“If we look at the Indian scene and look at the actions being taken by state and central governments, it’s a little bit difficult to understand why it is so difficult to get strong legislation passed domestically in the United States,” said Arabinda Misrah, director of the Climate Change Division at The Energy Resources Institute in India, at a CAP panel discussion on Thursday.
Misrah was joined by climate experts from around the world, who described continuing and ambitious efforts to reduce carbon emissions in Europe and the developing world and expressed confusion and dismay at the U.S. Senate’s inability to move such legislation forward, as this CAP cross-post explains.
The panel agreed that convincing action from Congress is necessary to persuade governments and private actors worldwide that significantly reducing emissions is both necessary and possible.
CAP Senior Fellow Andrew Light moderated the panel, which was cosponsored by the Global Climate Network. The Global Climate Network consists of nine think tanks around the world, including CAP, that cooperate on addressing issues related to clean energy and global warming.
Light cited the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s report released earlier this summer on the climate legislation proposed by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT). The agency analysis showed that one scenario would provide a 50 percent chance of stabilizing global temperature increases at 2° C by the end of the century””and that’s only if the countries in the Group of 8 fulfill their commitments to reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and the major carbon polluters in the developing world don’t begin aggressively reducing their emissions until 2050.
“I don’t like those odds. I don’t like a coin toss on my children’s future,” Light said. But, he added, the analysis reveals how much developed countries can accomplish to prevent climate change””if the United States steps up.
Panelists agreed that countries around the world look to the United States for leadership in reducing emissions. Jiahua Pan, executive director of the Research Centre for Sustainable Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, explained that many of his compatriots doubt whether they can achieve continued economic growth as well as significant reductions in emissions without U.S. action. “If you would do a little more, that would be an encouragement for the Chinese to do a little more. If you would do much better, that would give the Chinese confidence that they can improve their standard of living without increasing carbon emissions,” he said.
China has already taken determined and ambitious steps to create a clean energy infrastructure. The country shut down inefficient coal-fired power plants with a total capacity of 60 gigawatts””the size of the entire U.K. electricity system. But, said Pan, if the United States proves unable to significantly reduce its emissions, it would reinforce the lack of confidence among many Chinese that further reductions are possible alongside continued industrialization and urbanization.
American inaction has also created uncertainty about U.S. intentions internationally. Marie Parramon, a sustainability legal specialist at the South African nonprofit IMBEWU, explained that her country’s government was preparing to levy a tax on carbon dioxide emissions and that many in the South African private sector are convinced that reducing emissions is necessary to maintain competitiveness in the long term. But the United States’ failure to create a carbon market or finance the development of clean energy technology is creating anxiety. South Africans in government and in the private sector are growing hesitant to continue with their efforts on climate change, said Parramon.
“Just by having you on board in a much more clear position will create momentum on the national level and the international level,” she told the audience at CAP. When asked whether other actions could build confidence, such as EPA regulation of carbon dioxide, action by state governments, or regional efforts such as the Northeast Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Misrah responded that these could send a positive message but would lack the substance of resolute action in Washington. Domestic and local governments in developing countries can only do so much without expertise and financial instruments from the international community, he said.
Andrew Pendleton, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research in the United Kingdom, said that developing clean energy technology and infrastructure is in the United States’ economic interests””concerns about international confidence and finance aside. “Climate friendly technology is going to be the next wave of economic development””that’s the belief in Europe,” he said.
He summarized European actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which he characterized as motivated more by their desire to make their economies more competitive internationally than by concerns about global warming. “If I was sitting where you are sitting and looking at Europe, I would maybe be thinking, ‘if we don’t do this for climate reasons, let’s think of some other reasons to do it,” Pendleton said.
But Americans’ own conception of their country and its role in the world could trump diplomatic and economic considerations, suggested Misrah. “It’s more from a sense of morality, more from a sense of maintaining credibility in its international commitments, that America needs to come up with strong legislation,” he said, drawing nods from members of the audience.
– This is a CAP cross-post.
For more on this event, please see its event page
Previous in TP Climate Progress
The world will have to look elsewhere for leadership- not going to come from within the USA anytime soon.
This ‘waiting’ started immediately after the Kyoto Summit in 1997. It is a crude understatement to state just now that it is time to understand that ‘waiting for leadership’ of others is not in the national interest of the majority of other countries, fellow-members of the United Nations. The other world ‘leaders’ fail to act themselves and more strongly confront the USA in G20, UN Security Council, WTO, and all other fora with its escapism, which is unacceptable from the point of view that polluters must prevent damage and pay for the impact to those affected.
Americans have no idea how much rage and befuddlement Congress’ most recent charades are causing. People like Mitch McConnell and John Kyl are embarrassing, for both their corruption and stupidity.
Democrats, meanwhile, are afraid to even bring climate legislation up for a vote. It’s not just that they will lose. They are too timid to put the Republicans’ feet to the fire, and so intent on keeping their worthless majority that they want to protect the home state positions of a few Democratic swing state Senators.
Explain all of this to someone from another country and they will start to go as crazy as it has driven so many of us. It’s not just that our democracy is “broken”. I’m not sure that we even have one anymore, as long as there are rigged and bought elections, and a media that receives instructions from oil and coal companies.
So what is the world going to do?
Mike Roddy @3: This link to a Leonard Cohen song should give you a lift. Seven minutes of “revolutionary inspiration.” “Democracy is Coming” to the USA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OETwbVBPI1U
I fear that it will take an extreme weather related catastrophe, something on the magnitude of Katrina, hitting one of our crucial cities like New York, DC, LA, etc., before America as a whole will wake up to the reality of man made climate change. Perhaps a cluster of large scale extreme weather-related disasters will get our attention. We have already experiencing extreme weather almost daily across the country this year. Flooding in the Northeast, the upper Midwest and Tennessee and other parts of the South, tornadoes in New England, a massive hailstorm in Colorado, damaging straight line winds in New York, and the current heat wave blanketing the nation should be plenty for the much-needed wake-up call, but apparently it isn’t. Perhaps when New York City or Miami, both which are overdue for a hurricane, receive their Katrina, public opinion will sway enough to apply the necessary pressure on our government and corporations to make this issue the priority it really is.
Perhaps the world can learn from the demise of the US condition resulting from corrupt influence of concentrated financial interests and the resulting hundreds of billions of annual dollars of perverse, destructive subsidies for “energy.” Green Scissors 2010 has identified many of these direct and indirect fuel subsidies to transnational corporations, which are wreaking the potential for sustainable, decentralized economies. These are at the center of deficits, increasing public disease and climate impacts, military conflicts and security costs, and elite control of public treasuries.
The current ‘mini’ weather events- many deadly, some with flooding, tornadoes, extreme heat, while unusual are not numerous enough with loss of life, failing agriculture, catastrophic arctic ice decline, mega hurricanes causing major destruction.
When all these begin to multiply- then the media will begin to grudgingly report the truth.
What people do not understand yet, is the fact that with growing climate change conventional energy sources become more unstable, i.e. more methane accidents, more nuclear power plants shut-down.
Thanks, Leif, I needed a lift.
Two inexorable future developments will turn the public and its politicians around. One is all the money to be made globally on new energy technologies and industries; the other are the heat records, floods, forest fires, and storms that will increasingly produce headlines and talk in the U.S.
Forecasts have not been enough. “Show me” will have to be answered with actual examples. The U.S. has long been strongly anti-intellectual. Up to now, all environmentalists have known the extreme danger in that attitude. Soon the entire public will understand that as well.
No!….the U.S. populous is ecologically illiterate….
I thought All Goar was Der global Leader? As a sexual predator, does he have time to devote to the cause?
Black Holes,
Prokaryotes could a black hole be the aliens mirror
pointed to the earth showing us their view that all
that comes into our reach disappears into darkness.
That being our stage of development as burners of
fossil fuels.
Black holes are at the center of a galaxy.
The reasons we are so backwards on this matter are simple:
1: We are more conservative than most nations
2: Our government is anti-majoritarian, allowing a vocal conservative rural (and utterly insane) minority to block almost anything
3: We are more responsible for this mess than anybody, and we don’t want to admit it
Reminds me faintly of the monty Python “Meaning of Life” sketch where the grim reaper arrives and tells them their all dead…
“Grim Reaper: Shut up! Shut up you American. You always talk, you
Americans, you talk and you talk and say ‘Let me tell you something’ and
‘I just wanna say this’, Well you’re dead now, so shut up.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UBQFXQUqxE
Every time someone says to expand clean energy, conservatives and Fox News line up to declare that it will crush our economy, kill jobs, and put a burden on business. Every time environmental groups try to stop coal plants that may pollute lots of air pollution or overrun their budgets (especially if they are financed by the public), the conservatives and Fox News line up to condemn environmentalists for starving people of energy. Now some conservatives are even opposed to the new offshore drilling reform +energy efficiency bill. They say oil reform will kill jobs. It is the most incomprehensible arguement I have heard, considering that 11 people lost not just their jobs, but their lives in the oil spill. Now many fishers will lose their way of life too. Too many people listen to Fox News and that’s why you can’t expect climate leadership from the US. It’s futile alright.
The world can’t wait no longer for the US of A. While it’s hard to believe it’s not obvious that the use of insulation in houses is preferable to building a house out of a few planks and some tin and then let the AC run 24/7, or that it is necessary to use cars with more mileage for the gallon if you want to keep your mobility in times of soaring oil prices America puts it’s hand over eyes and ears and shouts “lalalalala”.
Maybe when the bible belt gets either flooded, tarred with oil, blown away by hurricanes or becomes a dust bowl, people will realize that the bible isn’t to be taken literally, God didn’t put the oil into the ground for us to use, evolution is real and Earth is not there to be subdued by us. But we have to be happy that we manage to live on it for another 5000 years without turning it into our eternal dump without any resources.