creating climate change.

Harris dissects this principle, breaking it down from a national-basis to an individual-basis. The burgeoning middle classes of China and India reveal a fundamental flaw in climate politics based on the nation state, and the evidence is that affluent sectors of society in developing countries are just as profligate in their emissions as their developed-world counterparts.

A similar situation exists in the oil-rich countries of the Middle East, and in countries such as South Korea, Singapore, etc, which can no longer lay claim to the developing-country tag.

On the assumption (perhaps now more questionable as President Obama looks to his ‘legacy’) that the US won’t jump first, and that Europe is already acting, though increasingly less of a player on the global-emissions map, Harris argues that it is the responsibility of China to take the initiative.

This is a bold and rather controversial contention, but well-argued: unilateral action by the Chinese government in making affluent Chinese polluters pay more would benefit the country as well as the world, and provide ‘first mover’ advantages to the greatest polluter.

Harris then expands upon a people-centred approach. This contains several meritorious ideas. Ultimately, it founders on the impracticalities of tackling greed, and a deeply ingrained belief in economic growth as the panacea for all ailments. This, perhaps, is where Harris’s idealism hits the buffers.

Everything he advocates is right and necessary, but does not offer sufficient clout to tackle the underlying diseases of consumerism and materialism. Can the nation state overcome its reluctance to dispense with its powers and heal the ‘tragedy of the atmospheric commons’?

Despite Harris’s forensic examination, the outlook must remain pessimistic.

At least in the short- to medium-term, the consequences of the Peace of Westphalia seem set to prevail.

- John Sweeney is professor of geography at NUI Maynooth.