The fight against global warming is an economically beneficial one, the Roadmap says
‘Roadmaps’ are often disappointing in politics. George Bush had a roadmap for peace in the Middle East, until the election of Hamas in Gaza and other off-piste developments consigned it to failure. This week the European Commission produced a different sort of roadmap. Its aspirations are equally bold, namely the effective decarbonisation of the European economy by mid-century.
Here the road is long and straight: the EU can and should reduce its domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25% by 2020, 40% by 2030, 60% by 2040, and finally 80% by 2050. This is the scale of contribution seen as necessary by the EU and other developed countries in order to limit global warming to 2° C.
The reduction percentages are big, round numbers, and the benchmark years are far enough away to feel futuristic. Nonetheless, the Roadmap breaks the target down into bite-size digestible targets – and suddenly it feels more attainable. The pathway to the 2050 target would require an annual reduction in emissions (compared to 1990) of 1% in the decade up to 2020, 1.5% up to 2030 and 2% thereafter. This will cost an extra 1.5% of EU GDP per annum than was invested in the low carbon transition pre-crisis, and the outlays are likely to be more than recouped by savings on fossil fuel imports.
The challenge for Brussels is to show member states that this is an attainable pathway, but not a self-evident one. The Roadmap does well to dispel any complacency about GHG reductions of this magnitude occurring of their own accord, on the back of miracle technologies or super fuels. Nor does it play into the hands of those who warn against climate change action plans as a smokescreen for draconian policies impinging on lifestyle freedoms, e.g. the freedom to eat meat and to travel extensively. The Commission is adamant that radical lifestyle changes – while potentially helpful – need not occur.
What would 80% emission cuts look like?
Instead, Brussels paints a detailed and necessarily prosaic picture of what 80% plus GHG emission cuts would look like. The resulting image is of a world where the systems of the present are meticulously adapted with the pick of emerging (but largely existing) technologies. The EU would produce more energy from renewables and progressively cut oil and gas imports, feed the new energy sources into more flexible ‘smart’ grids, remove the slack from emissions trading schemes to force up the virtual carbon price, deploy carbon capture and storage where heavy industries can’t decarbonise, electrify transport where possible and run other vehicles on biofuels, whittle down heat and light inefficiencies in buildings by applying existing technologies, and cut agricultural methane and nitrous oxide emissions (and to a lesser extent CO2) by applying state-of-the-art precision farming techniques. In short the EU must – in a broader, sustained and more focused manner – do what it is currently doing embryonically and in fits and starts.
In 2008 the EU scored a major victory for its climate credibility when it wrote 20% emission cuts by 2020 into law. The Roadmap shows that the Commission, largely thanks to its indefatigable climate chief Connie Hedegaard, is not resting on its laurels, and is convinced that the EU can and must go further, regardless of what the international community is doing.
The Roadmap is intended to be the starting pistol for a whirlwind of GHG-cutting initiatives. Brussels wants each member state and each sector to draw up its own roadmap for energy efficiency and GHG reductions. Putting sectors in healthy competition with one another could be a fruitful avenue; all sectors of the economy want investment (not least in r&d) to spur their future competitiveness, and they know that they will rise up the pecking order for public funding if they can add a strong sectoral GHG reduction performance (at the 2020 or 2030 benchmarks) to their CVs.
Targets: arbitrary but necessary
But if the roadmap has a weakness, it is the EU’s refusal to lay down the law. The current document merely maps out what scale of emission reductions can be achieved in which sectors and by which year, and relies on the goodwill of member states to rise to the challenge. Here the Commission should not be averse to a touch of dirigisme. Should short-termism prevent member states from grasping the economic/environmental win-win it has put on the table – and a long-term win-win can often be a short term lose-lose for popularity – Brussels should not be afraid to make the roadmap’s projections into binding targets.
Targets are arbitrary, approximate and unscientific, but this is the unavoidable face of any coherent international response to climate change. Emissions trading schemes are based on the allocation of an arbitrarily capped number of emission licenses. The Kyoto emission targets were arbitrary, and so are the EU’s 2020 targets. But these appear to be working: member states had already cut emissions by 16% by 2009. Targets have helped to drag them – kicking and screaming – in the right direction. Big round numbers are necessary, even if they incur the wrath of sneering do-nothings.
When it comes to the scale of change required to fight climate change, governments will need to sponsor particular industries, tax others prohibitively, mobilise huge fluxes of public and private money to particular causes, and send strong price signals. In short the very tenets of a planned economy. With this in mind, it is no surprise that many are tipping China to move to a low carbon economy with unparalleled pace and efficiency, once Beijing decides to definitively pursue that goal. When it comes to energy security, the US also shifts into planned economy mode – how else would America have managed to shift nearly 40% of its domestic maize production into fuel ethanol over the space of a decade? European politicians may be more sensitive to the environmental cause, but their failure to see the other side of the win-win – the economic gains – may mean that the EU stalls while others move ahead.
EU leaders have already signed up to a 30% GHG reduction scenario by 2020 on the condition that other wealthy countries follow suit; in the absence of any such agreement the commitment seems rather virtual. In the meantime the EU should do what makes economic sense domestically: according to the Commission’s modelling exercise, this means decarbonising ASAP. When other countries see the EU importing substantially less of their fossil fuels, and producing new jobs of its own through green investment, the most compelling case will have been made for them to follow suit in moving full throttle towards a low carbon economy.
Photo by Valentina Pavarotti
#1 by radinol on March 10, 2011 - 3:39 pm
Well, as long as they don’t ask us to decarbonate the human body, that’s fine with me.
#2 by Stevo on March 12, 2011 - 5:24 pm
Last year the Commission said that “what makes economic sense domestically” would be a unilateral move to a 30 percent cut by 2020, the roadmap effectively puts this off the agenda so represents an admission by Hedegaard that she is not going to win the 30% by 2020 battle.
Also it is worth recalling that the IPCC scenario of an 80-95 percent greenhouse gas emissions cut by rich countries by 2050 (with an overall global 50 percent cut compared to 1990), means only a 50 percent chance of keeping global warming to 2 degrees or less above preindustrial levels.
#3 by Roger Helmer MEP on March 15, 2011 - 9:50 am
When will you wake up to reality? There has been no significant global warming for fifteen years. Current global temperatures are entirely normal: there is no emergency. Human activity probably has no measureable effect on climate. Even if the EU decides to crucify its economy on the altar of climate alarmism, no other economic area will do so. So get the message: voters don’t believe it; they won’t vote for it; and they won’t pay for it. We’ve had enough of this nonsense.
#4 by Marcel on March 15, 2011 - 1:03 pm
I see the climate nonsense is still being peddled. Message to deluded lefties: IT IS A NATURAL PHENOMENON.
Meaning: we cannot stop it, cannot mitigate it or anything. Because it is a natural phenomenon, we can only ever adapt to it, and we will have to do just that.
Those who claim that mankind can stop climate change should be told that it would be the same that if people claimed we could stop earthquakes. And we all know, that is impossible.
Its all a scam by leftists to squeeze more taxes out of us so the directors of left wing NGOs can fill their pockets even more by acting all ‘progressive’ across the planet. Follow the money.
Repeat: it is a NATURAL PHENOMENON, don’t let lying leftists tell you otherwise, and don’t be scaremongered.
Now lets hear some people deny that climate change is a natural phenomenon.
#5 by oak on March 15, 2011 - 4:31 pm
Denying that climate change is happening is a crime and it is a lie. It is easy to deny it since here in Europe its effects are still not devastating, and they will probably not be in the near future, so why to get into al the trouble of facing the problem if we can just procrastinate? It sounds 100% logical. But it is completely irresponsible and selfish not to take any measure to stop the problem from our side. Countries like Bangladesh and India, just to quote a couple of examples, already have to face the consequences of climate change effects. Scientific proofs exist to show that the human activity is influencing the climate.
What is stopping you to face reality?
Losing electoral support? Tackling climate change will have to imply massive changes in our economic system which will probably generate discontent- but it is a responsibility of the politicians to put their electorate in front of the reality, at cost of making some unhappy.
#6 by Nick Jacobs on March 15, 2011 - 9:41 pm
@Roger Helmer
@Marcel
A majority of scientists tell us that climate change is happening and is linked to the emission of greenhouse gases. But even if you don’t buy that, is inaction a risk worth taking?
The answer is no, if you take into account the multiple co-benefits of action, along the lines of what the Roadmap advocates.
Facts on the ground show us that species are dying off at unprecedented rates, soils are losing their fertility, and water is becoming scarcer, among other worrying trends in regard to the world’s resource base. On top of this, the European Commission is now telling us that decarbonisation is beneficial even from a purely economic perspective – primarily in reduced fossil fuel imports.
So what is there to lose by going down this route? The climate change debate has become a broader one about resource efficiency, and the Roadmap is about managing what we have better, and achieving multiple positive outcomes from a single action, e.g. precision application of pesticides, in order to a) lower the carbon footprint from their production b) avoid pollution of water courses, and c) reduce the health risks associated with pesticide residues on food.
If EU policy is in the hands of environmental lobbyists, why (as Stevo points out) has the European Commission stepped back from the 30% emission cuts that NGOs have demanded by 2020, and settled instead for 25%? It transpires that lobyying is strong from both sides, and the Commission is steering a difficult course somewhere in the middle.
#7 by Marcel on March 16, 2011 - 9:24 pm
Don’t lie Nick.
First, of course climate change is happening, it is a NATURAL PHENOMENON after all, like for example…say… EARTHQUAKES.
And second, I very much doubt that it is a large majority that tells us that emissions have anything to do with climate change, because first of all it isn’t at all true (most emissions are in fact, NATURALLY produced) and second, even if it did, since when is consensus a scientific argument? And as we all know, consensus in science has a very bad track record indeed.
And then onto that roadmap. We also know that if the undemocratic EU has something to do with it, that such a ‘roadmap’ is full of nonsense. And of course, ultimately designed so the undemocratic EU can grab more powers and take them away from the elected national parliaments. Anything the EU does has one purpose and one purpose only, to give the EU more powers at the expense of national democracy.
NGO’s can also not be trusted since those are not only staffed exclusively with left wing ideologues, but second they take money from the EU and in exchange have to trumpet the ‘benefits’ of ‘more EU’ every step of the way. The unelected undemocratic Soviet-style Politburo aka European Commission, if that tells us something is beneficial, almost by definition you know that they mean its beneficial for them and will give them more power at the expense of national democracy. The EC also has a very bad track record and has throughout the last decade been flat wrong on many things.
Soils losing fertility has nothing whatsoever to do with the climate. but with overexploitation because the planet is overpopulated. And species dying off at unprecedented rates? I don’t believe it, and besides, species have always died off and sometimes very suddenly, ask the dinosaurs for example. Oh wait…
Speaking of natural law, which is the foremost natural law? Survival of the fittest, and whether you like that or not, with the gross overpopulation and overexploitation of soil, it is inevitable that it will come to that, roadmap or no roadmap.
#8 by Galena on March 17, 2011 - 10:15 am
Was the depletion of the ozone layer a NATURAL PHENOMENON?
Do the earthquakes happen because we the humanbeings, had to develop, exploit, produce and comsume by say pumping explosives into the fault lines throughout the world?
And what would make you uncomfortable in taking action to minimize the effects of an eartquake?
Or would you feel more comfortable if it is the national governments trying to take action by themselves, having a much smaller effect but underlying their “legitimate, strong and indispensible” existence?
#9 by Joe on July 12, 2011 - 3:50 pm
What would 80% emission cuts look like?
Visit the poorest of the world who strugle with inequity, inequality of opportunity, and diminished lifespans, and you’ll find out.
There wont be any “Smurf village” style participatory self-regulation when you’re denying people forms of affordable energy that are readily available to them, or telling people how to use resources. Enforcement will require somethign that will have to funtion like totalitarianism.
Plus, anyone who thinks human behaviour causes earthquakes has no capacity to embrace scientific concepts and mathematics, or to understand orders of magnatude. In short it sounds like the babblings of a programmed cult follower.
If you doubt this, think of the age you were when the messages of societal transformation was repeated to you, and its’ frequency. The malicious use the young in this way because reason can be bypassed and re-ordered in them. They don’t really seek a “cleaner world”, they seek social power and leverage of others because it feels good to them. Activists of the sort that pretend to be “reaching out to children” are just using them and exploiting them for their own ends. They know that they have to take their approach because most adults who think for themselves can see quite vividly that the activist motive is personal: hating happy, normal people makes them fee smart. Special hatred is shared for those whose social efforts are not comandeered by outside entities. To the activist, these people are not politically useful. You might notice in how many narrow, peevish causes this seems to be true.
Oh, and the movement of the ozone layer (which if you monitor a location selectively looks like evaporation) is indeed a natural phenomenon. All measures to “save it” have changed it little, and it was little changed by the era of industrialization. I lived through the decade where that was the pet-scare du jour.
Some equally gullible people were also up in arms about paper bags, having been convinced that they were made from old hardwoods that were worth to much to sell a pulping plant, and that trees “weren’t ever going to grow back”. At the same time, plastic bags apperared everywhere because these same people “saving civilization” through their evangalism pressured chain stores to fall for their pet-peeve-of-the-week.
Good science is scepticism. Embrace good science, be solidly spectical, and follow that WHEREVER IT LEADS YOU, not where a pack of dewy-eyed teenagers who have had all of their ideas spoon-fed to them want you to.
What are the stakes? Well, the UN reported lately what the (probably imaginary) estimate of the cost would be for the world to contend with Climate Change as they would have us. It’s 3,2% of the world’s GDP. This is the same of average world GDP growth in a good, non-global-recession cycle.
Therefore, all population growth, and ANY setback of any sort is a element that will structurally increase poverty on every person worldwide in a passel of little ways: food, medicine, comforts, etc.
Imaginary notions of weath transfer and communistic sameness of income will not compensate for it in any way that is real. A permanent state of contraction, no matter HOW anyone thinks it can be compensated for, will increase mortality, and destroy the natural environment by forcing more people to live off of it directly.