The Politics of Global Climate Change

Patrick M. Regan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317253884
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In 2009 the US House of Representatives passed legislation requiring reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent over the coming decade. Later that year, President Obama went to Copenhagen to sign a treaty requiring reductions by 50 percent over a two-decade period. The President came back with nothing: no firm commitment to reduce emissions and only a vague target to hold global temperature rises to under 2 C. How does a President who has a 75-vote majority in the House and a 19-vote majority in the Senate who has pre-approval for a treaty reducing greenhouse gas production by 18 percent not achieve a treaty with at least the minimum goal of 18 percent reductions by 2020?Others have answered the puzzle by looking at institutional designs or negotiation dynamics. This book articulates a multilevel process that starts with local politics to explain how they can influence international negotiations and why President Obama s efforts in Copenhagen were doomed to fail. Understanding the role of local private interests can help form strategies for overcoming national resistance to climate change legislation and ultimately international agreements that could change the environmentally self-destructive course we are on.

1

THE POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The world presents constant threats to human existence: war within and between states, nuclear weapons, famine, disease. Given these challenges, managing global political, social, and ecological environments is a constant struggle. But these are not all equally consequential struggles. The tempo of these threats waxes and wanes as we become more politically astute or socially inept. Human viability itself, though, is rarely at stake. New viruses that threaten millions of people reach a level of epidemiological equilibrium before the whole population is at risk. Avian flu, the West Nile virus, AIDS, the plague, all confront the human ability to resist, evolutionary processes to adapt, and the immunity of enough people—in biology or behavior—to prevent catastrophic impact on the planet. Avian flu required the slaughter of millions of chickens, development of vaccines, and in most instances, simple vigilance. The West Nile virus was kept in check by, among other things, mosquito repellant. International negotiations and sanctions are used to manage nuclear threats such as Iran’s. Although not trivial to either the world or individuals, these threats require neither the attention nor the commitment of the average individual. Compliance costs people little, and there is no immediate risk perceived to their ways of life. The solutions and, to some extent, even the threats are, for most people, background noise in their daily lives. Climate change, however, is very different.

The year 2014 was the hottest year on record, bar none. There have been warmer periods, but not at a time of human record keeping, let alone during the time of the modern human species. In the past 20 years, our language has reflected the reality of, and the concern about, the effects of climate change. Carbon footprints, hybrid cars, low-energy lightbulbs, and carbon sequestering are just a few of the terms that are now part of our everyday vocabulary. It is no longer a strange idea that airline passengers can reduce their own carbon footprint with a fare increase that goes toward planting trees in some ecological preserve. Empirical research has, for years, demonstrated the anthropogenic contributions to the processes that generate climatic changes, as well as to the encroaching threshold beyond which these processes may be irreversible (Hansen et al., 1981). In the span of a single lifetime, we have witnessed the nearly complete melting of the glacial cap on Mount Kilimanjaro, the retreat of some of the world’s largest glaciers, catastrophic weather events, and the long-considered drowning of New Orleans. Even though the flooding of New Orleans is attributed to human factors such as weak levees, the failure of the levees resulted from unprecedented weather patterns tied to changing climatic conditions. Weak levees might have been a necessary condition, but that alone would not have mattered if, in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina had not made landfall on the city.

Evidence suggests we are close to a point in the environmental degradation of the planet that is beyond irretrievability except over very long windows of the future (Dow and Downing, 2007). Although there are skeptics, few doubt that the planet is getting hotter by significant amounts or that climatic patterns are shifting enough to cause more catastrophic events (Anderegg et al., 2010). Though at the extreme it is possible, as some believe, that we might be in the early phase of another mass extinction on the planet—this time of the human species—it is likely that we are stressing the ecosystem in ways that generate irreparable harm (McMichael, 1993).

The tragic thing about the climate change debate is that the “truth” matters most to us, not to Earth. If those who support the anthropogenic arguments about climate change are correct, and we do nothing, we are the ones who lose. Other combinations of right and wrong are simply more or less costly. The arguments from the perspective of Earth are rooted in the geological processes that are or are not doing harm. There are risks in being wrong and costs associated with the gamble. But this gamble is hardly just an individual gamble. If we fail to act and we turn out to be wrong, everybody loses, including those who tried to make changes.

By almost all accounts, rising global temperatures, the melting of ice shelves, and dramatic climate variability are taking hold (IPCC, 2014). We understand the causes, the inflection point (550 ppb), and the consequences of our carbon-based lifestyle, so it seems an easy test of human cooperation to prevent our own destruction by finding a cooperative way to reduce our impact on our ecosystem by stabilizing our climate. And yet, given all this, we were unable to generate a binding international agreement or national legislation that could dramatically alter our current trajectory (Bianco et al., 2013). Contemporary political behavior suggests that the required level of cooperation is far from attainable. The goal of this book is to understand this conundrum and to examine more rational ways to implement solutions.

I start with a brief description of the problem itself from a nontechnical perspective. My task is not to present new scientific evidence that supports or refutes a particular understanding of the climate cycle or the role of anthropogenic contributions to the warming planet, but rather to clarify the hurdles we face in the political arena. Resolving many of the environmental problems is not primarily a technical challenge but rather a political one. At the most basic level, reducing our consumption of carbon contributes to reductions in CO₂ emissions, which, in turn, reduce the pressure on the planetary ecosystems, and reducing consumption can result from technological advances. But the foresight to embrace those technological advances, the will to compel their development, or the collective recognition that paying the costs is worthwhile resides in the realm of politics. Technology and geology can explain the physical processes that we confront but not the reasons we choose not to confront them. The social, technological, and political aspects all come together at a point that we call policy. But, absent the political will, we cannot achieve policy. It is my contention that the biggest hurdles we face are, in fact, political.

The Carbon Cycle and Global Temperatures

The carbon cycle and its planetary impact were not always political issues. For eons, the natural cycles on planet Earth were able to regulate the transfers of carbon-based emissions released into the atmosphere through various forms of carbon sequestering. Organic plants consumed carbon dioxide from the air and sequestered it in tree trunks, bogs, diamonds, oil, and coal, while the oceans sequestered huge amounts of carbon dioxide in the hardened shells of shellfish (Orr et al., 2005). Atmospheric equilibrium was achieved naturally to balance inputs and sequestering. The planet went through cycles of temperature gradients that brought on ice ages and subsequently melted mile-thick ice shelves in a process that appears to have been at least partially a function of CO₂ concentrations in the upper atmosphere (Whitesell, 2011; Singer and Avery, 2007; Michaels and Bolling, 2009). One of the weaknesses in the arguments against blaming human contributions to global warming is the assumption that nature, having pushed the planet through many cycles over the eons, is still the only force at work. There is considerable evidence to suggest that this is no longer the case (IPCC, 2014; Whitesell, 2011; Orr et al., 2005; Bianco et al., 2013; Olivier et al., 2011).

The advent of human-created fires is one of the first instances of nonnatural releases of carbon from otherwise effectively sequestered sources. Over millennia, tree leaves absorbed carbon emissions and stored it in the wood fibers of the limbs and trunk. Humans subsequently rereleased the carbon into the atmosphere when keeping warm and cooking. Trees and other organic materials rotted and formed bogs that were carved up to warm houses, and coal mines that dot the landscapes of Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and other states throughout the United States and other countries started as leaves that grew on trees that absorbed carbon from the atmosphere. Humans burned coal to keep warm, initially, but eventually to fire the furnaces of industry. The process was relatively harmless because the scale was insignificant. Humans burning fires early in this process did not know about the carbon cycle and the effect of its release into the atmosphere. Early humans, though they began the process of our potential climate problems, were as blissfully ignorant of what they were doing as were the dinosaurs that preceded them at the top of an Earth-centric hierarchy.

These encroachments on the ecosystem gave way to more intense violation of the carbon equilibrium with the industrial revolution, the internal combustion engine, petroleum distillation, economic development, and population growth. The current state of societies that are highly industrialized, are highly consumptive, and have large populations puts to the test Earth’s ability to rebalance in time to stave off catastrophic climatic consequences. From this perspective, human development has changed the rate at which carbon is being released from its sequestered locations. Also, at the same time, human development has constrained the natural mechanisms for sequestering carbon on a scale that shifts the heating and cooling patterns of the planet. The equilibrium, most climate scientists say, is out of balance, and the deciding contribution is related to human production of CO₂ (Anderegg et al., 2010). Much of the literature concludes that we are rapidly reaching the point at which Earth’s ability to cope will be sufficiently degraded and reversal will be impossible in a time frame useful to its contemporary inhabitants. The overwhelming bulk of this evidence appears to point toward anthropogenic causes (DeSombre, 2007; Dow and Downing, 2007; Anderegg et al., 2010; IPCC, 2014). While this debate rages on between the doomsayers and the naysayers, the locations of carbon continue to shift in ways that are increasingly harmful to the very people caught up in it.

As the average temperature of the earth increases, glaciers can no longer sustain their equilibrium between accumulation and melting; as the ambient temperature of water increases, so too does its volume at a rate tied to the thermal expansion of water. Given the immense volume of water in the oceans and the positioning of many of the world’s largest population centers, small changes in this volume can have large and disastrous consequences. Some of the great ice shelves on the Antarctic continent hold enough quantities of frozen water to inundate coastal regions if it were to melt or to break free of its land mooring. The breakup of the Larsen Bice shelf in the Antarctic in 2002 is one example; the rapid melting of the Petermann glacier in Greenland in 2010 is another.

There is significant scientific research linking the warming of the oceans to the more dramatic and destructive weather patterns observed around the world (IPCC, 2014; Hansen et al., 2012). El Niño and La Niña are complex weather patterns caused by changes in deep ocean currents and temperatures. These patterns have intensified in recent decades, dramatically impacting weather patterns in the continental United States. Climate science demonstrates that these are no longer debated or debatable processes. What generates the discord are the questions of whether humans are a large enough contributor to influence the much larger ecosystem and whether the time scale for any changes are influenced by our activities. There is agreement on the fact that a glacier melts when the temperature balance that determines the rate of melting and accumulating ice has tipped toward melting. Disagreements tend to be over whether human behavior is a major contributor, and, if it is, whether it can be a contributor in reversing those changes.

Those who find little reason to accept anthropogenic explanations for global warming and look to long-term patterns of planetary heating and cooling instead take the view that this is a natural process and that the human contribution is so small relative to geological processes that any changes we make to mitigate warming will not pay dividends (e.g., Singer and Avery, 2007; Michaels and Balling, 2009; Michaels, 2003). Their view is that the temperature of the earth has gone through numerous cycles over the past four billion years and what we are facing today could be just another of those cyclical trends that have had little to do with human behavior (Whitesell, 2011). If we were to change our behavior in an effort to influence this warming cycle and the natural cycle continued to occur, the outcome would be the same, but we would have paid a significant cost in terms of social adaptation. Moreover, the retreat of the ice shelves from their maximum extension during the ice ages are greater than those we are experiencing today. Poles were once warm, deserts lush, and tropical regions arid, and all these changes took place without human intervention. But regardless of whether or not ecosystem changes are part of a long-term trend, there is sufficient evidence that human consumptive behavior is shortening the time in which changes are occurring. The precarious positioning of human population centers were obviously not a consideration in the previous climatic cycles either.

It should be clear that I think somewhat like that proverbial soldier in the foxhole—the cost of being wrong on climate change far exceeds the cost of social adaptations that might have little short-term impact. If nature will get us to the point of human extinction in 1,000 or 10,000 years and human behaviors will accelerate that to 400 years, it is in our collective interest to have those extra 600 years to try to turn things around. The point of irreversibility is critical to those who stress the importance of taking steps today in order to ameliorate the long- and short-term consequences. We all go through life evaluating outcomes and estimating the likelihood of one over another. If you lease a car, you sign an agreement that specifies the value of that car two, three, or four years into the future. Assuming natural wear and tear, the price you pay is a function of an estimate of its future value. As we argue about climate change and the anthropogenic contributions—both to the problem and the possible solutions—we are estimating that future value. A small chance of being wrong has a very high cost if we do nothing. It is a cost that dwarfs that of erring on the side of action today for an uncertain outcome in the future.

One solution lies in technological advances, and numerous applications are already available. Lighting accounts for roughly 7 percent of average household electric consumption. LED and CFC lightbulb technology reduces this consumption by up to 75 percent. The only action required is for consumers to change the lightbulbs they use. Unfortunately, there is a lot of discussion over whether or not we should be compelled to do so. So much, in fact, that it seems as though freedom to buy inefficient lightbulbs is more important than the dire consequences of a rapidly warming planet. Many large countries had banned incandescent lightbulbs by 2012, but the United States delayed conversion until 2014, and even then only for wattages in the range of 100 to 40 watts (US Congress, 2007). The situation is no different when it comes to fuel standards. Europe and China have more restrictive regulations on fuel economy than we do in the United States, and it took a unilateral presidential directive to increase U.S. CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standard to international levels. In this country, we debate whether we should have a higher fuel economy standard, if any standard at all. It is not technology but politics that constrains our behavior. This leads to the question of why reducing the production of a gas that is wreaking havoc on our planet should be a controversial issue. We all have a collective interest in preserving the viability of our ecosystem, and we have multiple institutional testaments to that collective challenge (IPCC, Kyoto, Copenhagen). Unfortunately, that is not the pathway of politics (Bernauer, 2013).

From the perspective of a human contribution to climate change, the carbon cycle is a function of consumption. Carbon exists on the planet in quantities that are largely stable over time. Humans cannot create carbon; we simply move it around by combining it with other atoms to create molecules such as CO₂. When early humans made fires for warmth or cooking, they were consuming comfort or food. Today, too, we produce carbon dioxide through consumption; we are just more sophisticated about how we do it. Heating in winter and cooling in summer generally work by burning fossil fuels; cooking on a grill or stove is also made possible by carbon-based fuel. Travel uses carbon-based fuel today, whereas early humans used only their own energy; they traveled by walking. The more we travel, the warmer we make our homes, and the more we eat, the more fossil fuels we burn. In fact, we burn fuel to manufacture the car or plane that we use for transportation and to deliver the materials to build our homes that house our stoves that cook our meals. We consume a lot more per capita than early humans ever did. Climate change and global warming are, in part, functions of the human production of CO₂ gases, and our consumption lies at the core of that process. Patterns of consumption, as it turns out, are also a political issue. Technology could and would reduce our production of CO₂; politics can prevent—or at least impede—those technological advances from being used at all.

The natural carbon cycle produces CO₂ just as it did before humans began to occupy the earth. Scientists relate the warming and cooling of the planet over the past few billion years to the carbon cycle, where melting ice is linked to excess CO₂ in the atmosphere and the cold periods to a relative deficit of it (Whitesell, 2011). Geological processes shape the release and sequestering of carbon dioxide, and, as the relative composition of our atmosphere changes, so too does the temperature of the earth. The earth’s natural contribution to CO₂ levels in the atmosphere, CO₂ released from trees for example, is not a form of consumption.

As the global population increases, so too does the amount of CO₂ released in the aggregate. Therefore, even if individuals restrict their own consumption, as a group, we continue to increase the amount of CO₂ we release into the atmosphere. The good behavior of any one person, then, is nowhere near enough to change the trend in the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. To make things worse, though some countries are reducing the production of CO₂ on a per capita basis, other countries are just coming online as being major consumers. As a result, we have a long way to go before CO₂ emission begins to reduce as a result of industrial efficiency alone.

Fundamentally, consumption that produces CO₂ emissions is at the heart of anthropogenic causes of climate change. If we could consume less or consume significantly more efficiently, there is a window that allows for a new and sustainable equilibrium. The time horizon between any changes made to consumptive behavior today and its impact on the planet’s ecosystem is very long. So long, in fact, that most of us will not live to see the rewards of our behavioral efforts if we were even to make those efforts. Our children or grandchildren might, but not us. Climate models suggest that over the long-term (a century or more) reductions in CO₂ will significantly and positively impact our ecosystem, but little change in climatic conditions should be expected over a shorter term (Hamlet, 2011). A single big storm resulting from global warming will not cause a mass extinction of humans either—those changes, too, will come slowly and gradually, perhaps to the point when we realize we missed the opportunity.

It is hard to look far enough into the future to understand how we might be initializing changes that could make our planet uninhabitable. It might seem counterintuitive, but understanding a problem and its potential consequences does not always lead to behaviors necessary for a solution. It might sometimes be rational for an individual not to act in spite of evidence suggesting they should. The collective action problem is primarily responsible for this conundrum. Technology is not the key to overcoming this tendency of individuals to fail to act, nor is fear or altruism. Politics has the ability to encourage or coerce collective action.

Why Can’t We Fix This Problem?

This problem is serious, perhaps the most serious problem we face. The causes have been linked to human behavior, and the potential consequences are catastrophic. Other international issues that involv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Politics of Climate Change
• 2 Copenhagen: The Climate Change Summit
• 3 Lessons to Learn: Ozone and CO2
• 4 Whales and Wolves
• 5 Minimizing Uncertainty and Future Discounting
• 6 Moving Forward: Paris and Beyond
• References
• Index
• About the Author