Claus Leggewie
Claus Leggewie is director of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen (KWI) and a member of the Global Change Council of Germany (WBGU). Photo : Stefan/wikipedia under Creative Commons Licence
Manana Kochladze is a campaigner at CEE Bankwatch Network, an NGO that monitors international financial institutions active in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the winner of the 2004 Goldman...
Jean François Mouhot is historian. He has a long-standing interest for environmental and energy issues, in particular for climate change. He published one book about Past Connections and Present...
Fondée en 1993 et présente dans 80 pays, Transparency International est une ONG qui lutte contre la corruption.
Fred Pearce is journalist specialized in the environment and development. He was born in the United Kingdom and studied geography in the University of Cambridge. His latest book is When the Rivers...
George Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Institute. Photo : © AFP PHOTO / ERIC PIERMONT
Denis Loyer is a climate adviser at the Agence française de développement, AFD. AFD is France’s development bank.
Jean-Louis Borloo est le ministre français de l'Écologie, de l'Énergie, du Développement durable et de la Mer, en charge des Technologies Vertes et des Négociations sur le Climat depuis 2007. Il...
A l’origine maître d’armes, Nathalie Durand enseigne l’escrime pour les valides et les handisports. Diplômée en management international du sport, elle mène depuis 1996 des études et des actions...
Jeff Goodell is an author and contributing editor at Rolling Stone. His book on geoengineering, How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate, will be released...
Khadija Sharife is a South African journalist. She is also an activist and a scholar at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and a contributing author...
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific,...
Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France and a former leader of the Socialist Party, is a member of the European Parliament.
Joss Garman est un militant écologique britannique. il est chargé de campagne à Greenpeace et a aussi participé à la fondation du mouvement Plane Stupid qui s'oppose à l'extension du trafic aérien....
a été conseiller éditorial de la fondation GoodPlanet.
Figure du militantisme altermondialiste et surtout anticapitaliste depuis la sortie de No Logo en 2000, Naomi Klein est une journaliste engagée. Elle concentre son travail sur les dérives du...
Carl Zimmer travaille comme journaliste spécialiste des questions scientifiques et environnementales. Il a rédigé 6 livres et s’intéresse à des domaines aussi variés que la recherche dans les...
Achim Steiner est le directeur exécutif du Programme des Nations Unies pour l'Environnement (PNUE). Auparavant, il a exercé de hautes fonctions à la Commission mondiale des barrages puis à l'Union...
Pavan Sukhdev est un économiste et banquier indien qui a notamment travaillé pour la banque centrale allemande en Inde. Il a été chargé par la commission européenne de diriger une étude mondiale sur...
Claus Leggewie is director of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen (KWI) and a member of the Global Change Council of Germany (WBGU). Photo : Stefan/wikipedia under Creative...
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific,...
George Monbiot is a well-known investigation reporter and columnist for the British newspaper “The Guardian” as well as a member of the BBC Wildlife magazine’s advisory board. He is also the author...
Olivier BOUYER est Ingénieur du Génie Rural, des Eaux et Forêts. Il a participé à la conférence de Poznan (en 2008) avec la délégation française comme chargé de mission “effet de serre et forêt””...
Vandana Shiva (India): Physicist, epistemologist, ecologist, and Indian feminist with a PhD in the philosophy of science. She founded “Navdanya,” an association which works to protect biodiversity...
Martin Wright is the editor of Green Future Magazine, and occasional judge for the Ashden Awards for sustainable energy.
Fred Pearce is journalist specialized in the environment and development. He was born in the United Kingdom and studied geography in the University of Cambridge. His latest book is When the Rivers...
Adam Ma’anit is co-editor of the New Internationalist. He is the committed author of numerous publications on economic, social and environmental policies in Europe and Great-Britain. He has worked...
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific,...
From Carbon Insolvency to Climate Dividends
04/09/2009 3:17 pm
Limiting global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels is absolutely crucial, says the G-8 and most of the world’s best climatologists. If this is to be more than lip service, the consequences will be radical.
For starters, until 2050, only a total of around 700 gigatons of carbon dioxide can be emitted into the atmosphere. At the current rate of emissions, this “budget” will be exhausted in 20 years; if emissions increase as expected, the world will become carbon “insolvent” even sooner. So reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions must begin as quickly as possible. Wasting any more time will cause costs to skyrocket and render the 2° limit obsolete.
The rich North cannot continue as before, emerging industrial countries must leave the old industrial-based path to prosperity, and the rest of the world may not even embark upon it. Yet the negotiations on emissions limits with each of the 192 signatory countries in the run-up to the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009 have so far given no indication of so radical a change.
A global climate deal must be simpler, fairer, and more flexible than is today’s Kyoto Protocol. To achieve this, the Global Change Council of Germany (WGBU) suggests that a budget formula be adopted. The idea is that, in the future, all states will be allocated a national per-capita emissions budget that links three core elements of a fair global climate deal: the major industrial countries’ historical responsibility, individual countries’ current performance capacity, and global provision for the survival of mankind.
The task is immense. On a global level, quick and comprehensive de-carbonization of the world economy is necessary. All countries must reduce their use of fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy sources as soon and as much as possible. But, since the OECD-countries (led by the United States and Australia) will soon overrun their carbon budgets even after far-reaching emissions reductions, they must cooperate with developing countries that still have budget surpluses. Breaking the Gordian knot of climate negotiations requires offering technology and financial transfers in exchange for the ability to overrun a national budget.
A responsible global climate policy thus entails a fundamental change of international relations, and making the necessary institutional innovations in global governance requires courage. Until now, the wealth of nations has been based upon the combustion of coal, gas, and oil. But, if the 2°C target is taken seriously, the twenty-first century will see countries that are not so far down the path of carbonization (such as large parts of Africa), or that leave it in time (such as India and Pakistan), able to become wealthy by helping societies that must de-carbonize rapidly.
For the moment, all this is still utopian. In its current state, cap-and-trade schemes to reduce emissions are far from being fair and effective; a major improvement would include establishing a Central Climate Bank to register and supervise the transfer of emissions credits. This bank would also ensure that emissions trading did not run counter to the goal of remaining within the entire global budget, for example via the complete sale of unused emissions credits by individual developing countries at the beginning of the contract period.
In order to achieve this, the Central Climate Bank must have the power to do its job. That, in turn, implies that it is accountable and that it has democratic legitimacy – something fundamentally lacking in multilateral agencies such as the World Bank.
Additional changes to global governance will also be needed. These changes include the consolidation of face-to-face negotiations between old and new world powers (the US, the European Union, and China) and developing and emerging countries, including new regional powers like Mexico, Egypt, Turkey, and Indonesia.
In this framework, the old G-7/8 can no longer function as a hegemonic center, but rather as a kind of broker and preparatory body. Simultaneously, within a variable architecture of negotiation, there must be links to the numerous conference institutions of the United Nations, as well as to political-economic regional associations such as the EU, Mercosur, or the African Union.
This flexible (and, alas, fragile) architecture of multi-level negotiation can function only as long as it is oriented towards clear moral bases for negotiation, has sufficient democratic legitimacy, and is supported in national and local arenas of action. Global leaders will find it significantly easier to steer towards big cooperation targets if they are supported by visions of the future within civil society.
A low-carbon society is not a crisis scenario, but rather the realistic vision of liberation from the path of expensive and risky over-development. In 1963, when the world narrowly escaped nuclear catastrophe, the physicist Max Born wrote: “World peace in a world that has grown smaller is no longer a Utopia, but rather a necessity, a condition for the survival of mankind.” Those words have never been truer.
From Carbon Insolvency to Climate Dividends
by Claus Leggewie
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org
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