Empty promises: US and Chinas climate agreement looks awfully like the broken promises of Kyoto. My oped today in the Australian: ON Tuesday, China and the US made a joint statement on their intentions to limit CO2 emissions. This took part of the media by storm. CNN told us “US and China reach historic climate change deal”; the Los Angeles Times called it a “landmark climate deal”; the Huffington Post spoke of “ambitious climate change goals”. But this looks awfully like the original “solution” to global warming, the Kyoto Protocol, which consisted of mostly broken promises. The US-China statement hedges itself, making no new obligations: “The United States intends to achieve an economy-wide target of reducing its emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below its 2005 level in 2025 and to make best efforts to reduce its emissions by 28 per cent. China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early and intends to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20 per cent by 2030. Both sides intend to continue to work to increase ambition over time.” China essentially promised what it was already going to do. In the International Energy Agency’s baseline scenario, China’s CO2 emissions peak in 2030 at about 10 gigatonnes, or 25 per cent higher than today. And China already emits more than a quarter of the world’s CO2 emissions. Many, including CNN, read that China would get 20 per cent of its energy from renewable resources by 2030, but China promised only 20 per cent would come from non-fossil fuels — and guess what? In the baseline scenario of the IEA, China already plans to get 18 per cent of its energy from non-fossil fuels and solar and wind will make up only about 3 per cent. The rest come from nuclear (5.5 per cent), hydro (3 per cent) and wood (6 per cent) which in 2030 will still power the stoves of more than 240 million Chinese, contributing to devastating indoor air pollution and killing more than a half-million people each year. All this resembles the lead-up to the Copenhagen negotiations in 2009 when the Chinese promised they would emit 40 per cent to 45 per cent less CO2 per dollar of gross domestic product by 2020. It was hailed as a big breakthrough but was just business as usual as projected by the IEA. The target Barack Obama is offering is, on the other hand, is a real and significant reduction. Without any new climate policies, the shale gas revolution will see US emissions reduced by 11 per cent in 2025, so getting an extra 16 percentage points requires a lot of new, stringent climate policies. But clearly Obama lacks any legislative basis for making such a promise. This is reminiscent of Al Gore going to Kyoto in 1998. Back then, a Senate resolution with 95 votes to zero had already established that the US would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. So the Clinton administration never submitted Kyoto for ratification, but still promised a 7 per cent cut by 2008-12. In fact, the US emissions increased by 9 per cent across the period, ironically 16 percentage points more than promised, just like Obama is now promising. For the past 20 years the main solution to global warming has been grandiose promises of reductions that rarely materialise. Remember Canada promising a 6 per cent reduction at Kyoto but delivering a 24 per cent increase? There is a real climate problem and a smart way to fix it. If we invest more in green innovation we can eventually solve the problem. If we innovate the price of green energy down below fossil fuels, everyone will buy it, including the Chinese and the Indians. Americans have spent $10 billion on research into shale gas, which has spurred a great switch from coal to cheaper and less polluting gas, reducing US emissions by about 300 million tons of CO2 a year and making the US about $200bn more in GDP. Compare this with the European approach, which has cut just 91 million tons of CO2 with solar and wind, but costs $40bn in subsidies each year. If we spent $100bn a year on green research, it would likely cut long-term emissions dramatically, and every dollar spent would do about $11 worth of good. Yet the China and US promises suggest that the world is going to replay the Kyoto strategy of making empty promises. Kyoto lost us 20 years. If we’re not careful, in 2030 we will have little but broken promises. It is time the world took climate change serious and focused on green R&D instead. t.co/4fzyAQs2hQ
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 12:21:02 +0000
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