Copenhagen's Chinese Christmas Present

After the American Century Posting 204


As more insider accounts of the Copenhagen Summit come in, the Chinese emerge as the chief villains, a strong word, but not strong enough in this case. A piece in The Guardian reveals how the Chinese sabotaged attempts at a final consensus.

In the future, clearly, one cannot hold talks and hope that all the great powers agree. Giving every important power a veto right or the chance to undermine an agreement is just silly. Instead, the world will have to find another way to work toward relieving global warming. The summit model is not working, and perhaps can never work.

Here are some interlinked suggestions:

1. Create a system that ranks countries into four groups, depending on to what degree they are working toward global warming.

2. Tell consumers worldwide where each nation ranks, so that they can choose intelligently and buy products based on how much a nation is in compliance with UN goals. Under such a system, China would get a D rating, of course, and the US would perhaps as well. I would hope that consumers would be more willing to buy from nations that are trying to solve the problem of global warming rather from those that are making matters worse.

3. Allow companies to be rated as well, so that an environmentally responsible company can get a higher ranking than the nation where they are located.

4. Cities of more than 300,000 people would also be able to apply for and achieve ratings, so that if Seattle or Munich or Oslo or Rio wanted to they could achieve a rating higher than that within their home nation.

5. Give aid for conversion to clean energy technologies only to those Third World Nations where the military budget is less than 2% of GNP. It is absurd to pour money into a nation that is investing in arms and airplanes rather than solar panels, wind mills, and the like. Many poor nations are not focusing their own resources on the problem, and if this is the case, why should anyone else?

6. Give annual awards to successful projects (actually completed, not just proposals) that both improve the quality of life and reduce global warming. Make the awards as glamorous as the Nobel Prizes or the Academy Awards. Governments whose nations are in the A category would also be put in the limelight at these events and part of the ceremony would be to welcome any new members of the "A" club and to congratulate those who had moved up a category. Nations in the D category would not be allowed to have an official speaker or presenter at the awards, but they would be welcome to attend.

7. Instead of the trading system that most nations now have or want, where all free trade is considered to be a good thing, no matter what is traded, nations would be encouraged to revise their import taxes or other tax codes to favor products whose production and use had the least environmental impact. This sort of taxation would recognize that it costs more to manufacture in an environmentally responsible way. I do not suggest that the taxes be punitive, but rather that they be a restructuring of current VAT, and that they be applied to c. 100 goods that are particularly important in this area, notably automobiles, air conditioners, stoves, televisions, and so forth.

As these proposals suggest, we can no longer wait around for the nations of this earth to become unanimous. China blocked the deal this time, but it could be someone else the next time. Instead, turn loose the power of consumers and introduce something that the Chinese can understand: SHAME. They may think they have emerged as a great power, but the Chinese have lost face. Their government has not behaved in an honorable way.

Copenhagen Climate Crunch and Danish Democratic Style

After the American Century posting #202

It appears that the Danish attempt to formulate a text for the Climate Conference has been rejected. What is going on?

If you have been trying to follow the Copenhagen Climate talks, the proceedings may seem puzzling. Literally for days the delegates waited for a text to discuss. It was being prepared by the Danish hosts, they were told. Yet, in fact, the delegates had themselves prepared documents for discussion, which the Danish leaders wanted to ignore. Stalemate. Inaction. Secret discussions behind closed doors. Frustration among the delegates, who felt that the Danish leadership was ignoring them, with feelings running especially high among the African and Third World nations.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the Danes do not understoand or practice democracy in the same way as most other countries. In the Anglo-Saxon world and its former colonies, for example, the person who chairs a meeting should attempt to remain neutral, give all parties an equal chance to speak, and attempt to steer the meeting toward a vote, where there will be winners and losers, but where there will also be a majority decision.

In contrast, Danish leaders who chair a meeting attempt to impose their will on the group, even if it appears to be an open discussion. They want to steer the meeting not merely toward a vote but to a consensus where the outcome of the vote is obvious to all before it is taken. For those steeped in the English or American parliamentary traditions, or something like them, the Danish way of chairing a meeting seems undemocratic, secretive, irritating, high-handed, and counter-productive. To put this another way, most meetings in the Anglo-Saxon world abide by Roberts Rules of Order. Danish meetings, in my 25 years of experience, absolutely do not abide by any such rules.

In the Danish Parliament (Folketing) the coalition in power seeks to impose its decisions on the nation, often with surprisingly little public discussion. The real discussion goes on in private, in party caucuses and in coalition partner meetings. All members of a party are expected to vote the same way. When they emerge from behind their closed doors, they have all their votes lined up and they proceed to ram through the desired law with what I call "symbolic discussion." The result is already known beforehand.

I am not a delegate at the world climate talks, but from the outside it certainly looks as though the Danish leadership, steeped in its own ways of doing business, is trying to make the rest of the world play by Danish rules. And the rest of the world is not buying it. China in particular made it clear they were not going to dance to a Danish imposed tune.

To put this another way, the Danish leadership arrogated to itself too many roles. It wanted to be the host, the chair of the meeting, and also the chief negotiator. They wanted to wear too many hats, and acted according to a democratic model that others are not accustomed to. One could see this last night. The Danish Prime Minister had invited hundreds of wold leaders to a gala evening, to see the Royal Ballet and take some expensive refreshments. But the Prime Minister could not play his role there as host, because he was at the conference all evening, in his roles as chair and negotiator.

The talks are now in their final two days. One hopes that the very real Danish talent for finding compromises (albeit usually behind closed doors) saves the summit meeting from failure. If China and the United States are willing to act together (a very big If), then a historic compromise may emerge. But one thing seems certain. The Danes cannot expect to impose their text on the rest of the world.

Will we get a binding agreement? Will its standards be at least as high as those agreed upon in Kyoto? In other words, will it really make a difference in slowing down global warming? At this moment, it is hard to tell.

One thing we do know for certain: these world leaders came separately in their private jets.

Obama and the Copenhagen Climate Summit

After the American Century

President Obama has announced that he will briefly attend the Copenhagen Climate Summit. This is welcome news. But the timing of the visit (early) and its length (brief) suggest that the White House does not expect a major breakthrough to occur. After all, in the American system of government the President can only carry out what the independent Congress has mandated, and no laws are yet on the books that endorse even the modest 17% cutbacks that Obama has proposed.

One weakness of the preparations for the Copenhagen Summit is that there seem to be no clear guidelines on the methods of calculation that all nations share in advance. So when Obama says the US will cut CO2 emissions by 30% in 2025, this sounds much like what the EU is offering to achieve by 2020. It is not. The EU calculates from 1990 while the US is using a 2005 baseline. What the US is actually promising is to make reductions back to about where it was in 1990, while the EU is promising to go 20% lower than the 1990 level.

A second problem is that the focus really ought to be on per capita energy use and CO2 emissions. The United States uses about twice as much energy per person as Japan, so the US would need to reduce its total energy use by one half just to get to get even. Nations such as China and India, which each have more than four times as many people as the United States, look at per capita energy use, and relatively speaking do not see themselves as the problem. India uses less energy that the United States, and millions of its people still do not have regular electrical service. China is now the world's largest polluter, but the United States is by far the largest per capita.

A third problem is that the summit seems to be focused primarily on ends - CO2 reductions - without a corresponding showcase for the technological means to achieve it. Some nations, notably the UK, are adopting atomic energy as the way forward, since nuclear plants produce almost no CO2 compared to coal-fired ones. The problem is that atomic energy does produce serious amounts of toxic waste, and it must be stored for hundreds, or in some cases for thousands of years. Look around for examples of hermetically sealed buildings that have been constantly guarded for even 100 years. There are none. When all the long-term costs and dangers of atomic power are included, is it not likely that wind, tide, thermal, and solar power are more desirable?

In short, in addition to having a big political circus with heads of state coming that negotiate on the ends, the world needs an equally big demonstration of what is already possible. We already have the means available to build houses that are close to self-sufficient. We already can make automobiles that are twice as efficient as the average vehicle on the road today. There are hundreds of new technologies and best practices that just need to become better known and put to use.

The Kyoto agreement focused on noble ends, but they have not been achieved. In practice, not even one of the major industrial nations that signed the Kyoto agreement has in fact managed to do what they promised. In every case, energy use has continued to rise. (See my October 1, 2009 blog on this.) It is time to focus more on the technological means. The leaders can promise whatever they like, but will they know how to achieve those noble ends?