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
