U.N. climate plan called unrealistic
A strategy to cap greenhouse gas emissions could cost 3% of the
world's GDP.
By Alan Zarembo
Times Staff Writer
May 5, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-warming5may05,0,4174050.story?track=mostviewed-homepage
A United Nations panel on Friday released its most comprehensive
strategy to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming, but
experts said political and economic realities likely doom it to
failure.
Although more than 100 countries backed the report, experts said its
call for a global, multi-trillion-dollar effort to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions is unrealistic.
The United States and China — which account for more than 40% of the
world's carbon dioxide emissions — approved the report but have given
no indication that they would reverse their long-held opposition to
mandatory reductions in emissions.
"It's not realistic from a political standpoint, and it's not
realistic because those targets are incredibly expensive," said Robert
Mendelsohn, an economist at Yale University.
Even supporters of the plan were daunted by the speed and scale of
action required by the report to stabilize carbon concentrations at
slightly above current levels.
"It's hard to imagine," said Jae Edmonds, an economist at the Joint
Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland. "So
many things have to happen so fast, and they are so big."
The report, by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
was released in Bangkok after a week of contentious debate.
Its primary instrument for reducing greenhouse gas concentrations is a
system in which governments would place a cap on emissions and charge
polluters for every ton of carbon dioxide beyond that point. That
would force companies to cut emissions and invest in energy efficiency
and alternative fuels.
The price per ton would reach up to $100 by 2030. By then, the system
could cost up to 3% of the world's gross domestic product, the report
said.
The Bush administration quickly denounced the restrictions as too
expensive.
"It would cause a global recession," said James Connaughton, chairman
of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
"Our goal is reducing emissions and growing the economy," he said
during a news conference in Bangkok.
But Robert Socolow, a carbon mitigation expert at Princeton
University, said that taking a cheaper and slower path could still be
costly. A study by the British government last year found that damage
from global warming — flooding, starvation, drought and other
calamities — would easily top 5% of global GDP annually.
The U.N. report looked at a variety of scenarios, but only the most
expensive would avoid the worst perils of rising temperatures.
That course requires annual emissions to peak by 2015 and fall to 50%
to 85% of 2000 levels by mid-century. It would limit the temperature
increase to 3 degrees Fahrenheit.
The concentration of greenhouse gases would be stabilized between 445
and 490 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalents — a measure that
factors in the warming effects of all greenhouse gases. The current
concentration is about 425 parts per million.
The United States has opposed calls for mandatory emissions cuts and
carbon taxes, instead placing its hopes on voluntary reductions and
future technologies that would be cleaner and cheaper.
China also has opposed mandatory reductions, saying they would derail
its economic growth.
The country unsuccessfully fought to delete the most stringent
emissions scenario from the report, participants in the conference
said. India, the world's fifth biggest polluter, joined the effort.
The most prominent supporters of the plan were European nations.
"The report shows — and this is encouraging — that ambitious climate
protection is economically manageable," said German government
spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm.
The U.N. report is the third of four installments being issued this
year. With the input of more than 2,000 scientists and the approval of
more than 100 governments, they are the closest thing the world has to
a consensus on global warming.
The release in February of the first report, which definitively blamed
humans for global warming, helped galvanize world opinion after years
of debate and shifted the focus of activity toward fixing the problem.
The second report, released in April, looked at the potential effects
of global warming. It said that that rising temperatures, if left
unchecked, would lead to widespread coastal flooding, starvation and
species extinctions.
The current report is as much about policy as it is about science,
asking how much the world is willing to pay to stem global warming.
Among its options are several more affordable scenarios. For example,
one plan would stabilize greenhouse gas levels between 590 and 710
parts per million. It would cost 0.2% of global GDP in 2030, compared
with 3% in the most stringent plan.
Annual emissions would continue to rise until 2060, increasing more
than 60% above 2000 levels.
But under that scenario, temperatures would rise about 6 degrees,
which the U.N. panel has described as calamitous.
Global temperatures have risen about 1.5 degrees since the beginning
of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.
Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of
Concerned Scientists and an author of the current report, said he
hoped it would increase pressure on the United States to agree to
mandatory emissions cuts.
"The industrialized world needs to step up first," he said.
The United States, he said, lags behind Europe, which already runs a
market in which emissions permits are bought and sold.
The crux of the problem is deciding who should pay to contain global
warming.
China and other developing countries argue that industrialized nations
should foot the bill, since they are responsible for the bulk of
carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere over the last two
centuries.
That view is reflected in the Kyoto Protocol, which requires
participants to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions before 2012 by
an average of 5% below 1990 levels.
The Bush administration has refused to join the Kyoto pact on the
grounds that it does not restrict emissions in the developing world.
China, which opens a new coal-fired power plant every week, is on
track to surpass the United States as the biggest polluter as soon as
this year.
At that pace, its yearly emissions will double those of the United
States in less than a decade, said Gregg Marland, a fossil fuel
pollution expert at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
The U.N. report concludes that the greatest potential for curbing
future emissions lies in the developing world, since those countries
tend to be the least energy efficient.
But Mendelsohn, the Yale economist, said calls for immediate,
aggressive cuts could alienate developing countries.
"It's best to start by setting small targets in the near future — not
ones where China has to choose between economic growth and emissions
reduction," he said.
Delegates from more than 100 countries agreed at a conference in
Bangkok on Friday that acting now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
can mitigate global warming.
Top carbon dioxide emitters in 2004
in millions of tons
World*: 26,583
U.S.: 5,800
China: 4,732
Russia: 1,529
Japan: 1,215
India: 1,103
Germany: 849
Canada: 551
Italy: 462
S. Korea: 462
France: 387
* Includes emissions from international aviation and marine bunkers
--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
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