Realistic targets needed amid hollow climate change pledges

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The League of Nations, forerunner to the United Nations, is largely regarded today as having been an ineffective talking shop. It had no mechanism to enforce its judgments or punish aggression; and it lacked the participation of several key states, with the US never joining and Germany and Japan withdrawing in 1933. Born out of one catastrophic world war, it failed to prevent the next.

Today’s League of Climate involves world leaders meeting in Paris until December 11 to achieve a legally-binding and comprehensive agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Each country is supposed to submit “Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions” outlining what it will do towards reducing its climate impact after 2020.

But each part of this term is problematic. The submissions are “intended” – just as the League of Nations had no army to halt aggressors, so there is no enforcement mechanism for any country that emits over its target.

The plans are “nationally-determined”, essentially giving each country licence to make up whatever it thinks it can get away with, within the constraints of domestic public opinion and some modest degree of international shaming. There is no common format or standard for what a country must achieve.

And each plan is a “contribution”, with no guarantee they will add up to the target of limiting warming to 2°C. The pledges to date – if countries stick to them – would keep temperatures from rising more than 2.7°C. But even this has limited value, since we do not know precisely what amount of greenhouse gas emissions will produce 2°C of warming, and even that level is dangerous.

Many important developing countries seem wedded to the energy and carbon-intensive 20th-century model of Europe or North America, without the vision of new technologies that open up radically different economic possibilities. They are even resisting calls from the US and Australia for proper measurement and reporting of their emissions.

For example, India’s submission is a licence to pollute, with emissions per unit of economic activity planned to fall slower than they have recently. The country’s doubling of coal mining by 2020 will be deterred only by a multibillion price tag, to be paid by wealthier nations. But by 2050, today’s distinction of “developed” and “developing” will have little meaning.

Politicians will need to trumpet comprehensive agreement in Paris, but its practical import will be little. Outside this multilateral framework, however, there are many hopeful signs on climate change, even if they have little to show yet in reducing global emissions.

Canada and Australia, two laggards among wealthy countries, have new leaders with a more constructive attitude.

Although the US right wing continues its antediluvian ignorance of climate science, new regulations will dramatically curtail the country’s longer-term coal use. China is shifting towards a less energy-intensive economy, and appears to have decided to cooperate with the US.

Cheap and abundant gas helps to reduce US carbon dioxide emissions, with the promise of supplanting coal elsewhere. Renewable energy, especially solar and wind, has made great advances and is competitive with fossil fuels in the right conditions.

Major, positive and achievable global goals include greatly expanded research and development – into renewable energy, energy storage, super-efficient electricity grids, advanced nuclear energy, carbon capture and geo-engineering. Agreements on other greenhouse substances – black carbon particles and hydrofluorocarbons – cutting energy subsidies, and reducing deforestation would buy time. A widespread carbon tax would encourage deployment of these innovations.

Comprehensive global agreements – such as outlawing war through the League of Nations – are elusive enough even when all would benefit immediately. Climate change is long-term, its effects are grave but uncertain, and the costs and damages very unevenly distributed between countries. Rather than unenforceable, inconsistent and insufficient pledges, we would do better to negotiate towards the achievable and the useful.

Robin Mills is the head of consulting at Manaar Energy, and author of The Myth of the Oil Crisis