Copenhagen has been an unmitigated disaster.

The abject failure of the historical and the future major emitters to agree to minor cuts in their income growth is very likely to lead to massive disruption and loss of life within 50 years. It has highlighted the extent to which we tend to believe what is convenient rather than what is likely.

I applaud the resolution by the “real third world” that the global temperature increase must be restricted to less than 1.5⁰ and that we must stabilise CO² concentrations at 350ppm. This is roughly what the science requires and these are the people who will be most affected, either because they live at sea level or because they are subsistence farmers who will have to deal with increasing variability in their climate.

However the so called developed world and the rapidly developing countries have tried throughout the conference to water down the resolutions and remove any concrete emission based goals. I feel the USA must take the major blame for the failure, as they have just not put any realistic offers on the table despite Obama’s posturing, and seem to think they can bully the rest of the world into doing something they are obviously not prepared to do. However Chinese per capita emissions are now quite close to many European countries (2007 figures China 4.8, Romania 4.6, Portugal 5.7, Switzerland 5.8 and France 6.4) and are still growing extremely fast. In China, India and many other emerging countries the low emissions from the large bulk of the rural population is disguising the fact that many urban areas are already well above European levels.

So I am afraid James Hansen, wh0 has been one of the most hard line of climatologists, and whose forecasts have often been described as alarmist, only to be proven correct later, has again been vindicated when he said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.

A couple more quotes from the conference. Evo Morales: “Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity.” And Hugo Chávez: “The total income of the 500 richest people in the world is greater than the 450 million poorest… We have to change direction.”

In an article called Selling our Future Lester Brown states

“China now consumes more grain than the United States.  It consumes almost twice as much meat, roughly three times as much coal, and nearly four times as much steel.  But what would happen if China’s 1.3 billion people were to consume commodities at the same rate as the United States’ 300 million? For this exercise, we look at how an 8 percent annual economic growth rate in China (a conservative projection) would put per capita income in China at U.S. levels by 2024. At that point, if each person in China were to consume paper at the current American rate, China would need more paper than is produced worldwide today (there go the world’s forests).  China would require over half of the current world grain supply. China would also need 90 million barrels of oil per day; however, the world currently produces less than 86 million and is unlikely to produce much more than that in the future. These projections serve not to blame China for its consumption but rather to illustrate that the western economic model—with meat-rich diets, fossil-fuel powered utilities, and automobile-dependent transportation—will not work on a global scale because there are simply not enough resources.”

We are within five years of reaching 400ppm which has a 25% chance of exceeding the two degree “guardrail” and precipitating positive feedbacks that seem to have caused several previous mass extinctions. It seems obvious that we need an emergency effort, but the developed world’s politicians have just told us we can fix the problems by recycling our toothpicks and sticking a few bandaids on things. This will end in tears.

James Hansen was again criticized for calling for a campaign of civil disobedience. I suspect this is now the only alternative to catastrophe.

Prospects for a successful outcome to Copenhagen have been increasing lately with the news that Obama has changed his mind and will be present at the end of the Copenhagen talks, indicating that his minders think there will be a “positive outcome”. Recent announcements from China and India also indicate that some sort of a deal is likely. However this aging sceptic (on human nature rather than climate change) is still of the opinion that it will be too little to late, and will allow much too much scope for creative businessmen to sell the global warming equivalent of collateralised debt obligations. This story, while probably more blatant than most, shows that folk will find loopholes in any complex legislation. “The Story of Cap and Trade” video on You Tube is subtitled “Why you can’t solve a problem with the thinking that created it” echoing Albert Einstein’s “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them”. It’s seriously entertaining and recommended.

There seems to be a major disconnect between the talk and the action, which is especially disappointing as increasing efficiency will save money and could reduce total emissions by 20-25%. Everywhere you look, from gas flaring in the oil industry, data centre energy use to home energy use there is widespread waste much of which is ignored even when immediate savings could be made. The home energy use article at Grist demonstrates that we are not the rational, self interested and logical agents that economic theory believes us to be. We seem to get motivated when things are unpleasant, but once we are reasonably comfortable we are not that interested unless we are significantly different from our neighbours (whether measured in terms of the new car / TV / gizmo or in electricity use). The article describes an experiment by a California electricity company which showed that printing a smiley face (for less than average usage) or a frowning face (for above average) was 40% more effective at reducing usage as the information alone.

I just finished reading “Time to eat the dog?” which looks at the land use effects for our behaviour. A passage discussing payback period jumped out at me. They ask “why do we demand payback on a solar water heater but not on a new kitchen?” They also compare a solar PV system and a new luxury car, where the PV system is guaranteed for 20 odd years and will save money for that time while the car will loose half its value in 3 years and does the same job as a Toyota Corolla. They state “It may be that one of the most important tasks in the struggle to improve sustainability will be to find a way of making solar water heaters into status symbols”.

If we are not the rational agents postulated by economic theory then that edifice crumbles completely, making it truly insane to entrust the future of the species to the market. It is time for simple and direct government intervention via a Tax and Rebate system (discussed here).

Both more and less encouraging is the fact that today 56 major world newspapers are printing the same editorial in 45 countries and 20 languages calling for “decisive action” to combat global warming, and stating “Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted”. These are newspapers from every continent one earth bar two. Antarctica has a reasonable excuse, and yes Australia is the other recalcitrant. The fact that none of our major papers was interested is a disgrace and tells you something about the biases in our popular media.

Lastly Climate Interactive has released a widget which tallies the emission reduction promises by countries made so far, and shows the resultant warming by 2100. The team will monitor the Copenhagen talks and update the widget, which is shown below, daily. So we might be going to hell in a handcart but at least we will get a blow by blow almost real-time commentary.

Alastair Breingan