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25 August 2012 - Lake NEMI Diana to the Golden Bough - a region of the soul where man past & future unite.
Lake Nemi by Claude Joseph Vernet
Lake Nemi - the Golden Bough - TurnerTHE MYTHICAL LAKE – from Diana to the Tome of Frazer – the thousand and one stories of Nemi
Without Nemi the imagination of the ‘Novecento’, 20th century, would not have been the same. Because the still waters of this volcanic lake protect a mystery that has lasted three thousand years. It was the hand mirror of Diana, and the last refuge of the nymphs of the wood and the sylvan gods who decorate the work of George Frazer, the founder of anthropology. The font of our political and religious institutions is here on the fatal shores of Nemi. Here also was founded the temple of Diana Nemorensis of the woods: the founder was Oreste, son of Agamemnon, who after slaying his mother Clitemnestra and her lover Egisto, fled from Greece carrying a statue of the Goddess, eventually finding himself in the impenetrable forests of the Alban hills. He was joined there by Hippolitus who was fleeing from the incestuous attentions of his mother Fedra.
Hippolitus was the first priest of the temple, called by the Romans ‘Rex Nemorensis’, but the curse of Oreste remained. Every King of the Woods was required to repeat the homicidal act of the founder. The ritual prescribed was that the priest killed every challenger, who was required to tear a branch from one of Diana’s sacred trees before challenging, then to kill or be killed in turn in a mortal duel, to become the new King of the Woods. This is the mythic origin of ’The Law of the Strongest’ – the young man killing his father - an inspiration for Freud, who admitted that this legend of Nemi inspired ‘Totem and Tabu’, and led Conrad to write ‘Heart of Shadows’, and T.S Elliot to write ‘The desolate land’, finally the origins of ‘Apocalypse Now’ of Francis Ford Coppola is at Nemi.
All of these works point to the mirror of Nemi as a region of the soul, where the past and future of mankind will be united.
Based on an article in Italian by Marino Niola in ‘La Republica’, 25 August 2012
(The festival of the ‘Ramo d’oro’ starts in Nemi on the 27 August
Translation by John Caddy25 August 2012 - "5 degrees? always a role for a UN-led process?" C&C & the once & future Sir Bob Watson?
Courtesy Tom Watson Channel 4 TV
"An approach that is receiving significant attention, and endorsed by the German Advisory Council on Global Change, is some form of contraction and convergence whereby total global emissions are reduced (i.e., contraction) to meet a specific agreed target, and the per capita emissions of industrialized and the developing countries converge over a suitably long time period, with the rate and magnitude of contraction and convergence being determined through the UNFCCC negotiating process. "Contraction and Convergence” (C&C). C&C is a science-based global climate-policy framework proposed by the Global Commons Institute (GCI) with the objective of realizing "safe”13 and stable greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. It applies principles of precaution and equity, principles identified as important in the UNFCCC but not defined, to provide the formal calculating basis of the C&C framework that proposes:
Bob Watson on C&C
- A full-term contraction budget for global emissions consistent with stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at a pre-agreed concentration maximum deemed to be “safe” using IPCC WG1 carbon cycle modelling.
- The international sharing of this budget as ‘entitlements’ results from a negotiable rate of linear convergence to equal shares per person globally by an agreed date within the timeline of the full-term contraction/concentration agreement.
- Negotiations for this within the UNFCCC could occur principally between regions of the world, leaving negotiations between countries primarily within their respective regions, such as the European Union, the Africa Union, the US, etc, comparable to the current EU bubble.
- The inter-regional, inter-national and intra-national tradability of these entitlements should be encouraged to reduce costs.
- Scientific understanding of the relationship between an emissions-free economy and concentrations develops, so rates of C&C can evolve under periodic revision."
UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment- Policy Responses22 August 2012 - "C&C could usher in a new era of global justice." Local Sustainable Homes, Chris Bird
"What is Contraction and Convergence, and what does it mean for housing? The Global Commons Institute proposes a framework for a global reduction in carbon emissions while simultaneously moving towards greater equity and social justice.The framework known as Contraction and Convergence consists of reducing overall emissions of greenhouse gases to a safe level [contraction], while every country brings emissions per capita to a level that is equal for all countries [convergence]. In Britain, this means reducing our current per capita emissions of about 12 tonnes down to i.5 tonnes. Some countries with low per capita emissions might initially be entitled to a rise in their carbon rations and could sell their surplus to richer countries. Once all countries achieve an equal level of emissions - 2030 is the target suggested by the Global Commons Institute - then the carbon ration for all countries would continue to fall to an agreed safe level.
Contraction and Convergence represents a break from the vicious cycle where affluent industrialized word reaps benefits from fossil fuels while the developing world pays a disproportionate share of the costs in terms of climate change. In its place stands a virtuous circle where everyone benefits from reducing fossil fuel dependency. Based as it is on a philosophy of equal shares within a global limit, the framework could usher in a new era of global justice."
Local Sustainable Homes: How to Make Them Happen in Your Community
Chris Bird24 August 2012 - "No more effective proposal than C&C. I strongly support it." Dr Sue Roaf Herriot Watt UniversityDear Aubrey
I would like to add my name to those strongly supporting GCI's current C&C Proposal to the UNFCCC.
There has been no more effective proposal put forward for the metrics of negotiated accounting to emission reduction targets than C&C and I believe it is vital that C&C is adopted within future frameworks for carbon planning for the future.
Good luck with making that happen.
Sue Roaf
Professor of Architectural Engineering
Heriot Watt University
Chair of ICARB (the Initiative for Carbon Accounting);
A Director of theEdinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation,
A Workstrand Leader for the Edinburgh Climate Exchange and
Board Member of the International Solar Cities Initiative.
For a full account of the theory of Contraction and Convergence see the GCI website
Ecohouse
Sue Roaf24 August 2012 - "I support the C&C principle. It should be introduced at UNFCCC." Dr Kenedy Graham MP NZDear AubreyI support the Contraction and Convergence Principle as the way ahead for bringing into effect the global reduction curve of greenhouse gas emissions.
I pledge my support to assist in this endeavour.
Dr Kennedy Graham, MP
Global Affairs Spokesperson (Green Party)
Deputy Chairman, Foreign Affairs, Defence & Trade Committee
New Zealand Parliament
National sows fear and loathing about future emissions scenarios in the global South with no acknowledgment of a historical responsibility or per capita differential.
The Green Party acknowledges both historical and future responsibility. It embraces the need for contraction and convergence, for international equity, and thereby global legitimacy, to evolve.
Speech to the New Zealand Parliament by Dr Kennedy Graham Green MP
"As the Minister made clear recently in question time, the state of play is the Copenhagen Accord, with voluntary commitments to national cuts. These are demonstrably inadequate to the science-based judgment of what is required to avert failure, but we pretend that it is a useful start to greater things. We are told that global emissions must peak within about 7 years, and we know that the Accord is way short of achieving that, so we mumble about bigger cuts later and avoid looking into our children's eyes.
Let us address some facts. To achieve a 2 degrees Celsius threshold, we must reduce our global carbon budget from 50 gigatonnes today to 36 by 2020, and seven by 2050. The rich countries must cut from about 40 today to 11 by 2020 and one by 2050. That is correct: we in the rich world must emit only one gigatonne in 2050, out of the seven emitted by the world that year. It is called contraction and convergence, and it is the only way humanity will successfully deal with climate change. That is when our moral and political standards will merge at the global level."
I rise to address the issue of climate change and this Government's failure to develop adequate national policy to combat it. Climate change has slipped below the threshold of daily media focus and that is the way that this Government seems to want it.
The failure at Copenhagen to tackle the global threat head on has sent the international community into a state of collective catatonia. We see this in the lack of leadership from the UN itself, in the actions of national Governments around the world, and in the attitude of much of the public around the world. The problem we have is that Nature is not disposed to wait for humanity to iron itself out morally and get its political act together.
The poor countries rail against us for historical responsibility and insufficient reduction targets. The rich countries fear the projected population growth among the poor and insist that they enter binding commitments before we sign on to medium-term cuts.
Humanity probably faces only two global threats: immolation through nuclear conflict, or suffocation through global warming. The first is the product of traditional enmity; the enemy was the other tribe or the other nation. Climate change is the product of a new enemy: it is us.
We try to cut nuclear arsenals by changing the enemy's behaviour; we are required to cut carbon emissions by changing our own behaviour. It is no surprise that we are not succeeding. Most Governments lack the political courage to convey the magnitude of the climate change threat to their peoples, and they lack the political insight to prescribe the required global and national policies that are necessary.
Before, during, and since Copenhagen the threat of serious unpredictable climate change has grown. Our scientists do not know when non-linear change might occur, but they warn that tipping points exist. If the precautionary principle is to mean anything, we must all move with speedy purpose and resolve. Translated politically, that means we must act not as an international community of states, but as a global community of peoples who are represented by Governments. If the difference seems vanishingly small, then we do well to act on it none the less, lest our prospects of survival prove to be the same.
Our professional negotiators are rearranging the deckchairs, contemplating whether we shall have one or two legal agreements, and whether it will be next year or 3 or 10 years from now. Our political leaders dampen our expectations with appeals to realism. We all suffer from cognitive dissonance. Every so often we see the magnitude and imminence of the threat, and it is simply too frightening to accept individually and politically, so we basically return to business and government as usual.
As the Minister made clear recently in question time, the state of play is the Copenhagen Accord, with voluntary commitments to national cuts. These are demonstrably inadequate to the science-based judgment of what is required to avert failure, but we pretend that it is a useful start to greater things. We are told that global emissions must peak within about 7 years, and we know that the Accord is way short of achieving that, so we mumble about bigger cuts later and avoid looking into our children's eyes.
Let us address some facts. To achieve a 2 degrees Celsius threshold, we must reduce our global carbon budget from 50 gigatonnes today to 36 by 2020, and seven by 2050. The rich countries must cut from about 40 today to 11 by 2020 and one by 2050. That is correct: we in the rich world must emit only one gigatonne in 2050, out of the seven emitted by the world that year. It is called contraction and convergence, and it is the only way humanity will successfully deal with climate change. That is when our moral and political standards will merge at the global level.
After 10 millennia, especially the past two centuries, it is the moment of truth. For our part, New Zealand has to agree through treaty or by voluntary declaration in advance to cut our national emissions proportionately. That means we must cut from 78 million tonnes today to 56 million tonnes in 2020, down to 1.6 million in 2050.
That is the scale of the challenge before New Zealand. It is as well that we face up to it now, not when it is too late."
Key Principles
The Green Party believes that:
1. Climate change policy should be guided by the science with the
interests of the global community and environment ahead of the goal of economic growth
2. We must think long term and start early because of the lag time in climate effects.
3. We need to act quickly if we are to successfully limit global warming to
2 degrees C and prevent runaway climate change.
4. Total global emissions must be reduced quickly and converge to emission quotas that are based on equal per capita entitlements - a process known as contraction and convergence.
5. In order to achieve the necessary permanent reductions in greenhouse emissions all countries must be part of a binding international agreement that sets regular targets for emissions and monitors compliance with them.
6. Those countries with the highest per capita emissions must do the most to reduce their emissions.
7. Those sectors with the ability to reduce their emissions or to switch to non-emitting activities must do so as quickly as possible.
8. All sectors of the economy should cover the overall cost to the taxpayer of their emissions and do this in a fair and equitable manner, with no free riders.
New Zealand Green Party
24 August 2012 - "The Green Party embraces C&C." Kennedy Graham Green MP speech NZ Parliament.National sows fear and loathing about future emissions scenarios in the global South with no acknowledgment of a historical responsibility or per capita differential.
The Green Party acknowledges both historical and future responsibility. It embraces the need for contraction and convergence, for international equity, and thereby global legitimacy, to evolve.
Speech to the New Zealand Parliament by Dr Kennedy Graham Green MP
23 August 2010 - "C&C is compelling yet has a contestable ideological assumption at its heart . . ." John AshtonWas John Ashton the 'Great British Colleague' mentioned recently by Todd Stern when he said, "Nations, as a rule, do not act in ways they see as contrary to their core interests or in disregard of what a great British colleague of mine once described as their “compelling constraints.”
Druing 10 years as the Government Special Climate Change Ambassador John Aston insisted that, "C&C is compelling yet at its heart lurks a contestable ideological assumption." John has resigned and now insists instead that, "C&C misses the point."
But for 10 years he missed the point of C&C: - it is a logical proposition for negotiating UNFCCC-compliance to which there have been added contestable economic computations and and ideological reactions.
23 August 2010 - "C&C; an elegant theoretical concept I am in complete sympathy with [but] . . . " Tom BurkeNot Climate Denial but C&C Denial.
Is it now C&C-Deniers who should face charges of crimes against humanity?Tom Burke told the BMA 'Medics and the Military' conference last year: -
“Contraction and convergence is wonderfully elegant but I don’t think it works in the real world.”
He was subsequently pressed about this view in widely circulated letters by Dr Mayer Hillman.
Here is Tom Burke's 'final response': -
In my view contraction and convergence is an elegant theoretical concept with whose moral thrust I am in complete sympathy. However, it is not, in my judgement, a viable avenue down which to pursue a global political agreement on climate change.
I am aware that there are many people who do not share this judgement. I respect their right to do so and to seek to persuade others of their point of view, just as I expect, in return, to be respected for coming to a different judgement.
These are matters of great complexity on which it is very likely that people of good will, acting in good faith, will sometimes come to different judgements. We clearly have arrived at that point.
With best wishes,
Tom BurkeHe then somewhat paternalistically and to the agitation of some doctors agitated in the British Medical Journal for insurgency by 'the young against the old'.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Commentary
Its 'no-surprise there' then. However, the question still remains, "what is this 'different judgement'?" Moreover, there must be a reason for Tom Burke's refusal to answer Mayer's question at all, let-alone coherently. Is it really to try and arrange that the 'blame' for the inevitable failure we now face at UNFCCC is transferred to 'the other side' . . . ? He persistently refuses point blank to answer Mayer Hillman's question, in other words to explain if he doesn't support C&C, what it is that he does support.
For information John Ashton co-directs E3G with Tom Burke and Nick Maybe. John Ashton's recent article in the Guardian showing this is here - it's a classic piece of 'I-dunno.guv' and fits nicely with the 'no deals till 2020' announced by HMG 21 November 2011.
It is also worth noting that, apart from being a 'founder director of E3G', John Ashton is also the HMG Foreign Office's special representative for climate change. In other words what John writes is effectively HMG 'government-policy' on international climate change negotiations.One can wonder therefore, why on Earth is the Guardian simply publishing the Government's propaganda for failure?
However, writing for the PEW Centre's assessment of Climate Change policy options, back in 2003 John Ashton wrote this:"The entitlements approach circumvents these complexities by choosing a different starting point. Rather than responsibility, it assigns rights, in the form of equal entitlements to the atmosphere. If everyone has an equal right to account for emissions, the next stage of the climate regime should bring per capita emissions closer together. So countries with high per capita emissions should reduce them; but those with low ones should have headroom within which to increase them. This is the basis of the proposal known as 'Contraction and Convergence.' Such an approach has intuitive appeal. Indeed it is hard to see how any successful response to climate change could follow a radically different path to the one it maps out. But as a practical framework for the next stage of the international negotiations, it faces serious obstacles, not least in addressing concerns about the scale of resource transfers and domestic dislocation it might require of high emitters; (see box in PS below where he states: But on closer inspection, there is no fundamental reason why the right to emit should be equally shared when access to other public goods is not: at the heart of the proposal lurks a contestable ideological choice to that effect)."
Had DECC, HMG et al had made progress since 2003 in the right direction at UNFCCC, we might well not have been having these increasingly desperate discussions and negotiations now. But sadly the progress has been in the wrong direction. We continue to cause the problem faster than we evolve the solution, and this ratio of the rate-of-the problem to the-rate-of-the-solution is even worse now than it was in 2003-1997-1992 etc. and international discord increases with every COP. So the need to see that the chips are down is there, even more greatly than before.
It is fundamental to see that 'choosing C&C' has nothing to do with 'ideology'.
C&C is not a belief system; it is a rational negotiating tool.
John Ashton, Tom Burke, DECC [the list goes on] have conveniently conjured up this 'straw-man' of 'ideological-C&C' and then set out to burn it. But in twenty years this effort has not succeeded because C&C is not 'ideological', it is just 'logical' - i.e. rational and has a lot of support
By choosing the C&C rationale as a principle, requires us all - subject to the limit in the UNFCCC-objective - to agree to negotiate, and not just prescribe, the rate of convergence [with India China Africa etc al] as we tried and failed at doing at COP-15. [See Ed Miliband comments here]. China was very clear before COP-15: - they start from the position of immediate convergence to equality of entitlements. It is crass to just pretend that the Chinese Government didn't do this [especially as we are in Beijing right now begging them to re-finance our Eurozone Crisis!]. At base-level C&C is a response to the question, 'what alternative is there for getting agreement?' As said above, Tom Burke's employer Rio Tinto Zinc actually funded the publication - see
Clearly the Ashton/Burke/HMG/DECC etc-etc/whoever/whatever 'alternative' has been to generate more [not less] international 'disagreement' and discord and this is all as time runs out. None of that removes the inevitable requirements that we will have to negotiate [and not prescribe] the rate-of-convergence. As someone once said, there is no alternative.
But, in a phrase from 'yes-minister', though the chips are going down, DECC/HMGs civil servants seem still hell-bent on trying to ensure that the chips are staying up.Sadly this colonial attitude is why emissions/concentrations/temperature are up too and FWIW the Chinese Government wrote to GCI saying effectively they will not accept blame for going over two degrees. The Indian Government wrote to GCI saying that they have no intention of being told what to do by the West.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Commentary now [20 March 2012]
Is Tom Burke suddenly now calling for 'cultural revolution'?Now we get this, the next incarnation of Tom Burke, this solution-denier writing in the BMJ.
'Insurgency?' - perhaps he thinks he's in the Oxford Union.While Dr Robin Stott publishes a clear pro-C&C article in the BMJ saying he speaks largely for the medical profession
Mr Tom Burke [not a known or registered medical professional] repositions himself with this in same edition of the BMJ.He is still opposed to C&C. However he points out that technology & capital are freely available. Although [remember his admonition to Mayer Hillman; "these are matters of great complexity"], according to Tom Burke all we lack is 'political will' [and an attack by under 40's on over 40's]. One BMJ author described it as 'vacuous waffle'. Its certainly not 'Limits to Growth'.
"To deal with the problem of climate change we need a much deeper political analysis than we have had to date. This analysis needs to address the tension between markets and planning and the tension between entitlements and investment. So far, we have not begun to do that.
My own very strong feeling is that what itâs really going to take politically to solve this problem is an insurgency of those under 40 against those over 40. We need to shift the axis of politics from a battle between the left and the right to a battle between those who care about the future and those who want to stay in the past."
Has this now perhaps become Chairman Burke's 'Cultural Revolution' - just side with and incite the children? His 'very strong feeling' appears now to be asking the 'under-40's' to attack the 'over-40s. But does he seriously believe that they will be recruited to push 'investment not entitlement' in 'markets with no planning' for a present that many under-40's already know has been destroyed for them by these very 'investment-markets', let-alone a future that these same 'investment-markets' have as good as destroyed for everybody. These under-40s are hardly ready recruits for this '$-numeraire-casino'. That said, the battle split between the left and the right isn't the issue here anymore than its between the under-40's and the over-40's. The unrealoved split is still between the North and the South.
But never mind this and 'real people', now the 'real world' has ceased to be relevant to Chairman Burke as well. It is no accident that in addition to working for RTZ, Mr Burke now sits on the External Review Committee of Shell & the Sustainability Advisory Board of Unilever. Will Chairman Burke now be leading his cultural revolution from the board-rooms of these 'forbidden corporate citadels' that know only 'greed and growth at any cost'?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Contraction & Convergence [John Ashton]
"The 'Contraction and Convergence' proposal, developed by Aubrey Meyer, assigns every human being an equal entitlement to GHG emissions. All countries should thus move towards the same per capita emissions. Total emissions should contract over time, and per capita emissions should converge on a single figure. The actual convergence value, the path towards convergence, and the time when it is to be reached would all be negotiable. The proposal allows for the trading of emissions entitlements using mechanisms of the kind permitted under the Kyoto Protocol. At one level, this is compelling. It offers a long-term architecture for an international emissions regime, potentially robust across several of the equity dimensions identified in this paper. It would not require developing countries to shift their immediate focus away from their basic needs: their emissions constraints would bite gradually as per capita emissions increased. And by emphasizing entitlements as well as commitments, it could help address the sense of inequity that arises from the unrequited 'carbon debt' of past emissions by industrialized countries.But on closer inspection, there is no fundamental reason why the right to emit should be equally shared when access to other public goods is not: at the heart of the proposal lurks a contestable ideological choice to that effect.
Moreover, perhaps it is not GHG emissions that should be equally distributed, but the welfare costs to which emissions give rise. Should not those living in cold countries (with high heating needs) or large countries with dispersed populations (high transport needs) be allowed higher per capita emissions? The large resource transfers from currently high per capita countries to low ones implied by the scheme may be equitable; but it is probably unrealistic to expect such commitments at this stage.
Ultimately, almost any conceivable long-term solution to the climate problem will embody, at least in crude form, a high degree of contraction and convergence. Atmospheric concentrations of GHGs cannot stabilize unless total emissions contract; and emissions cannot contract unless per capita emissions converge. The practical question is not whether this is a reasonable scheme, but whether the quickest way to realize it is to base the next stage of the negotiations explicitly on it.
Nevertheless, the contraction and convergence proposal plays an important role in the climate process. It focuses attention on the ethical questions at the heart of the climate problem, which no long-term solution can afford to ignore. If supported by a critical mass of countries, it would become an important force in the negotiation. The ideas behind the proposal will remain relevant to any discussion of climate and equity for as long as the search continues for a global response to climate change."22 August 2012 - "C&C least unrealistic; demands serious attention from policy-makers." Dr N Bardsley Reading UniDear Aubrey,
Please do sign me up.
"In climate change policy we need to identify the least unrealistic proposals that could work. The options that satisfy both criteria are few and contraction and convergence has strong claims on both counts. It demands serious attention from policy makers.”
Best Wishes,
Nick
Dr Nick Bardsley
Lecturer in Climate Change Economics
University of ReadingClimate Change Policy and Governance
The Ecological Economics of Climate Change
Module Convenor: Dr NICK BARDSLEY Email:
Summary module description:
The module provides an overview of climate change policies, both actual and proposed, and associated debates at both national and international levels. Participants will gain an understanding of the course of climate change negotiations and the challenges and prospects for progress in this area.
Aims:
To enable students to critically appraise policies for climate change mitigation and adaptation. To foster an appreciation of the complex and holistic nature of the problems involved in climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Assessable learning outcomes:
Students will be able to:
- critically evaluate alternative policy proposals for mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change
- valuate existing mitigation and adaptation measures
- provide critical insight into climate change negotiations and governance processes
Additional outcomes:
Students will develop an awareness of the different issues facing countries at different stages of development, and the differential social and economic impacts of both climate change and policy towards it. Students will utilise the following skills: Presentational skills Critical essay writing
Outline content:
Topics covered will include: targets for emissions reduction, the role of renewable energy technologies, quantity and price instruments for mitigating emissions, evaluation of existing policies and policy proposals, reducing land-based emissions, adaptation measures, historic and ongoing negotiations within the UNFCCC framework, and contraction and convergence.
Brief description of teaching and learning methods:
Sessions will consist of both lectures and seminar activities. Exposition of the course material is through the lectures. Student-centred learning is developed through seminar activities.
21 August 2012 - "I support C&C proposal to the UNFCCC." Tim Yeo MP, Chair Energy Climate Change CommitteeDear Aubrey
Thank you for your email regarding GCI’s Contraction & Convergence Proposal to the UNFCCC.
I do support this.
Yours Tim
Tim Yeo MP
Chair Energy and Climate Change Committee
UK House of Commons
"In the UK Climate Act we have endorsed the C&C principle.
Its pretty strong support for what Aubrey Meyer has said."
The Chairman of the UK Climate Change Committee Adair Turner
Interogated by Joan Wally MP, confirms to EAC that C&C is embedded in UK Climate Act
The Global Commons Institute said that the origins of the advice from the Committee on Climate Change could be traced back to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution’s advocacy of contraction & convergence in their report ‘Energy - the Changing Climate’ published in 2000.52 The Global Commons Institute promotes contraction and convergence as a means of resolving the impasse in international negotiations. Contraction and convergence is a framework for reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases that envisages global emissions peaking and then gradually falling (contraction). It achieves the reduction in emissions by limiting per capita emissions in such a way that they converge (convergence).
It entails large cuts in per capita emissions for developed countries while allowing developing countries to continue growing their economies before they have to make cuts to reach equal per capita emissions. Lord Turner said that the advice of the Committee on Climate Change was, “reasonably pragmatically close to Contraction and Convergence”.
Carbon Budgets Volume 1
House of Commons: Environmental Audit Committee
Question: - Where did the UK budgets come from? Are they adequate to keep within the 2 degree limit?
- The UK budgets came from Contraction and Convergence via the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution [RCEP] 2000 report “Energy - The Changing Climate”. The report recommended C&C but applied it at rates that are too slow to keep within the 2 degree limit.
- To keep within the 2 degrees Celsius temperature limit, the budgets need to be based on a global emissions contraction of 80% by 2050 and where the airborne fraction may still stay constant @ 50% giving a 450 ppmv outcome. But with sinks failing @ 0.5%/yr, the outcome only may still be 450ppmv.
- By not taking account of the “new” Coupled-Carbon-Cycle modelling in IPCC AR4 Chapter 10 [2007], the UK Climate Change Committee models and the assumptions used by the Committee on Climate Change are not valid in setting carbon budgets.
- There is unanimous agreement among the coupled climate carbon cycle models driven by emission scenarios run so far that future climate change would reduce the efficiency of the Earth system (land and ocean) to absorb anthropogenic CO2. There is evidence that the CO2 airborne fraction is increasing, so accelerating the rate of climate change.
- Until about 1800 the overall climate system was at equilibrium. The very sudden rise of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 and CH4 since then shows that the system is no longer in conditions of homeorhesis, it is going out of control.
- JokeWaller Hunter, Executive Secrearty of the UNFCCCCOP-9 in Milan in 2003 said, “Achieving the goal of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change inevitably requires contraction and convergence.”
- The basis on which the UK Committee on Climate Change arrived at the UK’s share of the global effort to cut emissions was the RCEP and their advocacy of Contraction and Convergence.
- Convergence to equal per capita emissions entitlements globally for example by 2020, would reflect the C&C principle where, “if contraction must be accelerated for reasons of urgency, convergence must be accelerated relative to that for reasons of equity.”
- There appears to be an emerging consensus for Contraction and Convergence as the UNFCCC-compliant global framework for climate mitigation, as evidenced in the reference material attached to this memorandum.
- There is real danger of not doing enough soon enough to avoid dangerous rates of climate change.
- But with sinks failing @ 0.5%/yr, the outcome only may still be 450ppmv.
- In concert with others, the UK Government’s aim is to limit overal global temperature above pre-industrial to no more than two degrees Celsius. Not exceeding 450 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere is considered a pre-requisite of keeping within that limit.
- “Enforcing” the right target will be no harder than enforcing the wrong target.
Carbon Budgets Volume 2 - the evidence
House of Commons: Environmental Audit Committee
Nomination - but not winner - of Aubrey Meyer for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize
by Martin Caton, and six other Members of Parliament from the UK House of Commons
Martin’s fellow nominators were Colin Challen MP (Labour), Peter Ainsworth MP (Conservative), Chris Huhne MP (Liberal Democrat), Michael Meacher MP (Labour), Joan Walley MP (Labour) and Tim Yeo MP (Conservative).Martin explained, “Aubrey Meyer may not yet be a household name, here in Britain, or indeed, in many other parts of the world. Yet his work is absolutely central to the global fight against climate change.“ The Nobel Institute recognised how important the climate change challenge is to the future of our planet last year, when it awarded the prize jointly to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for raising awareness about this environmental threat. “We believe that it would, now, be right to recognise the man who has done most to provide an international solution to averting the disaster of global warming.“
Aubrey Meyer realised that we need a comprehensive climate change framework if we are to protect our planet. He founded the Global Commons Initiative in 1990 that developed just such a framework known as ‘contraction and convergence’. “This is the logical way forward. The human race reduces its carbon footprint towards zero at the same time as greenhouse gas emissions on a per capita basis in developed and developing nations converge. If his initiative was recognised now then it would send exactly the right message to world leaders as we consider what comes after the end of the Kyoto round in 2012.”
21 August 2012 - Laurie Barlow assesses recent conflicts on carbon-budgeting. Pasadena Greensward Civitas
A proposal on the table from the Global Commons Institute provides a strategic way of reducing global carbon emissions in time to prevent runaway climate change: Contraction and Convergence (C&C). C&C was established and has been on the record as a formal well-supported position at the UNFCCC since 1996. A briefing, explanation and chart are here.
Back in the mid-1990s, Aubrey Meyer, in developing the case for C&C, set down a model for analyzing the implications of any proposal aimed at informing policy makers on how best to organize at the UNFCCC to limit the ravaging consequences of climate change. On a clear axis of time-dependency, this covered the key elements:
- the rate of accumulation of the carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere;
- the various rates at which the emissions contribute to that globally [contraction]; and, within that,
- shares converging internationally on the global per capita average arising under any rate of contraction (with or without a population-based year set for any year chosen within the contraction process).
As you can see from the above chart, the principle is that all countries contract in a coordinated way in order to limit the temperature change that is generated by carbon emissions. In 1996, GCI's goal was to keep the temperature increase below a further 0.5 degrees C in 2060 with zero emissions at that point, so that carbon is limited to 350 ppmv in 2100, the original C&C intervention at COP-2 1996 Geneva. While this principle was supported, that rate wasn't, so the slower rate of 450 ppmv was proposed.This hasn't been adopted, while we quarrel, and temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degrees C. We've already passed 350 ppmv and are nearly at 400 ppmv in 2012, and are still pouring out carbon. So now we have a global emergency.
In reacting to this situation, James Hansen has inspired a group of activists who are positioned now on climate change with 'extreme urgency'. This is further supported by his recent article in the Washington Post. Last year Dr Hansen, together with 14 other leading experts in various disciplines relevant to global climate change, concluded that 1 degree C since 1900 is the danger limit for avoiding future planetary climate catastrophe. We are at O.8 C today. Previously Dr Hansen has published that in order to avoid planetary climate catastrophe the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has to be held below 350 ppm. Today it is 393 ppm and rapidly rising.
Recently, after being criticized by European leaders after the May climate talks in Bonn, Todd Stern of the US State Department qualified its support for a U.N goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels in 1900, and made it clear that all countries must reduce carbon emissions forthwith, not just first-world countries. This is a key statement, because it throws out the political carbon allocation derived from GDP analytics, and retreats from historical support of C&C (pg. 13, Equity and Survival).
Bill McKibben's recent article in Rolling Stone has since triggered much public debate about how to address the reduction of global carbon. The debate is contentious because of the importation of the GDP measure into the allocation formula in order to amplify the carbon emission reduction in a "polluter pays" scenario, which was part of the Copenhagen and Cancun agreements. As I've discussed before, this is not based upon science, but rather imports political agendas into the contraction allocation formula. Two of the discussed GDP - based scenarios in the chart above are:
- [1] the red curve is the McKibben formula for no more than 154 Gt C "Maximum permissible", but using GDP allocations to create negative emissions for the USA by 2025 within the 1Gt C/yr from 2010, arriving at 0 emissions by 2040. Bill claims that 2 degrees C by 2100 is a safe temperature increase, but notes that there's only 154 allowable Gt C left before we exceed planetary limits.
- [2] the yellow curve is the GDR curve which is nearly twice that at 267 Gt C., requiring negative emissions entitlements in the US by 2025, created by GDP allocations. In other words, allows overall more carbon but hits the US much harder. It's now preferred by McKibben, and also by Jeffrey Sachs, who at the same time was a co-author of the Hansen Paper from which McKibben drew his 154 Gt C. The original source of this is Hansen's Carbon Budget of 166 Gt C [i.e. reducing @ -6%/yr from 2010].
- The third allocation calculation that is very immediate and urgent is one that is a straight emissions reduction per capita, with no GDP "adjustments". It reflects the urgency that is created because we're already committed to an apparent 2° C by 2100 by not having done anything. That much climate change is now considered dangerous, and so an immediate reversal is necessary:
- [3] the grey curve is Peter Carter's 2012 emergency energy conversion and food security budget: virtual zero carbon emissions in 10 years with negative carbon to follow. 1Gt C per year from 2010 arriving at 0 emissions by 2020, in order to restore the 350 ppmv level of carbon in the environment at 2050. That's essentially where we are today with our extreme climate events. If you've done the real math, you know that it means massive reductions in carbon emissions, energy use and global stranded investments.
An interactive chart showing many options is here. You will see that under the IPCC scenario we never get back to the planet we used to have in 1950, when global warming had already started at about 310 ppmv.
So this is humankind's legacy?
20 August 2012 - "Delighted to support the campaign." Professor John Twidell Director AMSETDear Aubrey,
Delighted to support your campaign for fairness and good sense.
Kind regards
John
Prof John Twidell
AMSET Centre
Bridgford House
Horninghold
Leicestershire LE16 8DH
UK
Global resourcesConsidering these aims and with the most energy-efficient modern equipment buildings and transportation a justifiable target for energy use in a modern society with an appropriate lifestyle E = 2 kW per person. Such a target is consistent with an energy policy of ‘contract and converge’ for global equity, since worldwide energy supply would total approximately the present global average usage, but would be consumed for a far higher standard of living. Is this possible, even in principle, from renewable energy?
Each square metre of the earth's habitable surface is crossed by, or accessible to, an average energy flux from all renewable sources of about 500 W. This includes solar, wind or other renewable energy forms in an overall estimate. If this flux is harnessed at just 4% efficiency, 2 kW of power can be drawn from an area of 10m * 10m, assuming suitable methods. Suburban areas of residential towns have population densities of about 500 people per square kilometre. At 2 kW per person, the total energy demand of 1000 kW km -2 could be obtained in principle by using just 5% of the local land area for energy production. Thus renewable energy supplies can provide a satisfactory standard of living, but only if the technical methods and institutional frameworks exist to extract, use and store the energy in an appropriate form at realistic costs. This book considers both the technical background of a great variety of possible methods and a summary of the institutional factors involved. Implementation is then everyone's responsibility.
Renewable Energy Resources
By John Twidell, Anthony D. Weir20 August 2012 - Artists gathered at NEMI 02 2012: Jelle Hielkema, John Caddy, Lynda McDonald, Aubrey Meyer
Jelle Hielkema John Caddy Lynda McDonald at Lake NEMI February 2012
[Aubrey Meyer isn't in the picture because he took it].
Lake NEMI in the evening - Calm on the lake in this now extinct volcano South West of Rome
Lake NEMI at sunset
"GAIA and my subconscious mind" John Caddy
"Wrath of GAIA in the River Styx" embroidered applique; Lynda McDonald
"Pythagoras Renewed for Our Global Common Future" Jelle Hielkema and Aubrey Meyer
Consolidating the Pythagorean root of 'Contraction and Convergence' [C&C] in musicas a "Well Tempered Climate Accord".
20 August 2012 - The beautiful 'Lake NEMI' . . . . John Robert Cozens [1752 1797]
John Robert Cozen's life overlappad with that of Tom Paine [1737 1809].
John Robert Cozens died when Ludwig von Beethoven wrote the Pathetique Sonata
played here by Daniel Barenboim of East-West Divan Orchestra.Tom Paine died when Ludwig von Beethoven wrote Egmont
Ludwig von Beethoven was born and died 1770 - 1828.
19 August 2012 - "C&C the emergence of an important new concept." The Capitalism Papers, Jerry Mander
Contraction and Convergence
A further consideration in any steady-state system is the matter of distribution of whatever resources that remain available. As the currently over-consuming nations of the world "power down” their energy and resources use, overall global consumption will need to be reduced to a level safely below what is sustainable for the planet. Some nations and peoples already live at very low consumption levels, sometimes well below levels that can sustain well-being. Disparities like that are typically the results of centuries of prior exploitation or present neo-colonial activity, making self-sufficiency impossible. The deplorable resource and land-grabbing that we described in chapter VI is a good current example. Nations that have been historically deprived argue that they cannot reduce consumption as yet. In fact, they continue to need help in increasing consumption to a level of sufficiency - hence the emergence of an important new concept, making its way through environmental and social-justice communities – contraction and convergence.
The Capitalism Papers: Six Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System
Jerry Mander
19 August 2012 - Movement and Rest. "What changes are fractals of what doesn't."18 August 2012 - "Earth Charter Principles lead inexorably to C&C." Voice of Reason, Ian Lowe
The Earth Charter Initiative is a broad-based, voluntary, diverse, global network of people, organisations and institutions which participates in promoting and implementing the values and principles of the Earth Charter. Members include leading international institutions, cational governments and their agencies university associations, non-government organisations and community-based groups, city governments, faith groups, schools and businesses as well as thousands of individuals. The Earth Charter embodies the fundamental principles of a new global ethics under four broad headings: I) respect and care for the community of life; 2) ecological integrity; 3) social and economic justice; and 4) democracy, non-violence and peace. Australian environmental groups have worked strongly for decades on the first two of these. There is now an increasing recognition that solving the complex problems we face demands an integrated approach. Solutions to our environmental problems will not be socially and politically sustainable unless they are based on social and economic justice. This is most obviously true of climate change, which can only he solved if the developed nations accept their responsibility for causing the problem as well as accepting the legitimate demands of poorer countries to improve their material wellbeing. These principles lead inexorably to a 'contract and converge’ model in which the Earth's capacity to absorb carbon dioxide is much more equitably allocated.
Voice of Reason,
Ian Lowe17 August 2012 - "Happy to support the C&C proposal to the UNFCCC." Prof D Huddart Liverpool JM UniversityAubrey,
I would be happy to support GCI's current C & C proposal to UNFCCC.
There is an immediate need for more action on climate change and a response from all governments and international organisations like the United Nations.
Individuals too can help in this and educational establishments like ours can educate students in a positive manner.
Best Wishes
David
Professor David Huddart
Director of Research Faculty of Education,
Community and Leisure
I.M.Marsh Campus
Liverpool John Moores University
Contraction and converqence: The last hope?
Supported by China, Germany, The European Parliament, Stern and many others, this concept is on the idea that everyone on planet Earth has the right to emit the same quantity of GHG. At present a US citizen emits 20 tonnes of CO2 each year, a UK citizen emits 11 tonnes while a Nigerian only emits 0.09 tonnes. Contraction and Convergence [C&C] is the Global Commone Institute's proposed UNFCCC-compliant climate mitigation strategy for an equitable solution to cutting greenhouse gas emissions through collective global action.The ultimate objective of the UN Climate Treaty is to move to safe and stable GHG concentration in the atmosphere and C&C starts with this. C&C recognizes that subject to this limit, we all have an equal entitlement to emit GHGs to the atmosphere, since continuing unequal use will make it impossible to get global agreement needed for success. The Kyoto Protocol cannot be the basis of this success, because it is not science-based and, due to divergent national interests, it does not include all countries.
Scientists have advised on safe concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and on the global cap on emissions necessary to achieve it. A level of 450 ppmv has until recently been regarded as the upper limit for keeping under the maximum temperature oncrease of 2 degrees above the pre-industrial average.
From the inception of a global agreement, C&C schedules the mandatory annual global contraction [reduction of emissions] that will keep CO2 concentrations from rising beyond the agreed safe level. This rate of contraction must be periodically adjusted to take account of the increasing release of GHGs caused by climate warming. C&C proposes emissions entitlements to every country. While starting with current emissions, it proposes a scheduled convergence to equal per person entitlements for everyone on the planet by an agreed date [see figure above]. That way, convergence will reduce the carbon shares of the developed over-emitting countries sharply until they converge with the [temporarily rising] shares of the developing countries. The latter will be able to sell their surplus carbon shares to the wealthier nations. Emissions trading will be subject to rapid investment in renewable energy.
The 14th session of the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention [COP-14] will be held in conjunction with the 4th Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol [COP 14] in Poznan, Poland, from 1 to 12 December 2008. In 2012 the Kyoto Protocol expires. To keep the process going there is an urgent need for a new climate protocol. In 2012 the Kyoto Protocol runs out. It is to be hoped that discussions at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen in 2009 and subsequent agreements lead to a Copenhagen Protocol to prevent global warming and climate change.
Earth Environments: Past, Present and Future
By David Huddart, Tim Stott17 August 2012 - "CNN reports on Hansen linking recent events to global warming."
16 August 2012 - "I support the GCI C&C submission to the UNFCCC." Prof Robin Attfield Cardiff UniversityDear Aubrey,
I support the GCI submission.
Best wishes
Robin
Professor Robin Attfield,
Professor of Philosophy
Cardiff University
Extended and very strong C&C advocacy in
Human Ecology Review
Global Warming, Equity and Future Generationsby
Robin Attfield
Cardiff University
United Kingdom�Contraction & Convergence probably remains the best prospect for addressing the global problems of mitigation and adaptation, and at the same time a promising spring-board for achieving a global agreement on addressing the problems of poverty and under-development of the kind that is also urgently needed.�
16 August 2012 - "C&C remains best prospect for global agreement." Strong advocacy; Dr R Attfield Cardiff Univ
Extended and very strong C&C advocacy in
Human Ecology Review
Global Warming, Equity and Future Generationsby
Robin Attfield
Cardiff University
United Kingdom"Contraction & Convergence probably remains the best prospect for addressing the global problems of mitigation and adaptation, and at the same time a promising spring-board for achieving a global agreement on addressing the problems of poverty and under-development of the kind that is also urgently needed."
15 August 2012 - "I understand the merits of C&C but it isn't the Government's agreed position." FCO Minister
August 2012Foreign & Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London SW1A 2AHDear Mr Meyer
Thank you for your email of 13 July, about support for the Global Commons Institute's submission to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Whilst I understand your proposal has potential merits, I am unable to give my support to it as the Contraction and Convergence approach is not an agreed Government position. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is committed to tackling climate change through our climate diplomacy work.
We will continue to press other countries to increase ambition to ensure targets are more consistent with 2°C trajectories, including encouraging the EU to move to 30%.
Best wishes
Henry Bellingham MP
Minister for Africa, the UN, Overseas Territories and the Caribbean15 August 2012 - "Tough C&C scenario needed." International Resource Panel, Resource Cap Coalition
As partner of the Resource Cap Coalition (RCC) - an open platform for organisations advocating for a global resource cap - PAN Parks Foundation is promoting its aim of halting biodiversity loss and maintaining, as well as recovering ecosystem services, which underpin human wellbeing.According to the International Resource Panel, absolute reduction of resource use on a global level is necessary to make progress towards a sustainable economy. Under a tough contraction and convergence scenario industrialized countries should reduce their per capita resource use (average metabolic rate) by 66-80%, while 10–20% reduction in developing (non-industrialized) countries would be also need. Such a scenario, which in fact would only mean going back to levels of global resource consumption in 2000, would be consistent, in terms of carbon per capita, with the IPPC recommendation to keep global warming below 2ºC.
Partnership with Resource Cap Coalition14 August 2012 - "C&C architect GCI leveraged Govts & shaped course of negotiations." J Camilleri & J Falk
Dr Peter Newell provides extensive evidence pointing to enhanced NGO leverage vis-a-vis governments, and concludes that that their influence extended to agenda setting, negotiation-bargaining, and policy implementation. The agenda-setting role is well illustrated by the Villach workshop convened in 1985. The Workshop was instrumental in setting the framework within which climate change would be considered. Governments anxious to be seen to play a leadership role were forced to respond in particular through the establishment of the IPCC.As for the negotiation process, the Global Commons Institute (GCI), the leading architect of the 'contract and converge' emissions reduction strategy, collaborated with developing countries to provide them with much-needed information. It also presented them with a concrete framework for emissions reduction built around the normative principle of 'common but differentiated responsibilities which subsequently helped to shape the course of negotiations. In the IPCC WG3 debate on cost-benefit analysis, GCI directly questioned the appropriateness of this approach, thereby persuading developing countries to demand the withdrawal of an entire chapter on the economics of climate change.
The technical capacities of some NGOs coupled with the legitimacy derived from skilful advocacy enabled them to influence the assessment of policy options. NGOs able to muster the most competent technical arguments were often those that carried the greatest weight. At the international level, where negotiations often involved a complex technical discourse, collaboration between NGOs and relevant epistemic communities was at times decisive.
Worlds in Transition Joseph Camilleri Jim Falk14 August 2012 - "C&C in IMACLIM-R, REMIND-R & WITCH models." RECIPE Economics of De-Carbonization
In the RECIPE project model based analyses of the economics of decarbonization – with a focus on the energy system – were carried out. For these analyses, three models were used: IMACLIM-R, REMIND-R and WITCH (see Jakob et al., 2009a, 2009b and Luderer et al., 2009).Figure 1-1: European CO2 emissions decomposed by different sectors for the three models IMACLIM-R, REMIND-R and WITCH for the 450 ppm C&C and the 410 ppm C&C scenario. The upper solid line indicates baseline emissions. The dashed line indicates the emission trajectory in the climate policy scenarios. The emissions abatement – the area between the baseline and policy emissions – can be attributed to the different sectors (light colors). Note that the sectoral breakdown differs between models.
RECIPE THE ECONOMICS OF DECARBONIZATION
Authors: Benjamin Bodirsky (PIK), Renaud Crassous-Doerfler (CIRED), Huib van Essen (CE Delft), Jean-Charles Hourcade (CIRED), Bettina Kampman (CE Delft), Hermann Lotze-Campen (PIK), Agnieszka Markowska (CE Delft), Stéphanie Monjon (CIRED), Karsten Neuhoff (University of Cambridge EPRG), Steffen Noleppa (agripol), Alexander Popp (PIK), Pablo del Río González IPP, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), Silke Spielmans (agripol), Jan Strohschein (PIK), Henri Waisman (CIRED) We especially remember Bernhard Schlamadinger and his valuable contribution to this paper. Please cite as Bodirsky, B., R. Crassous-Doerfler, H. van Essen, J.-C. Hourcade, B. Kampman, H. Lotze-Campen, A. Markowska, S. Monjon, K. Neuhoff, S. Noleppa, A. Popp, P. del Río González, S. Spielmans, J. Strohschein, H. Waisman (2009):How can each sector contribute to 2C?
RECIPE Background paper, available online at www.pikpotsdam. de/recipe
14 August 2012 - "C&C without Green Growth useless. Green Growth without C&C dangerous."Happening in a galaxy near you . . . ?
14 August 2012 - "C&C the only way that's equitable & viable." Prof Paul Harris Hong Kong Education InstituteDear Aubrey,
I'd be happy to endorse your proposal.
One thing I greatly admire is not just the C&C concept, but that you have been so diligent in promoting it for a very long time. I recall more than one phone call to my office from you when I was working in London in the 1990s!
"Contraction and convergence is the only approach we have to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions that is both equitable and politically viable. Coupled with a diligent effort to widen conceptions of climate justice to include the rights and needs of the world's vulnerable individuals and communities, while requiring action on the obligations and duties of the world's affluent individuals, C&C is a pathway toward lowering emissions without leaving the poor behind."
Good luck!
All best,
Paul
Paul G. Harris,
Chair Professor,
Hong Kong Institute of Education.
"One increasingly popular proposal for action on climate change involves 'contraction and convergence' (Meyer 2000) which calls for per-capita emissions of each state to be brought to a level that is equal with other states and that the atmosphere can withstand, in practice meaning that emissions in wealthy countries would come down to a safe level (contraction) and in most developing countries would go up to that level (convergence). The notion of contraction and convergence is essentially based on egalitarianism (Heyward 2007: 526). The equal per-capita amount that the atmosphere can withstand is roughly l .5 tonnes carbon-dioxide equivalent per person per year, which compares with about 20 tonnes in the United States, on one end or the spectrum, and about 0.1 tonnes in Mali, on the other (Smith 2006: 97). What the cosmopolitan corollary would require is that this policy be implemented not only among states but within them as well. This would mean that while most people in rich countries would lower their greenhouse gas emissions to the globally safe per-capita level most people in poor countries would be allowed to increase their emissions to that level. A difference between this approach and international doctrine is of course that poor people in wealthy states would not bear an unfair burden. Conversely, while most people in poor and developing countries would be allowed to increase their greenhouse gas emissions to the globally safe level, a large minority of people - the affluent - in those same countries would be required to reduce them. The precise amounts set for people would reasonably and fairly depend on their circumstances. Some people are in no position to reduce their emissions, and some emissions over the safe per capita limit might be allowed for certain people if there is no alternative. At the same time, it is reasonable and probably necessary to expect some people to reduce their emissions below the globally safe level. The candidates for this requirement will be those who have polluted far more than they should have done already and who have the means (financial technological and so forth) to reduce their emissions below the globally safe level while still meeting their basic needs."
World Ethics and Climate Change: From International to Global Justice
Paul G Harris
Nigel Dower examines dimate change from the perspective of selected cosmopolitan theories. From these theories he derives the cosmopolitan resonsibiliyt of individuals. As he points out, even if cosmopolitanism can be translated into practical climate policies, individuals will have to take some responsibility for bringing about the needed changes. Put another way, cosmopolitan responses to climate change need to occur at the level of institutions, including what Dower calls cosmopolitical changes and at the level of 'active global citizenship engagement'. In examining the latter, Dower focuses on three questions: if effective international cooperation to address climate change is to be realized, how important is it to allow for a variety of pragmatic principles, such as precaution. 'contraction and convergence' and 'polluter pays', and how significant are ethical principles that different individuals and groups can accept? What is the nature and extent of the obligations of individuals with respect to climate change, particularly those whose lifestyles are carbon-intensive, here and now - prior to any changes in laws, regulations, economic incentives or social expectations? And what is the relevance of these individual obligations for the likelihood and legitimacy of government policies for addressing climate change?
Ethics and Global Environmental Policy: Cosmopolitan Conceptions of Climate Change
Paul G. Harris
Costs of emissions reductions will adversly impact the economies of some regions more than others. Dislocating coal jobs in the poorer regions will have a greater political-economic impact than on the wealthier coastal and urban regions where the energy from coal is primarily used. As Hu (2009) argues, it is the wealthier regions that need to make the reductions first, allowing interior and western regions to continue developing while the wealthier regions taken on the burden of beginning the process of contraction and convergence across sectors. In developing a national C&C roadmap, China's governance will require a scalar methodology of oversight resembling the approach introduced as the climate box. Ensuring that this box is tightly sealed is a difficult problem for the Government, as emissions slippage will almost certainly occur at multiple levels. Furthermore, each of these scales of governance represents an opportunity for intervention by foreign governments, non-governmental organisations, firms and other parties that have an interest in seeing China converge its CO2 output and contract towards the nations fair share of global emissions. The primary challenges facing China will be on-site compliance and accountability of climate strategies, and the developments of more robust forms of public participation to ensure that they are measurably effective.
China's Responsibility for Climate Change:
Ethics, Fairness and Environmental Policy - Paul Harris
in moving towards Contraction and ConvergenceGlobal Regional National
Determining directives for energy sector, infrastructure, innovation, and
technology transfer.Intra-
national
and encouragement of collaboration
between urban regions.Provincial
even if growth is sacrificed.
Increasing procedural capacity and representation of participation of various levels of authority.Urban/
Regional
antisprawl measures, coherent trans-portation networks, inter-urban collaborations.Urban/
Local
in procedural process.
CO2 reduction in project choice. Support for choosing green buildings. Controlling developers. Improving insulation in buildings.Firms/
Business
Installing cleaner more energy efficient
technologies. Demanding proof of compliance
with other partner firms. Engaging in robust
technology transfers for efficiency gains.TVEs
production strategies on the ground. Most
difficult regulatory issues here, and impetus for
business as usual is strongest.Individual
as much as possible.
Changing personal preferences and habits.
Understanding carbon footprint in every dimension.Moving forward, dimensions of Chinese carbon governance will need to work coherently together across scales if contraction and convergence towards a national cap is to be implemented properly and cohesively, without further exacerbating problems around the distribution of harms and benefits, particularly to poorer regions.
Conference on China and Global Climate Change - Lingnan University Hong Kong 2009
Proceedings edited by Paul Harris14 August 2012 - "Eventually all conjoin in C&C." Energy Society and Environment David Elliott
Indeed, some argue that, given that the already industrialised countries have benefited from being able to pollute in the past, it is reasonable and fair to allow the developing economies some room to grow, even if that does lead to pollution. Subsequently however, they must join the industrial countries and converge on the path to lower emissions - the so-called 'contract and converge ' approach to sustainable development, as promoted by the Global Commons Institute (Meyer 2000).
Energy, Society and Environment By David Elliott
13 August 2012 - "Public health practitioners need to be familiar with C&C." Hanlon Carlisle Lyon Hannah
Contraction and convergence
It has been calculated that a world of more than nine billion people will require an 80 to 90% reduction in carbon use by rich countries and drastic reductions in many other forms of consumption, to avoid worsening of existing problems. If sustainability and global equity is to be a goal, we will have to achieve ‘contraction’ in the richer world and 'convergence' with the poorer world. The phrase 'contraction and convergence' has primarily been used as a response to the threat of runaway climate change (Meyer 2000), and is one with which public health practitioners need to be familiar. Meyer's argument is that the whole world needs a contraction In the production of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is an output of increased industrialization and economic growth. Rich and poor nations must eventually converge in their carbon production to avoid nothing less than a climate catastrophe. Less developed nations must be allowed to develop - so their carbon use goes up - while Industrialized and post Industrial nations must make substantial reductions (Meyer 2000). Failure to contract and converge will have health consequences that may be hard to predict but will probably include the loss of agricultural land, severe storms and flooding, forest fires, hunger and forced economic migration, and so on. Contraction and convergence is of course another form of redistribution on a global scale, and the concept can apply to other resources and not just the carbon that affluent societies depend on.
The Future Public Health
Phil Hanlon, Sandra Carlisle, Margaret Hannah, Andrew Lyon12 August 2012 - US Department of State "Catastrophic non-linear climate change now threatens." But British advise that, "nations won't disregard their compelling constraints" & the 2 degree limit only works on paper . . .
'No China, No Deal'
Remarks by Todd Stern [US Special Envoy for Climate Change] August 2, 2012
. . . or how to make an omlette with hard-boiled eggs . . .
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Thank you very much. I want to say what a pleasure it is to be back at Dartmouth, back on campus, back in Hanover. It is particularly gratifying for me to be able to return here in a capacity that allows me to contribute a little to the vibrant intellectual give and take that is a hallmark of Dartmouth. So, thanks for the invitation, for the chance to walk around the Green and down familiar paths, and for the opportunity to spend some time with all of you.
I am especially glad that this “Leading Voices” series has decided to devote one of its sessions this year to climate change. The truth is that public consciousness of this issue has faded in recent years despite the ongoing drumbeat of evidence, month after month, year after year, that the globe is warming and our climate is changing. Media coverage about climate change is down almost 40 percent since 2009 and public attention has diminished according to any number of polls. Attention to the issue has even appeared to wane in typically green Europe. An April column in the Financial Times started a sentence by saying: “With climate change off the political agenda…” People aren’t talking about it anymore.
And those who are talking are too often yelling. An issue that should concern us all, that is likely to undermine our well-being and disrupt the world of our children, has become the latest political hot button, viewed by too many in political life as a third rail they can’t touch. Climate change has long been a partisan issue, but when you see a parade of conservative candidates publicly recanting the apostasy of having acknowledged that global warming is real, you know you’ve entered Wonderland.
This is not healthy. We can talk past each other, close our ears, put our heads in the sand, or join the local chapter of the Flat Earth Society, but here’s the thing – the atmosphere doesn’t care. Its temperature will continue its implacable rise, with all the consequences that entails, unless we act to stop it. Michael Gerson, George W. Bush’s trusted speech writer and advisor, wrote a telling piece in the Washington Post earlier this year called “Climate and the Culture War.” He analyzed how the discussion of climate change has reached its current toxic state, and then said this: “[H]owever interesting this sociology may be it has nothing to do with the science at issue. Even if all environmentalists were socialists and secularists and insufferable and partisan to the core, it would not alter the reality of the Earth’s temperature.”
And that reality has been demonstrated over and over again, most recently in the work of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, led by Dr. Richard Muller, who began his comprehensive assessment as an avowed climate skeptic and ended it convinced by the clear evidence that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity. This conclusion is emphatically shared by the best and brightest of the global scientific community, including our own National Academy of Sciences.
Whether we look at the steady increase in global temperature; the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to the highest level in a half-million years; the march of warmest-ever years (9 of the10 hottest on record have occurred since 2000); the dramatic shrinking of mountain glaciers and Arctic sea ice; the accelerating rise in sea level; or the acidification of our oceans; the tale told by the evidence is consistent and it is compelling.
These things matter. They warn of droughts and floods and extreme storms. They warn of water shortages, food shortages and national security risk. They warn of what 11 retired generals and admirals wrote about in 2007 – climate change becoming a “force multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world.” And they introduce the threat of catastrophic, non-linear change.
A power company executive was quoted in the New York Times last week (July 26) saying “we’ve got the ‘storm of the century’ every year now,” and it’s starting to look that way. Consider:
• A searing heat wave struck Moscow in late June 2010, spawning massive wildfires, killing tens of thousands, and cutting Russia's wheat crop by 40%, contributing to a sharp spike in world food prices.
• The 2010 floods in Pakistan were the most expensive natural disaster in Pakistani history, killing nearly 2000 people, affecting 20 million, and causing $9.5 billion in damage.
• Heavy rains triggered floods and landslides in Colombia in 2010 and 2011, killing over 600 people and causing nearly $7 billion in damage, the biggest natural disaster in the nation’s history.
• The Queensland flood of 2010-2011 was Australia's most expensive natural disaster, with a price tag as high as $30 billion.
• In 2010, the second “100-year drought” in five years in the Amazon led to net emissions of 5 billion tons of CO2 – a stunning amount roughly equivalent to a fifth of the global CO2 emissions produced that year from burning fossil fuels.
• In Greenland, more ice melted in 2010 than any time since the start of accurate record-keeping in 1958.
• This year, Colorado has been ravaged by wildfires that burned an area six times the size of Manhattan. In 2011, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and Minnesota all had record-breaking wildfires, with Texas losing an area larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.
• Severe drought is currently scorching nearly 40% of the continental United States, the largest stretch of country this dry in nearly a half-century, affecting 88% of the nation’s corn crop.
Scientists will tell you correctly that they cannot attribute any particular event to global warming because Nature doesn’t leave that kind of signal for us. But they also say that these are the kinds of events they predict for a warmer world. And remember, these events are what we’re seeing with only a modest global temperature increase – about 1.3° F since 1900 – compared to the much larger increases we will see if we don’t take strong action.
In short, while there is certainly much more to understand about climate phenomena, a level-headed assessment of what we know already should impel us to act with vigor and determination.
Today, I’m going to talk about where we stand both internationally and domestically and offer some thought about where we need to go in our efforts to limit climate change.
We’ll begin in the international arena, and I want to make a preliminary point. Climate change negotiations are very difficult. They are difficult, first, because climate change is not just an environmental issue – it implicates virtually every aspect of national economies, including industry, energy, transportation, agriculture and forests. So limits on emissions make countries nervous about economic growth and development. They are also difficult because the multilateral climate body – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – includes over 190 countries; these countries are grouped into various blocs with criss-crossing agendas and priorities; long-standing north-south resentments continue to rile the debate; and negotiations are governed by a consensus rule of procedure, which, in effect, enables any small handful of determined countries to block progress. So this is challenging stuff.
Right now, we are at an interesting juncture in light of what occurred at the negotiating session in South Africa last December – a juncture from which we can look back and reflect on what we have learned over the past three years, and from which we can look ahead to a revised model of international climate action.
At the time President Obama took office in early 2009, hopes were running high around the world that a major new treaty would be concluded in December in Copenhagen at the annual meeting of the “Conference of the Parties” to the UN Framework Convention.
But we believed from the outset that these hopes were built on a dubious foundation. The prevailing paradigm of climate negotiations was still that a firewall existed between developed and developing countries as they were defined in the 1992 Framework Convention, with all specific obligations to cut emissions assigned to developed countries. This paradigm is embodied in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the Berlin Mandate that gave rise to it.
The U.S. never thought that paradigm was legitimate. In 2009 we saw it as an unworkable basis for moving forward. As a matter of substance, you cannot meet the climate challenge by focusing only on developed countries when developing countries already account for around 55% of global emissions from fossil fuels and will account for 65% by 2030. You cannot build a system that treats China like Chad when China is the world’s second largest economy, largest emitter, second largest historic emitter, will be twice the size of the U.S. in emissions in a few years and has even caught up to the EU in per capita emissions, according to recent numbers from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
This is no knock on China. Their economic success is remarkable, and they have surely lifted more people out of poverty faster than any country in history. They are also determined to become the world’s leading producer of renewable energy. But the Chinese emission numbers do mean that if we’re going to be serious about taming climate change, we need to include all the major emitters, both developed and developing, accounting for some 80% of global emissions, and build out from there.
Further, as a matter of U.S. politics, any agreement that requires action by us but not by the emerging economies would be a dead letter in the U.S. Senate. Remember that all the way back in 1997, the Senate, by a vote of 95-0, passed the Byrd-Hagel resolution, declaring that the U.S. should not accept commitments to reduce greenhouse gases unless developing countries accepted such commitments as well. Securing Senate support for climate agreements is difficult under any circumstances, but unless all major countries are seen as committing to real action, it will be hopeless. Of course, the actions of different countries need not be the same – addressing climate change is not a one-size fits all proposition – but they need to be seen as fair.
With this in mind, our focus for the Copenhagen meeting in 2009 was clear. First, while we supported the objective of a new legally binding agreement, we made clear that we would only consider such an agreement if it fully included at least China and other emerging economies. Second, whether the product of Copenhagen was to be legally binding or not, it was crucial that all major players, developed and developing, commit to real action. And third, everyone’s implementation needed to be subject to genuine transparency so that all countries could have confidence that others were acting.
If you look at the major climate meetings of 2009, 2010 and 2011 through this lens, you will see that we accomplished quite a bit.
Copenhagen is remembered for its chaos, for the spectacle of world leaders improvising an agreement in the final hours to avoid meltdown, and for the dashing of over-inflated expectations. But it was also important. The Copenhagen Accord included, for the first time, agreement by all major countries to implement a set of listed actions and to do so with international transparency. It thus struck a blow against the firewall. It also ushered in a new, more “bottom-up” structure in which countries put forward their own pledges. This structure was essential for bringing in the emerging economies in a manner roughly parallel to the industrialized countries. And Copenhagen also included important provisions on funding, technology and forest protection.
Although the full Conference of the Parties refused to formally adopt the Copenhagen Accord, owing to the hard opposition of a small handful of countries, the next year’s meeting in Cancun adopted a fleshed out, 30-page version of the Accord.
Last December’s meeting in Durban, South Africa, took further steps to make the Copenhagen and Cancun agreements operational for the period up to 2020, writing guidelines for the new transparency regime, outlining the structure and functions of a new Green Climate Fund, and taking steps to set up a new Technology Center and Network.
But the headline out of Durban was an understanding reached in another short decision, called the “Durban Platform,” to negotiate a new legal agreement by 2015, taking effect after 2020.
For us, the pivotal features of the Durban Platform that will shape the contours of the new agreement are that it is to be “applicable to all Parties” and that it applies to the world of the 2020s. “Applicable to all” matters because it means the 1990s firewall, according to which commitments were only applicable to some, is finished. The 2020s matter because by that time we will be 30 years removed from the original 1992 division of countries, making that division ever more anachronistic.
None of this means that all countries will be expected to limit emissions in the same way. Differentiation among parties is an accepted premise of climate diplomacy. But in the world of the Durban Platform, it can no longer be the differentiation of two distinct categories of countries; rather, it will have to be the differentiation of a continuum, with each country expected to act vigorously in accordance with its evolving circumstances, capabilities and responsibilities.
These initial observations about the Durban Platform are the only the start of the discussion. A live and active debate is just beginning about the kind of legal agreement that should take effect after 2020.
For many countries, the core assumption about how to address climate change is that you negotiate a treaty with binding emission targets stringent enough to meet a stipulated global goal – namely, holding the increase in global average temperature to less than 2° centigrade above pre-industrial levels – and that treaty in turn drives national action. This is a kind of unified field theory of solving climate change – get the treaty right; the treaty dictates national action; and the problem gets solved. This is entirely logical. It makes perfect sense on paper. The trouble is it ignores the classic lesson that politics – including international politics – is the art of the possible.
Nations, as a rule, do not act in ways they see as contrary to their core interests or in disregard of what a great British colleague of mine once described as their “compelling constraints,” whether economic or political. If countries are told that, in order to reach a global goal, they must accept targets their leadership sees as contrary to their core interest in growth and development those countries are likely to say no.
These basic facts of life suggest that the likelihood of all relevant countries reaching consensus on a highly prescriptive climate agreement are low, and this reality in turn argues in favor of a more flexible approach that starts with nationally derived policies. Back in 2009, Australia proposed a “schedules” structure – lingo borrowed from the trade world – in which each country would offer up its own commitments. Such a scheme could be legally binding at the national level or the international level.
This kind of approach would have a far better chance of being broadly acceptable to all parties, but the risk of a system like this is that the policies and targets countries submit prove to be too modest. The question is whether a system could be structured to increase its overall ambition. For example, the system might include a six-month period after countries submitted initial offers in which other governments, experts and civil society could react and urge modifications. How to encourage ambition in an agreement that is broadly inclusive will be one of the fundamental challenges in designing a new system.
The keys to making headway in this early conceptual phase of the new agreement is to be open to new ideas that can work in the real world and to keep our eyes on the prize of reducing emissions rather than insisting on old orthodoxies.
In addition, we have to develop an agreement that builds in the capacity for modification over time. Remember that we have agreed to complete this new instrument by the end of 2015, but it won’t take effect for five more years. No one in 2015 can have a full understanding of what sort of reductions will be possible so many years in advance. Unforeseen changes in technology in the mid-2020s may make mitigation offers put forward in 2015 obsolete. So the new agreement should give countries flexibility to modify and update their mitigation commitments, spurring more and more aggressive action over time. In addition, the dynamic nature of development around the world means that expectations for country action can no longer be frozen in time. The developing country of 2015 may be a top five economy by 2025.
This kind of flexible, evolving legal agreement cannot guarantee that we meet a 2 degree goal, but insisting on a structure that would guarantee such a goal will only lead to deadlock. It is more important to start now with a regime that can get us going in the right direction and that is built in a way maximally conducive to raising ambition, spurring innovation, and building political will.
Now I want to shift gears slightly. As much as we need to make the UN climate regime work effectively and promote aggressive, real-world action, we also need to recognize that it can’t do everything. So we should expand the field of international engagement to include other, more informal groupings of countries prepared to act in ways that can make a difference. The point of such coalitions is not to negotiate agreements, debate the meaning of treaty clauses or grandstand about the imagined sins of our rivals, but to act. To produce results. To get something done. And efforts like these are starting.
• In 2009, the countries of the G20 agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. We collectively spend nearly $500 billion a year on such subsidies, with only about 15-20% going to the bottom 40% of the population in developing countries. These are largely perverse incentives bolstering already lucrative energy sources that we need to use less of, not more. There are far better ways to deploy our funds. The G20 countries need to follow through on this commitment now.
• The Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate is a group of 17 major developed and developing economies that we established in 2009, building on a structure created by President Bush. The “MEF”, as we established it, has a two-track mission: to facilitate negotiations in the UNFCCC and to focus on action that this group of countries, accounting for some 80% of global emissions, can do on our own. • In 2009, MEF action spawned a new coalition, the Clean Energy Ministerial, led by energy ministers and focused on spurring the development of clean technologies.
• The MEF also has real potential to drive a much more aggressive agenda going forward, focused on large-scale actions that this group of countries can undertake on our own.
• In February, Secretary Clinton announced a new effort, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, committed to reducing so-called “short-lived climate pollutants,” such as methane, black carbon and HFCs . Together, these agents account for over 30% of current global warming, millions of premature deaths, and extensive crop losses. We started with six countries and have already grown to some twenty countries and ten non-state partners. We have created a Science Advisory Panel, brought on other key players like the World Bank, and so far have $20 million in committed funds. We are implementing scaled-up, real-world initiatives to attack large sources of emissions, such as methane from landfills and from oil and gas production; black carbon from heavy-duty diesel engines; and HFCs used in refrigeration and air conditioners.
• The Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases was launched in 2009. It now includes 30 countries, led by New Zealand, and is dedicated to reducing emissions from a sector that currently produces around 15% of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
These initiatives and others like them are no substitute for multilateral action in the UNFCCC. But our mission has to be to produce results on the ground, and if initiatives like these can help get things done, then more power to them.
Let’s turn now to domestic policy and politics. We know that international agreement on climate is critical, because climate change is a quintessential “global commons” problem, where countries won’t act unless they have confidence that their partners and competitors are acting as well. But the real key to bringing down emissions is national action. And the action that is at the heart of the matter is the transformation of the energy base of our economies. So let’s take a quick look at what the U.S. has done over the past 3 ½ years.
Although large-scale legislative action was blocked in 2010, President Obama has accomplished a great deal through executive action:
• In the transport sector, accounting for some 35% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the President has put in place historic new standards that will nearly double the fuel economy of our cars and light duty trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Dan Becker, a long-time climate activist and Director of the Safe Climate Campaign called it “the single biggest step the American government has ever taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions.” And we have also introduced the first efficiency standards for heavy duty vehicles.
• In the building sector, accounting for 40% of U.S. emissions, the Department of Energy is leading an aggressive effort to boost the efficiency of buildings through stepped up appliance standards that will affect virtually everything that uses energy inside buildings. And this effort is making a difference. In 2005, the Energy Information Agency projected that CO2 emissions from buildings would increase 53% by 2030. But by 2012, EIA’s projection for the same time period had dramatically changed – rather than a 53% increase, EIA now projects a 2.4% decrease in CO2 emissions by 2030. Part of this change is attributable to slower economic growth, but by no means all. Better energy efficiency is a big factor.
• In the power sector, EPA recently issued CO2 regulations for new power plants that cannot be met using coal unless the resulting emissions are captured.
• Boosted by major investments under the 2009 Recovery Act, the U.S. has nearly doubled renewable electricity generation from wind, solar, and geothermal energy since 2008.
• And the Administration is also pursuing a multi-track R&D approach under the leadership of our Nobel-Prize winning Secretary of Energy, Steve Chu. This includes: • First, funding a new agency, “ARPA-E,” to support early-stage research aimed at delivering game-changing energy technologies. ARPA-E is modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – DARPA – the agency responsible for innovations including the Internet and stealth technology;
• Second, creating Energy Innovation Hubs – large, mission-oriented research efforts that bring together top researchers from academia, industry and government laboratories. The first three Hubs were for energy efficient buildings, nuclear reactors, and fuels from sunlight. The President recently proposed three new Hubs for smart grid technologies, batteries and energy storage, and critical materials.
• Third, establishing 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers, mostly university-led teams working on basic research to overcome technical impediments to clean energy development.
• This R&D effort may end up being more important than anything else. The best hope for containing climate change is likely through major advancements in technology, so government R&D support is crucial. Some still insist that government should just stay out of the way of the private sector, but our history tells a different story. Technological step-change has been aided by government engagement over and over again, from railroads, to the interstate highway system, aviation, telecommunications and the internet. More recently federal research support helped lay the groundwork for the new horizontal drilling techniques that are revolutionizing the production of natural gas and altering the U.S. energy landscape.
• One final point: since 2006, according to the International Energy Agency, U.S. CO2 emissions have fallen 7.7%, the largest reduction of any country in the world in that time period. Meanwhile, the latest figures from the Energy Information Agency, for the four months ending in March, show that U.S. emissions are 14% lower than in 2005. There are many reasons for the U.S. emissions decline, some relating to the broader economy, some to fuel switching from coal to natural gas, some to the measures taken by the Obama Administration, outlined above. But these are statistics few people around the world would have predicted even a year ago.
In short, the President has made real progress on climate and clean energy on the strength of his executive authority. But for action of the scale we need to transform our economy, there is no substitute for national legislation. And this truth brings us back to the question of the political challenge of climate change in the United States, because national legislation of scope and reach requires a broad base of engaged public support.
Such support is not easy to come by. Climate change, by its nature, is a tough issue politically. It involves short-term cost for long-term benefit. Its dangers seem distant and can be crowded out by more pressing concerns. It is complicated, and the link between global warming and natural disasters often feels uncertain to people, since scientists can’t say global warming caused this particular event. A sense of issue fatigue can take hold, born of the difficulty of making rapid progress. The natural propensity of the press to give equal time to both sides of any issue, even when the evidence lies overwhelmingly on one side, can leave people confused. And then, of course, ideological interests have worked overtime to make this issue too hot to handle.
What we need is a straight-shooting conversation that explains what’s at stake in climate change and why we need action to accelerate the transformation to a clean energy economy. We can and should make clear that there are immediate, non-climate benefits to doing this – building America’s competitive future, since clean energy will be one of the defining industries of the 21st century; making our air cleaner; protecting our health against conventional pollution. But we also need to make clear that the severe risks of climate change make this transformation essential if we care about sustaining our health, our prosperity and our national security. Climate change is what makes the transformation of our energy system an engagement of necessity, not one of choice.
On December 12 of last year, the Economist’s on-line blog said: “A hundred years from now, looking back, the only question that will appear important about the historical moment in which we now live is the question of whether or not we did anything to arrest climate change.” I wouldn’t go that far – we are surely dealing with other seismic issues in this historical moment. But, the underlying point of the blog is on target. While potent issues of the moment will always command our attention, we must also take the long view, acting now to avoid crisis down the road.
So we need to present the case – both the short-term benefits and the longer-term imperative – in a sober, persuasive way, not alarmist, but not pulling punches. The benefits of action are manifest; the costs manageable.
We also need to go beyond the usual suspects to find trusted figures – including from business and the military – who can speak to a broad constituency. My own conviction is that if you talked privately to the CEOs of the Fortune 500, the vast majority would recognize that climate change is real, serious, and calls for a concerted response. Exactly what that response should be is a fair subject for debate, but if we can at least establish the priority of developing such a response, we’ll have taken an important step forward.
Finally, we need energy – the human kind – which can be found in large supply in places like this and among young people across America, whose stake in what we do about climate change couldn’t be higher. Your future is now.
Paving the way for broader national and international action on climate and energy won’t be easy for all the reasons I’ve outlined. But it can be done and we need to start.
Once again, thank you so much for the invitation to come back to Hanover to share some thoughts. I’d be happy to take questions.
12 August 2012 - "I would like to support the C&C proposal to the UNFCCC." Dr R Yamamoto Tokyo UniversityDear Dr. Aubrey Meyer
Please accept my apology for not having written to you sooner.
I would like to support your proposal to the UNFCC.
Best wishes
Ryoichi Yamamoto
Chair of the International Green Purchasing Network
Emeritus Professor of the University of Tokyo, Japan
Visiting Professor of International Christian University
International Green Purchasing Network (IGPN) Secretariat
Cosmos Aoyama, 5-53-67 Jingumae,
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0001, Japan.
Three different scenarios for resource use up to 2050
- Scenario 1 Business-as-usual (BAU) BAU scenario assumes that developing countries adopt growth and development strategies aimed at ‘catching up’ with the resource consumption patterns of industrialized countries, this will result in the tripling of global annual resource extraction and consumption by 2050. Specifically, this means more than doubling biomass use, while almost quadrupling fossil fuel use and tripling the annual use of metals (ores) and construction minerals.
- Scenario 2 Moderate contraction and convergence Assumes substantial structural change in the dominant industrial production and consumption patterns. This scenario would require substantial economic structural change and massive investments in innovations for resource decoupling.
- Scenario 3 Tough contraction and convergence This scenario does not raise global resource consumption above the 2000 levels, and can hardly be addressed as a possible strategic goal by politicians.
09 August 2012 - "Per Capita Emissions must Contract & Converge." Population Connection
"Population stabilization deserves consideration among the proposed mitigation solutions just as much as switching from SUVs to hybrids does. But it can not be the only solution.Per capita emissions must also contract and converge at a level that allows everyone to live a decent quality of life, without overloading the atmosphere with carbon."
Population and Climate Change
09 August 2012 - "Radically new C&C approach needed." Sharing Growth Globally, Citizen's Renaissance
Over the last 20 years, an extra billion Consumers have joined the world’s population, and rapidly developing nations like China, India and Brazil will increasingly claim a fairer share of the world resources.And many of the developing world’s people are being encouraged to follow the same path that we in the developed world have. Chinese and Indian TV adverts encourage Consumers to get rid of the bicycles and get cars. China currently only has the number of cars per head as the US had in 1915 but is rapidly catching up and now ranks as the number one global market for Rolls-Royce. In 2005 it had just one drive-through McDonalds. By the end of 2008 it is predicted to have 115. Of course greater mobility and connectivity brings freedom, but do those adverts also tell the story of congestion,
A study by Professor Haberl of Vienna University in 2006 on the ecological embeddedness of the global economy from 1700 to 2000 concluded that “the efficiency increases in terms of a reduction in resource use per unit of GDP may be beneficial but are certainly not sufficient to result in a reversal of current trends the developing countries will find it impossible to follow the trajectory the industrial core has followed in the last two centuries”.
The picture and the implications for growth are different for the developed and developing worlds. For those 5bn people earning less than $13,000 it is clear that increasing wealth brings increasing Wellbeing. For those above that level it does not. And the concomitant planetary impacts are not worth those rapidly diminishing returns.
China has a new millionaire a day and yet the vast majority have little hope of improving their standard of living.
This calls for a radically new 'contract and converge' approach in which the rich world contracts its footprint while the developing world continues to develop and our per capita footprints converge globally at a sustainable level. That said, in those developing countries there is an urgent need to spread growth equitably. China for instance has a new millionaire a day and yet the vast majority have little hope of improving their standard of living. In already wealthy countries this calls for an end to a fixation on growth and Consumerism, a contraction of our growth and a spreading of a far more equitable access to increased Wellbeing to the world’s poor.
The cake has now been shown to be far smaller than we had assumed it was. It has been shown that we cannot expect to expand it. So the rich need to take far less and the poor need to be given access to far more.
Professor Victor’s LowGrow model examined earlier in this chapter illustrates that a contraction of developed country growth can work for people and planet. Future modelling could start to show how access to needed growth in developing countries can be shared out and how developed countries can grow to a sustainable level and converge with developed countries at a globally sustainable level.
Globalisation rapidly speeds up transactions whilst destroying government’s abilities to maintain a healthy balance between the interests of the rich and corporate and the Wellbeing of all Citizens.
Even in the rapidly developing BRIC countries’ per capita footprints and global warming emissions are still far lower than in the developed world. Countries like China whilst their emissions are rising fast with their huge economic growth are at the front-line of any climate change impacts. China is the most per capita resource-poor country in the world. Huge areas are rapidly turning to desert, most of its rivers are ‘dead’ and often do not even flow any more. China has huge reserves of coal and huge population and poverty pressure pushing it to burn that coal. But China will also be badly affected by any global climate changes resulting from burning this coal.
As we have seen from Chapter One on the Perfect Storm, our current form of capitalism does little to increase equitable access to resources and wealth whilst destroying the planet. It is clear from the inequity evidence we described earlier that our current form of globalised, liberalised, free-market economics is neither fair on the planet nor the wide majority of its people.
Our current globalised trading system operates in a way which inevitably favours the rich. Globalisation rapidly speeds up transactions whilst destroying government’s abilities to maintain a healthy balance between the interests of the rich and corporate and the Wellbeing of all Citizens. That is why free trade is always so favoured by powerful countries, companies and capital rich people. When anyone sells something outside their own locality in competition with other selling communities they are likely to increase the relative wealth of their target customers. On a global scale what happens is that wealth thus concentrates ever more in the hands of the already wealthy and poor producers compete with each other to reduce profit margins and remain poor.
It is in the developing world where recent HSBC research found most concern for and engagement with combating Climate Change.
In order to update this faulty operating system, a new set of institutional architecture and rules for commerce, trade and with an equitable distribution to our global “commons” in a new Capitalism 3.0 is needed (as we examine in Chapter Eight). Only this can hope to reduce poverty within the carrying capacity of the planet. And only this can hope to encourage reduced birth-rates in the developing world. At the same time the expected population increases predicted need to be avoided by an encouragement of family planning, women’s empowerment and democratic governance.
Counter to what many people assume, it is in the developing world where recent HSBC research found most concern for and engagement with combating Climate Change. This dispels perhaps the myth that developed countries may as well not bother to change because “China will keep on growing emissions anyway”.
Sharing Growth Globally
Robert Phillips and Jules Peck08 August 2012 - "I support the C&C proposal to UNFCCC." Prof Sharon Friel Australia National UniversityDear Aubrey,
Yes you have my support too.
Please add my name to the GCI proposal concerning contract and converge to the UNFCC.
Best wishes,
Sharon
How Climate Change is Linked with the Social Determinants of Global Health and Development
The health effects of climate change and other aspects of adverse global environmental change will not be distributed uniformly or fairly. Populations and communities who face social disadvantage (both between and within countries) are likely to bear a greater burden due both to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change, deepening existing vicious circles that entrap the poor.In a fair world, this extra jeopardy would provide extra impetus to address climate change, not least as the most vulnerable populations are those which are least responsible for fossil-fuel combustion and other greenhouse gas emissions. However, an additional layer of complexity exists. The development pathways that most low consumption populations aspire to (in addition to the ongoing aspirations of high consumption populations) are in obvious conflict with carbon budget targets. The great challenge is to provide increased health and well-being in ways that reduce the rate of greenhouse gas accumulation.
This is daunting but not impossible; more active transport in high consumption countries can reduce chronic diseases and reduce carbon emissions, �contraction and convergence� of material consumption, including of animal products can improve health for both rich and poor. Solar and other technologies can provide electricity without harming the climate. Lowering population growth in low consumption countries, through means such as female education, will hasten economic development, enhance climate change adaptation and reduce the eventual scale of greenhouse gas emissions.
Governing for a Healthy Population:
Towards an Understanding of How Decision-Making Will Determine Our Global Health in a Changing Climate
Kathryn J. Bowen, Sharon Friel, Kristie Ebi, Colin D. Butler, Fiona Miller, Anthony J. McMichael07 August 2012 - "Full support for C&C proposal to UNFCCC." Prof Colin Butler Australia National UniversityAubrey
You have my full support.
Please add my name to the GCI proposal concerning contract and converge to the UNFCCC.
Best wishes
Colin
PS Are you aware of our paper: McMichael AJ, Powles J, Butler CD, Uauy R. Food, livestock production, energy, climate change and health. The Lancet. 2007; 370: 1253-63. This explicitly argues for a C&C strategy with regard to meat consumption.
How Climate Change is Linked with the Social Determinants of Global Health and Development
The health effects of climate change and other aspects of adverse global environmental change will not be distributed uniformly or fairly. Populations and communities who face social disadvantage (both between and within countries) are likely to bear a greater burden due both to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change, deepening existing vicious circles that entrap the poor.In a fair world, this extra jeopardy would provide extra impetus to address climate change, not least as the most vulnerable populations are those which are least responsible for fossil-fuel combustion and other greenhouse gas emissions. However, an additional layer of complexity exists. The development pathways that most low consumption populations aspire to (in addition to the ongoing aspirations of high consumption populations) are in obvious conflict with carbon budget targets. The great challenge is to provide increased health and well-being in ways that reduce the rate of greenhouse gas accumulation.
This is daunting but not impossible; more active transport in high consumption countries can reduce chronic diseases and reduce carbon emissions, �contraction and convergence� of material consumption, including of animal products can improve health for both rich and poor. Solar and other technologies can provide electricity without harming the climate. Lowering population growth in low consumption countries, through means such as female education, will hasten economic development, enhance climate change adaptation and reduce the eventual scale of greenhouse gas emissions.
Governing for a Healthy Population:
Towards an Understanding of How Decision-Making Will Determine Our Global Health in a Changing Climate
Kathryn J. Bowen, Sharon Friel, Kristie Ebi, Colin D. Butler, Fiona Miller, Anthony J. McMichael
In a recent paper in The Lancet Anthony McMichael and Colin Butler propose that the world should commit to reducing the global average daily intake of meat, especially red meat from ruminants. This would be part of the evolving portfolio strategy across various sectors of commerce, energy use and human behaviour to mitigate climate change. The fairest approach is contraction and convergence, where the world's nations agree to reduce average per-person meat consumption (currently just over 100 grams per day) and to do so equitably. High-consuming populations would reduce their intake and low-consuming populations could increase their intake up to the agreed average level.
Contraction and Convergence is Good for our Health
Food Ethics - Tony McMichael
As has been proposed for greenhouse-gas emissions at large, emphasizing international equity, a contraction and convergence policy seems to be the most defensible�and therefore the most politically feasible�model for restricting emissions arising in relation to consumption of meat and dairy products. Because rapid reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions per unit of livestock production would be technically and culturally difficult in the short term, the prime objective must be to reduce consumption of animal products in high-income countries, and thus lower the ceiling consumption level to which low-income and middle-income countries would then converge.Key messages
- Greenhouse-gas emissions from the agriculture sector account for about 22% of global total emissions; this contribution is similar to that of industry and greater than that of transport. Livestock production (including transport of livestock and feed) accounts for nearly 80% of the sector�s emissions
- Methane and nitrous oxide (which are both potent greenhouse gases and closely associated with livestock production) contribute much more to this sector�s warming effect than does carbon dioxide
- Halting the increase of greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture, especially livestock production, should therefore be a top priority, because it could curb warming fairly rapidly. However, livestock production is projected, on current trends, to increase substantially over the next four decades, mainly in countries of low or middle income
- Available technologies for reduction of emissions from livestock production, applied universally at realistic costs, would reduce non-carbon dioxide emissions by less than 20%. We therefore advocate a contraction and convergence strategy to reduce consumption of livestock products, mirroring the widely supported strategy proposed for greenhouse-gas emissions in general. Contraction of consumption in high-income countries per head would then defi ne the lower, common, ceiling to which low-income and middle-income countries could also converge
- Assuming a 40% increase in global population by 2050 and no advance in livestock-related greenhouse-gas reduction practices, global meat consumption would need to fall to an average of 90 g per person per day just to stabilise emissions from this sector. Such a decrease would require a substantial reduction of meat consumption in industrialized countries and constrained growth in demand in developing countries, especially of red meat from ruminant (methane-producing) animals
- A substantial contraction in meat consumption in high-income countries should benefit health, mainly by reducing the risk of ischaemic heart disease (especially related to saturated fat in domesticated animal products), obesity, colorectal cancer, and, perhaps, some other cancers. An increase in the consumption of animal products in low-intake populations, towards the proposed global mean figure (convergence), should also benefit health
- The resultant gains in health and environmental sustainability should help to off set any (initial) discomforts from restrictions on some popular foods and altered dietary customs. Replacing ruminant red meat with meat from mono-gastric animals or vegetarian-farmed fish would reduce methane production and lower the pressures on wild fisheries as sources of fish-meal for aquaculture
- Climate change will, itself, affect food yields around the world unevenly. Although some regions, mostly at mid-to-high latitude, could experience gains, many (eg, in sub-Saharan Africa) are likely to be adversely affected, with impairment of both nutrition and incomes. Compensating vulnerable populations for this and other climate-mediated harm caused by other populations should be an important element of global climate change policy
- Global population growth is continuing, although slowing. The eventual peak size is not predetermined: it can be lowered by education, leadership, and wider contraceptive availability. Slower population growth will help achieve the Millennium Development Goals and will limit population size, climate change, and the environmental effects of food production
Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health Anthony J McMichael, John W Powles, Colin D Butler, Ricardo Uauy07 August 2012 - C&C "Global Health & Development." Kathryn Bowen et al Australia National University.
How Climate Change is Linked with the Social Determinants of Global Health and Development
The health effects of climate change and other aspects of adverse global environmental change will not be distributed uniformly or fairly. Populations and communities who face social disadvantage (both between and within countries) are likely to bear a greater burden due both to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change, deepening existing vicious circles that entrap the poor.In a fair world, this extra jeopardy would provide extra impetus to address climate change, not least as the most vulnerable populations are those which are least responsible for fossil-fuel combustion and other greenhouse gas emissions. However, an additional layer of complexity exists. The development pathways that most low consumption populations aspire to (in addition to the ongoing aspirations of high consumption populations) are in obvious conflict with carbon budget targets. The great challenge is to provide increased health and well-being in ways that reduce the rate of greenhouse gas accumulation.
This is daunting but not impossible; more active transport in high consumption countries can reduce chronic diseases and reduce carbon emissions, �contraction and convergence� of material consumption, including of animal products can improve health for both rich and poor. Solar and other technologies can provide electricity without harming the climate. Lowering population growth in low consumption countries, through means such as female education, will hasten economic development, enhance climate change adaptation and reduce the eventual scale of greenhouse gas emissions.
Governing for a Healthy Population:
Towards an Understanding of How Decision-Making Will Determine Our Global Health in a Changing Climate
Kathryn J. Bowen, Sharon Friel, Kristie Ebi, Colin D. Butler, Fiona Miller, Anthony J. McMichael
07 August 2012 - "I fully support C&C submission to UNFCCC." Derek Deighton Director TrailblazersDear Aubrey
Thank you for your kind words.
I fully support GCI�s efforts on Contraction and Convergence and also support the submission to the UNFCCC
Kind Regards
Derek
Derek Deighton
Managing Director at Trailblazer Business Futures
At core is our need to contract and converge
- how can we creatively match the energy and Resource Intensity of SystemUK to the affordable energy and other resources available to us as a society to give a sustainable �Quality of Life�.
- Critically it is not only about technologies but also about how we �organise� ourselves as a society and businesses to continually reduce the Resource Intensity of the �essential� services we enjoy.
The Queen Elizabeth prize misses entirely the key requirement of this century, the need to continually contract and converge the Resource intensity of societies whilst living within global resource and sink availability.Any prize that doen't put these requirements at the core of the judging criteria is not fit for purpose. And as far as politicians are concerned we can fairly say that ~ the sustainability of any society is inversely proportional to the number of lawyers per capita.
Those whose income depends on the failure demand generated by society cannot make rational decisions as to the effective distribution of precious resources.
05 August 2012 - "C&C - limits of planet brought into proximity are clearly visible." Mineral Ore Coal Buyers
Since 1900, global consumption has increased almost tenfold, while the World GDP has risen over the same period by a factor of 23. Resource consumption and economic growth have thus indeed decoupled increasingly, resource consumption in industrialized countries has stagnated over the past three decades even, but would also cleared the rest of the world to the excessive consumption of the industrialized nations, as is currently in countries with rapidly growing economies such as China , India and Brazil already looming, the carrying capacity of the planet beyond.The path of the so-called "contraction and convergence" would be that developed countries halve their consumption of resources by 2050, while the rest of the world catches up. As an alternative to threaten violent conflicts over resources, as they begin to emerge already in some places. "The limits of the planet Earth are brought into proximity clearly visible," said the authors of the report.
05 August 2012 - "C&C the most feasible policy for tackling global warming" MEDACT
Environmentally friendly policies may feel like a low priority among the many pressures in a busy professional life, but promoting carbon rationing could be your most important contribution to patients' health.Climate change related to global warming is the world's most urgent public health problem. Our planet is already seriously damaged, with worse to come. Health professionals have an enviable record of contributing solutions to previous threats and must do the same for climate change.
The most feasible policy for tackling global warming is contraction and convergence, developed by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute. So how can health professionals contribute?
Virtuous cycles
So five years on, where are we? The council has shown that a fair global solution to climate change, as exemplified by the Contraction and Convergence framework means that what’s good for the climate is good for health. Council members have also made substantial contributions to the seminal work published by the Lancet. As well as benefitting individual health through the reduction of carbon emissions, relevant measures have considerable socio-economic benefit, and so create the virtuous cycles of promoting social, environmental and economic gain synergistically. We are working with others to quantify the health gains which such measures will produce, with the ultimate aim of producing a health ‘Stern report’. This offers a more optimistic prism through which to view climate change, as our council member Hugh Montgomery found when talking to delegates at the recent COP conference in Cancun. Raising awareness of health implications could make a difference to global negotiations so the council will try to ensure that delegates going to Durban are better informed. We will ask the nearly 6,000 supporters from 130 countries who have signed our pledge (and if you haven’t signed, please do so now) to contact their negotiators.Â
MEDACT Communique
Climate change
Throughout the year, Medact members drew attention to the devastating impact of climate change on health and the health benefits of reducing carbon emissions. Medact took part in the consultation on the draft Climate Change Bill advocating for more stringent CO2 emissions targets, Full Life Cycle Analyses of CO2 emissions and the inclusion of emissions from international aviation and shipping. Medact Bristol led an energetic campaign against airport expansion. This included public meetings, rallies and picnics and personal letters to over 200 individual GPs in North Somerset. GPs were encouraged to take the lead in opposing airport expansion and to exert pressure on councillors and MPs. Medact continued to promote the Contract and Converge model which considers the urgent actions needed to reduce carbon emissions in the light of global inequalities. Medact was represented on the Climate and Health Council and the Working Group on Climate Change and Development.
MEDACT Annual Report 2007/2008
05 August 2012 - "The Q Elizabeth Prize entirely misses the point without C&C" Derek Deighton 'The Engineer'
The Queen Elizabeth prize misses entirely the key requirement of this century, the need to continually contract and converge the Resource intensity of societies whilst living within global resource and sink availability.Any prize that doen't put these requirements at the core of the judging criteria is not fit for purpose. And as far as politicians are concerned we can fairly say that ~ the sustainability of any society is inversely proportional to the number of lawyers per capita.
Those whose income depends on the failure demand generated by society cannot make rational decisions as to the effective distribution of precious resources.
At core is our need to contract and converge;
- How can we creatively match the energy and Resource Intensity of System UK to the affordable energy and other resources available to us as a society to give a sustainable �Quality of Life�.
- Critically it is not only about technologies but also about how we �organise� ourselves as a society and businesses to continually reduce the Resource Intensity of the �essential� services we enjoy.
03 August 2012 - Updated all-country 'zoomable' past-emissions-graphic [CDIAC] + McKibben & GDR Futures?
Which Future Carbon Budget? This point needs to be clarified.At the link shown, here is a chart with all CO2 emissions for all countries [zoom, they are all there - just over 200] 1800 - 2000. the chart has been updated to 2010 [with latest CDIAC data] but is still a draft. Minus the 'deforestation' figures [which are shown but which are controversial] the total fossil-fuel emissions over this period weighed ~363 Gt C.
The chart also shows at scale the two future projected carbon-budgets.
One is from Mr Mckibben and the other is from the Greenhouse Development Rights [GDR] paper.It is worth looking at the enormity of what is recommended/asked-for/demanded with both. But it is also worth noting the enormity of the the difference in weight between the two. The GDR budget weighs twice the McKIbben budget. Mr McKibben has said it must be no more that figure of 154 Gt C. However, then he says he prefers the GDR budget of ~267 Gt C.
If some are calling calling for crimes against humanity to be attached to those who 'don't observe or who resists this/these' restrictions, the 'prosecution' better 'do the maths'.
This is not rocket science. This question deserves and requires an answer from Mr McKibben but he has chosen to ignore it. I requires an answer, as he so publicly spoken on this yet with those two quite contradictory figures, both standing in the name of his campaign for 350 ppmv.
Moreover, he is leading many young people into direct confrontation with the establishment, where it is becoming a badge-of-pride to 'get jailed from opposition'.
GCI is not saying 'don't do that. All were saying is if you are going to do it [and be willing to go to court as 'defendents'] it will be prudent to have done the 'maths' if a case is to made [a] not just against 'the problem' but [b] for 'the solution' being advocated. Otherwise, the defendents will lose and the proceeedings will be yet more farce and recriminations.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the same GCI is not saying that the 350 campaign should or shouldn't support C&C. We are simply asking, which budget is the 350 campaign based on and campaigning for? [as we don't think it can sensibly campaign for both].
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GCI is separately saying that the GDR mechanism is unworkable for two reasons: -
[1] Politically - the US will never accept *negative emissions entitlements* for itself and the 'Annex One Countries' at any contraction rate. They will say it is arbitrary and in the light of the above presently 'maths-free-zone', the US Government will certainly find it easier to make that stick than anyone saying otherwise.
[2] Methodologically - [a] the complexity of calculating and administering fossil-fuel derived income globally [b] under all the competing option available in the GDR scheme and [c] to each person in each country for the next 50-100 years is simply unworkable and is hardly breaking the link between fossil fuel use and money.
03 August 2012 - "Happy to support C&C proposal." Professor Peter Newell Sussex UniversityHi Aubrey
Hope all is well.
Apologies for not replying earlier, usual craziness.
I’m happy for you to add my name to your proposal for C&C.All best wishes
Peter
Professor Peter Newell
Department of International Relations
School of Global Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton East
Sussex BN1 9SN UK
"One way of allocating emissions could be on the basis of the notion of 'contraction and convergence', This idea was developed by a little known London outfit called the Global Commons Institute, led by concert violinist and engaging orator Aubrey Meyer. With colourful diagrams and impeccable logic, Meyer's argument moved relatively quickly from the margins of the debate, dismissed as unrealistically radical to the mainstream. Contraction & Convergence meant that while overall global emissions would contract to a level consistent with the overall goal of the UNFCCC - to 'prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system' - these emissions would converge at a common per capita level. Emissions in the North would thus decline while those in South grew, albeit at a slowed rate. By 2030, per capita emissions across the globe converge, while overall global emissions peak about 2020 and then decline."
Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy
Peter Newell and Matthew Patterson03 August 2012 - "C&C captures differential responsibilities best - I endorse it." Dr R Emmanuel Glasgow UniDear Aubrey,
I am delighted to endorse C&C which captures ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ best!
All the best,
Rohinton
Dr Rohinton Emmanuel
Reader & Subject Lead, Sustainable Design & Construction
Dept of Construction & Surveying School of Engineering & Built Environment M536E,
George Moore Building
Glasgow Caledonian University
70 Cowcaddens Road,
Glasgow G4 0BA ,
Contraction and Convergence
One of the most widely advocated and scientifically sound models for resolving this problem of reducing global emissions whilst ensuring greater equity is Contraction and Convergence. C&C, as it is known, was originally developed by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute (GCI). However, the term has been adopted more widely, and where it is used it is important to know whether or not the specific model is being referred to. C&C begins with the principle that the developing world should be allowed to develop whilst the developed world begins to reduce its emissions, and then models these trajectories over time to meet emissions goals of 350 ppm, 450 ppm and 550 ppm. The best way to understand C&C is to inspect the highly zoom-able diagram produced by the GCI. Figure 2.3 gives a snapshot of the diagram, which is free to download from the GCI website.
Carbon Management in the Built Environment
By Rohinton Emmanuel, Keith Baker03 August 2012 - "Very happy to endorse this C&C proposal." Dr Keith Baker Glasgow Caledonian UniversityHi Aubrey,
Good to hear from you!
Of course I'm happy to endorse this proposal and sure Rohinton would be too.
All the best,
Keith
Dr Keith Baker
Sustainable Urban Environments Research Group (SUE-RG)
School of Engineering and the Built Environment
Glasgow Caledonian University
70 Cowcaddens Road G4 OBA
Contraction and Convergence
One of the most widely advocated and scientifically sound models for resolving this problem of reducing global emissions whilst ensuring greater equity is Contraction and Convergence. C&C, as it is known, was originally developed by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute (GCI). However, the term has been adopted more widely, and where it is used it is important to know whether or not the specific model is being referred to. C&C begins with the principle that the developing world should be allowed to develop whilst the developed world begins to reduce its emissions, and then models these trajectories over time to meet emissions goals of 350 ppm, 450 ppm and 550 ppm. The best way to understand C&C is to inspect the highly zoom-able diagram produced by the GCI. Figure 2.3 gives a snapshot of the diagram, which is free to download from the GCI website.
Carbon Management in the Built Environment
By Rohinton Emmanuel, Keith Baker03 August 2012 - "Very happy to support the C&C proposal." Dr Matthew Paterson University of OttawaDear Aubrey
Thanks for your email. I'm very happy for you to add my name as a supporter for the proposal.
I remember seeing you proposing C&C in Geneva in 1996, and have been a fan ever since.Cheers
Mat
Matthew Paterson
Ecole d'etudes politiques,
Universite d'Ottawa
Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5
Web
Co-editor, Global Environmental Politics
Latest book (with Peter Newell)
"Climate capitalism: global warming and the transformation of the global economy"
"One way of allocating emissions could be on the basis of the notion of 'contraction and convergence', This idea was developed by a little known London outfit called the Global Commons Institute, led by concert violinist and engaging orator Aubrey Meyer. With colourful diagrams and impeccable logic, Meyer's argument moved relatively quickly from the margins of the debate, dismissed as unrealistically radical to the mainstream. Contraction & Convergence meant that while overall global emissions would contract to a level consistent with the overall goal of the UNFCCC - to 'prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system' - these emissions would converge at a common per capita level. Emissions in the North would thus decline while those in South grew, albeit at a slowed rate. By 2030, per capita emissions across the globe converge, while overall global emissions peak about 2020 and then decline."
Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy
Peter Newell and Matthew Patterson03 August 2012 - "C&C; widely advocated, scientifically sound." Carbon Management - Emmanuel & Baker
Contraction and Convergence
One of the most widely advocated and scientifically sound models for resolving this problem of reducing global emissions whilst ensuring greater equity is Contraction and Convergence�. C&C, as it is known, was originally developed by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute (GCI). However, the term has been adopted more widely, and where it is used it is important to know whether or not the specific model is being referred to. C&C begins with the principle that the developing world should be allowed to develop whilst the developed world begins to reduce its emissions, and then models these trajectories over time to meet emissions goals of 350 ppm, 450 ppm and 550 ppm. The best way to understand C&C is to inspect the highly zoom-able diagram produced by the GCI. Figure 2.3 gives a snapshot of the diagram, which is free to download from the GCI website.
Carbon Management in the Built Environment By Rohinton Emmanuel, Keith Baker02 August 2012 - "We Are the Music-Makers" Brian O'ShaughnessyWe are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.02 August 2012 - Green Growth & Equity in Climate Context [C&C] Jeffrey Sachs & Shiv Someshwar ADB
Projection of CO2 emissions under Contraction and Convergence model
The Global Commons Institute formulated this hybrid approach and presented it at the second Conference of the Parties in 1996. The key idea is to help equalize GHG emissions per capita on a global scale, over time. In principle the rich would consume (gradually) far less resources per capita than before, while the poor consume more than they have in the past, so that both ‘groups’ converge towards a common ‘fair share’ level, which the planet can sustain (GCI 2008).It envisages global emissions peaking and then gradually falling (contraction), while emission reduction is achieved by limiting per capita emissions in such a way that they converge (convergence). It requires large cuts in per capita emissions for developed countries while allowing developing countries to continue growing their economies before they have to make cuts to reach equal per capita emissions. The “fair carbon emission per country” is calculated based on a total population cap for each country.
Green Growth and Equity in the Context of Climate Change: Some Considerations
Jeffrey D. Sachs and Shiv Someshwar ADB
02 August 2012 - "C&C the only scientifically robust, ethically justifiable framework." J Barry Queen's UniversityDear Aubrey
I am more than happy to support the C&C proposal to the UNFCCC.
C&C is and remains the only scientifically robust, politically and ethically justifiable framework for enabling a global 'just transition' to decarbonisation in relation to climate change
Yours sincerely
Dr. John Barry
Reader, School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy
Associate Director, Institute for a Sustainable World
Director, Centre for Sustainability and Environmental Reseach
Queen's University Belfast
21 University Square
Belfast, BT7 1NN
Advances in EcoPolitics ed John BarryContraction and Convergence is a proposal from the Global Commons Institute for how the Earth's atmosphere (the 'global commons’) should be shared, which is another way of saying how the right to produce polluting carbon dioxide should be distributed (Meyer, 2000). It is a simple plan to cap total emissions at the level suggested by the best available science (relying on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and then to share these equally between all the world's citizens so that everybody receives a carbon credit. The Figure illustrates the Contraction and Convergence model, indicating how emissions have risen and how they countries will be expected to reduce them over the next 50 years. The contraction is this decline: the convergence is the movement towards global equality in per capita emissions.
Vulnerability and Resilience in Contemporary Green Thought and Action
John Barry
Institute for a Sustainable World
Queen’s University Belfast02 August 2012 - "I would like to introduce C&C." Catherine Budgett Meakin Population & Sustainability Network
Catherine Budgett Meakin
Population and Sustainability NetworkSo the Heffalump trap is when we start talking about population and climate change as though this is cause and effect. The areas of the world where the least CO2 is emitted are those with the highest population growth.
I would like to introduce the concept of Contraction and Convergence. The concept was developed by the Global Commons Institute and is a central part of discussions about how to achieve carbon emission reduction in an equitable way.
This framework for dealing with climate change, in brief, argues that the minority world needs to ‘contract’ its per capita greenhouse gas emissions, while those of the majority world are allowed to increase until the two amounts ‘converge’, thus arriving at an equitable and just level of per capita emissions across the world.
This approach makes the case that the right to emit carbon dioxide is a human right that should be allocated on an equal basis to all of humankind.
Often people say – well, there’s no point in our doing anything about climate change while China expands economically and emits more CO2 emissions, year on year.
Per Capita Emissions per annum
- United States: 20 tonnes
- UK: Nine tonnes
- China: less than four tonnes (but growing)
- Nigeria: less than one tonne
Firstly, their per capita emissions are still very low compared with the US or Europe (in the US it’s 20 tonnes per person per year, in the UK, it’s over 9 tonnes, while in China it’s less than 4 tonnes, though growing.
But where do almost all our goods seem to come from now?
It is increasingly difficult to find something which has not been Made in China. So we are, in effect, exporting our emissions across the world, and then blaming China. China and India and indeed poor countries everywhere have a right to make every effort to reduce poverty. It is hypocritical and indeed unjust for us, who have it all, to say that other countries should not be developing. What model of development they should be striving for is a subject for another paper. But certainly any model of development (in the minority and majority worlds) dependent on fossil fuel should be closely scrutinised – because fossil fuels will become ever more expensive and scarce, and because climate change is caused, principally, by fossil fuel emissions.
To return to population: if we go along with the Contraction and Convergence model, and we are working towards equity per capita, then the more people there are – wherever they are – the smaller CO2 emission per capita allowance there will be for everyone, everywhere (though it will hit those of us in the rich minority world most).
So if we are now approaching seven billion, then, for the sake of the argument, we can emit seven billion tonnes per annum. If we are to have nine + billion, as seems increasingly likely (unless action is taken NOW to increase family planning services), then the per capita allowance will be less than one tonne.
.
02 August 2012 - "Climate change has started. Mountain of evidence we can't turn away from." US Senate Com
Statement of Senator Barbara BoxerFull Committee Hearing: "Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures"
August 1, 2012
Climate change is real, human activities are the primary cause, and the warming planet poses a significant risk to people and the environment. To declare otherwise, in my view, is putting the American people in danger - direct danger.
The body of evidence is overwhelming, the world's leading scientists agree, and predictions of climate change impacts are coming true before our eyes. The purpose of this hearing is to share with the Committee the mountain of scientific evidence that has increased substantially over time: time that we should have used to reduce carbon pollution - the main cause of climate change.
In 2011, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released the final report on climate. It concluded, "climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems," and "The preponderance of the evidence points to human activities as the most likely cause for most of the global warming that has occurred over the last 50 years...."
Even some former climate deniers now see the light. Just this past weekend, Professor Richard Muller - a self-proclaimed climate skeptic - wrote the following in the New York Times:
"Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."
Claims by the remaining skeptics are overcome with an examination of the facts.
At the first hearing of this Committee when I became Chairman on January 30, 2007, I invited all Senators to give their views on climate change. More than one-third of the Senate spoke out, and most warned of the dangers that climate change would bring unless we acted.
Senator McCain said, "We are no longer just talking about how climate change will affect our children's and grandchildren's lives, as we did just a few years ago, but we now are talking about how it is already impacting the world. Drought, declining snow packs, forest fires, melting ice caps, species dislocation and habitat loss, and extreme weather events -- all are examples of how climate change is impacting us. We need to act to mitigate and adapt to these devastating events." He was right then.
Senator Snowe said, "Arctic glaciers and polar ice caps millions of years old are melting. Sea levels are rising globally. Our own federal agency, [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)], report[ed] that 2006 was the warmest year since regular temperature records began in 1895 and the past nine years have been among the 25 warmest years on record for the contiguous U.S." She was right then.
More than five years later, we continue to see evidence that the climate is changing around us through trends in extreme weather, and we simply cannot afford to ignore these warnings.
There are many examples of how the climate is continuing to change around us. NOAA reported in June that the previous twelve months had been the warmest 12-month period the nation had experienced since recordkeeping began in 1895. Many cities set all-time temperature records during the month of June - over 170 all-time warm temperature records were broken or tied.
As of July 3, 56 percent of the contiguous U.S. experienced moderate to exceptional drought conditions. Scientists at NOAA have confirmed that the record-breaking Texas drought was strongly influenced by climate change.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reported last month that an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan broke off of Greenland - a phenomenon that is expected to be repeated as the climate continues to warm.
Scientists have also linked warming of the oceans to the emergence of a group of bacteria in the Baltic Sea in North Europe.
These recent events make it clear that the climate continues to change and the likelihood of extreme events is growing greater, which puts our nation and our people at risk.
In 2008, Congress blocked action and we have lost valuable time to address this threat. But some progress has been made. The Obama administration deserves credit for moving forward with measures to reduce pollution and improve the nation's energy efficiency while saving money.
The Administration's new automobile efficiency standards will reduce carbon pollution by over 6 billion tons while saving consumers $1.7 trillion in fuel costs over the life of these vehicles.
The General Services Administration (GSA) has reduced energy consumption by nearly 20% over 2003 levels. By 2020, GSA expects to increase its renewable energy production and procurement to 30 percent of annual energy consumption.
According to the Brookings Institution, in 2010, 2.7 million workers were employed at more than 40,000 companies across the nation in the clean economy sector.
And bipartisan proposals such as the Bennett-Isakson SAVE Act, which would reduce barriers to homeowner energy efficiency improvements, offer ways to reduce harmful carbon pollution.
We cannot turn away from the mountain of evidence that climate change has already started to impact the planet and will only grow worse without action. Leading scientists who are testifying today on the latest science will reinforce that point.
Taking action to address this serious problem will benefit us and future generations. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
02 August 2012 - "C&C is the scheme world leaders are adopting." Not More than 2 Degrees
The scheme world leaders are adopting to share out emissions cuts is called contraction and convergence which ends up with each person in the globe allowed to emit the same amount of CO2 at the end of the period (normally 2050). Therefore developing countries could continue to increase emissions until they are at that level. Note that this takes no notice of historical emissions which were due to the developed countries. As the world population is projected to rise almost 50% to 9 billion by 2050 each person’s slice of the pie will reduce over that period.
Not More than 2 Degrees
02 August 2012 - "I'm happy to confirm support for the C&C proposal to the UNFCCC." Prof Bill Adams CambridgeDear Aubrey,
Thanks for this.
I have now read the proposal, and am happy to confirm that I support it.
Good luck!
Best
Bill
Bill Adams MA MSc PhD Moran Professor of Conservation and Development
Fellow of Downing College
Works on the social drivers of the loss and protection of nature.
Re-conceiving growth: contraction and convergence
The dominant development model, based on the unlimited meeting of consumer wants leads inexorably to overconsumption. Yet the continued physical expansion in the global reach of commodity supply systems means that consumers in developed countries continue to perceive resource flows as bountiful, and develop no sense of limits to consumption. Whether as consumers or citizens, people in industrialized economies show no awareness that production systems are ecologically flawed or constrained.In order to achieve fair shares of the global resources available, theories of growth need to be transformed to theories of contraction and convergence, to balance the increases in energy and material use that are needed to raise living conditions among the poor against contractions among the wealthy and super-rich. There is a growing interest in ideas of 'degrowth' (de-croissance). Degrowth is a term created by radical critics of growth theory intended to make space for alternative projects as part of post-development politics. Degrowth is (like sustainability) an ethical concept of how the world needs to change. Proponents of contraction want 'to create integrated, selfsufficient and materially responsible societies in both the North and the South'.
Re-conceiving growth builds on longstanding arguments about the need for, and feasibility of, 'zero-growth', notably perhaps Herman Daly's work on 'steady-state economics'. Back in 1977, Daly's 'impossibility theorem pointed out that a high mass-consumption economy in the US style was impossible (at least for anything other than a short period) in a world of four billion people. Since then, lockin to progressivist growth economics has if anything deepened, and so too have the risks that sustainability thinking seeks to address. The idea of a contraction-based society poses a challenge: to find alternative models for the creation of human welfare from industry, technology and nature. Poor countries need to be able to industrialize and grow to meet the welfare needs of their people, but they need a way of doing this that avoids the world-busting models of past industrialization. Rich countries need to see ways forward that maintain quality of life, while shedding the habits and structures that damage the biosphere and corner an unfair share of the resources that are needed by the world's poor.
IUCN - Transition to Sustainability: Towards a Humane and Diverse World
S J Jeanrenaud W M Adams
A call for a new policy approach was identified by Professor Bill Adams of University of Cambridge as one of the main topics of conversation surrounding the upcoming Rio+20 conference. Some people have high hopes that the summit will address many of the major global issues and argue that the process is ‘honing in on a solution’. However, others see it as simply a ‘spiral of talk’. Prof. Adams put the upcoming conference in the context of 40 years since the publication of ‘Limits to Growth’ in 1972. Since then, he stated, we have made progress in some ways but are at a point in what he called ‘the Anthropocene’ where ‘the rates, scales, kinds, and combinations of changes occurring now are fundamentally different from those at any other time in history’ (quoted from Vistousek et al). Consequently, we need new policy approaches and innovative solutions which holistically address the needs of society, the economy and the environment. Prof. Adams argued that this will require a transformation of production and consumption to reduce resource demand and improve equity. This ‘contraction and convergence’ will be ‘profoundly difficult’ due to the challenge of persuading populations in both developed and developing to adjust their material aspirations. Prof. Adams concluded that the current situation is ‘an uncomfortable place to be’ but exciting too as important political figures are beginning to recognise that a change in lifestyles and consumption is necessary to address the ‘perfect storm’ of issues facing the world.
British Ecological Society.
01 August 2012 - "C&C reslistically proposes convergence to quotas proportional to population" Dieter Helm
Somewhat more realistically, Contraction and Convergence scheme proposes national emissions quotas would start from current levels and very slowly converge - over several decades - to being proportional to population.
The Economics and Politics of Climate Change [Hardcover]
Dieter Helm (Editor), Cameron Hepburn01 August 2012 - Full, frank, frightening and sad; A report of how California sees its future changing climate
WHAT'S NEW IN 2012
Our Changing Climate 2012 highlights important new insights and data using probabilistic and detailed climate change projections and refined topographic, demographic and land-use information.
The findings Include:
- The State’s electricity system Is more vulnerable than was previously understood.
- The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Is sinking, putting levees at growing risk.
- Wind and waves, in addition to faster rising seas, will worsen coastal flooding.
- Animals and plants need connected “migration corridors" to allow them to move to more suitable habitats to avoid serious impacts.
- Native freshwater fish are particularly threatened by climate change.
- Minority and low-Income communities face the greatest risks from climate ch.nge.
- There are effective ways to prepare for and manage climate change risks, but local governments face many barriers to adapting to climate ch.nge; these can be addressed so that California can continue to prosper.
California prepares for harsh realities of changing climate
Nationally, the debate on climate change shifted last weekend when Richard Muller, who had been a leading skeptic of global warming, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times concluding that global warming is real and that "Humans are almost entirely the cause." Muller, a physics professor at UC? Berkeley, now characterizes himself as a "converted skeptic."
Brown has long been one of the most outspoken politicians on the issue of climate change, and California is moving forward with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost its use of renewable electricity.
"We are looking at climate change and what we have to do to adapt," said John Laird, Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency. "We have to get Californians at every level of government and individually to think about this."
By Dana Hull
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01 August 2012 - "C&C a civiliation challenging ethical issue and we may not duck it." Don Brown Widener Legal.
