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BY DR. JIM LEONTIADES
CIIM, The Cyprus Business School
Amid a freezing Scandinavian snowstorm, politicians form 120 countries met in Copenhagen recently to combat global warming. The chaos outside the climate change conference was to be expected. It has become foreseeable that every such international conference will be attended by riots and protests. It is hard to see that they achieve anything, perhaps they are not intended to. Protest itself is apparently a sufficient end in itself if it achieves media coverage.
The chaos that took place within the conference should also have been foreseeable. How could 120 countries actually communicate, negotiate and achieve consensus in just two weeks on a problem concerning the entire world’s population? The only comparable negotiations are those of the World Trade Organisation on the lowering of trade barriers. The latest of these has been going on for over a decade with no agreement.
It did not help that the chairwoman of the Copenhagen conference resigned. It was not called a resignation but that is what it was. Five of the major countries turned their backs on the others and arrived at some form of agreement between themselves.
President Obama declared that an “accord” had been reached. 100 billion dollars would go to developing countries to combat climate change by 2020. However the details are so vague that it is difficult to know what this means and for which developing countries (keeping in mind that about 100 of the participant countries fall into this category). Some countries supported this agreement, others were neutral. Still, others strongly opposed it as totally inadequate. But even that sum may be difficult to achieve once the politicians go home and seek approval from their constituents.
FROM DISCUSSION NO ACTION
Hilary Clinton announced that any such donation would depend on “transparency” regarding how the funds would be used. Transparency has also become a popular word in regard to international aid donations. It has become clear that much aid to developing countries was misappropriated (a polite word for corruption). No details were given as to how this transparency would be achieved. Some countries opposed international monitoring on grounds of sovereignty. How would any such transparency be implemented? For example, if money is donated to protect forests in developing countries, how will it be more successful than previous measures to protect forests which have conspicuously failed?
Such questions have to do with the movement from discussion of principles to action – something that was almost entirely ignored in Copenhagen. Of course, the Copenhagen conference was declared to be “only a first step”. First steps are undoubtedly useful but there is no disguising the fact that subsequent steps will prove more difficult. At best, the Copenhagen conference has simply agreed to “throw money at the problem” – little else. This is quite easy to do as long as there is some hidden assumption that it is other people’s money. The task before the politicians going home from the conference is to sell the costs and benefits of any such agreement to their own constituents.
The really major costs associated with reducing global warming are related to the measures which the developed countries have to take within their own economies.
The few calculations which have been made on this score indicate that with present technology, many hundreds of billions of dollars will be required to make even modest progress in reducing global warming. The cost of producing a national unit of output will be increased significantly, amounting to a drop in productivity and national income.
NEW TECHNOLOGY?
Considering the staggering costs associated with reducing carbon emissions in the present stage of technology, some noted scientists believe that the best use of such money would be to back major investment in new methods for generating energy and making energy savings. There has been enormous progress recently in both. One example is the development of photovoltaic cells which generate electricity from the sun. The costs of such electricity remain more expensive than that produced by conventional means – but the gap is narrowing. Could a programme (such as that behind the international space station) speed this and analogous developments in power generation, increased engine efficiency, better insulation, etc., prove more a more cost efficient use of such funds?
SPLIT BETWEEN DEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING
What became clear at Copenhagen is a growing split between developing and developed countries. This is the same split which is behind the failure to achieve a global consensus on the reduction of trade barriers. The developing countries seek more than the developed countries are willing to offer. This split along economic lines seems to be a growing friction point of international relations and promises to remain so for many years to come. Developing countries feel entitled to major donations from “richer” countries. But few countries today are in a position to make sizable financial commitments. Is the USA with its trillions of national debt able to get approval from Congress for any substantial increase in that debt for donations abroad? The same may be said of Britain, or for that matter Greece (with a debt already equal to 125% of GDP) or Cyprus struggling to balance its national budget and avoid tax increases. After the parades and speeches, it gets down to that.
