Third, and partly as a consequence of the first and second points, is the fact that climate change has become so polarized politically. President Obama concentrated his energies on getting his Health Care Reform Bill through Congress. Although successful, the process increased the gulf between Democrats and Republicans. The Republican right views anything to do with expanding the powers of government with suspicion. Healthcare, intervention in the economy and efforts to combat climate change: all fall into that category as far as many Republican leaders and voters are concerned.
In no other country is opinion about climate change so acutely divided as in the US today. A poll taken by the Pew Foundation late in 2010 showed that only 16 per cent of Republican voters agreed that climate change is real, caused by human activity and dangerous, compared to over 50 per cent of Democratic voters.16 (See below, figure 5.1, p. 106.)
In some regions, states and cities in the US, the situation contrasts quite dramatically with that on the federal level – although the large majority of initiatives have been led by Democrat-dominated state or local leaderships. A recent study looked at climate action plans developed in 16 different states, and extrapolated the findings to the national level.17 If the actions in question were implemented in all US states, American carbon emissions would fall to 27 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. Of course, as things stand it is extremely unlikely that such an extrapolation could become a reality.
At the time of writing, yet another cap and trade bill is before the Congress, initiated by John Kerry and Joe Lieberman. The driving force of the initiative is once again primarily clean energy. The terms of the bill are quite modest – far short of what would be needed seriously to reverse the high level of emissions per person displayed by the US.
Lessons to be drawn
Some points of general interest emerge from the material discussed in this chapter:
1 With the partial exception of Germany and Denmark, countries that are at the top of the league in terms of reducing emissions are there because of a preoccupation with energy security rather than climate change. In this sense, they have arrived where they are largely by accident. This category includes one of the large emerging economies, Brazil, which early on introduced ethanol as fuel for vehicles – partly because sugar, from which it is made, was very cheap at the time, and a little later because of the oil crisis. Although it took a long time in some countries to create a significant renewables sector, it is now in principle possible to move much more quickly. The reasons are that there is past experience to draw upon, for example, in introducing relevant tax breaks; and that the technologies involved have advanced.
2 The left–right dimension can significantly affect the continuity of energy and climate change policies. Thus far, effective policies have mostly been driven by left-of-centre regimes. The Scandinavian countries, for example, are in a prime position largely because they have had long periods of left-of-centre government. Germany provides a better model for the future, since there has been something of a consensus among the parties about environmental measures. The same is true of the UK. The case of the United States shows how paralysing it can be for climate change policy when the issue becomes seriously politically polarized.
3 Carbon taxes do work – although, as I shall discuss at a later point, they are rarely straightforward to implement. Putting a price on carbon is an essential component of climate change policy. Carbon taxes have the great advantage over other strategies in that they are universal and binding, although ways have to be found to reconcile them with issues of social justice, since the poor are very often the hardest hit. It is essential for the state to subsidize renewable technologies if they are to make an impact, and revenue from carbon taxes can be used to achieve this. One reason is the need to preserve a stable basis for investment, even as oil and other fossil fuel prices fluctuate. Subsidies can also be used to provide positive motivation for the take-up of possibilities on offer. The feed-in tariffs made available in Germany and in some other countries provide a model which can and should be copied elsewhere.
4 As far as limiting their emissions are concerned, most countries, even the leading ones, remain heavily contradictory. Germany is a case in point, with its continued strong reliance upon coal. Climate change policy has to be holistic. Policies that are potentially valuable may have little impact if pursued in isolation. Examples are investment in clean (low-carbon) technology, the pursuit of energy efficiency and the quest for greater energy security. Each can contribute greatly to reducing carbon emissions. Each can be part of the ‘positives’ that help secure business and public support for policies that reduce emissions. Yet if taken in isolation they will not necessarily reduce emissions within a given national economy or wider economic sector. It is entirely possible to have a society, as the example of Spain and Portugal shows, in which there is quite a high proportion of renewables in the energy mix, but where carbon emissions continue to climb, perhaps even steeply.
Energy efficiency is important to combating climate change if part of a wide-ranging policy package. If not, it can in fact directly increase emissions, since the savings made may be simply spent on other carbon-producing activities. Japan is an example of a society that has a high level of energy efficiency, but growing greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, most countries want greater energy security, except those amply provided with natural resources. Energy security can be a driving motivation for reducing emissions, but only if carefully directed to that end. Thus a country that responds to worries about energy security by turning back to coal would exacerbate global warming rather than help reduce it. Coal is the most lethal fossil fuel in terms of emissions.
5 Despite objections – and the widespread worries caused by the happenings at Fukushima in 2011 – nuclear power likely to have to form part of the energy mix, at least in some states, if carbon emissions are to be reduced. The worries that many people have about the use of nuclear energy are real and significant. Yet we have to bear in mind the percentage principle. The risks involved when a country has little chance of reaching its emissions reduction targets without nuclear energy as part of the mix must be taken seriously too.
6 The inertia built into current ways of doing things is very large, both in energy systems and in the ways of life which they underpin. Not a single country in the world is as yet on track to reduce its emissions to a level compatible with limiting global warming to a 2ºC increase.
7 Although I have not discussed the issue in this chapter in a direct way, we should bear in mind that the past 20 years have been a period during which manufacturing continued to decline in Western countries. They have become dependent upon manufactured goods produced in China and the other developing countries. The levels of emissions produced by the developed countries would be considerably higher than they currently are without this ‘transfer of emissions’ eastwards.
5
A RETURN TO PLANNING?
Key arguments of this book are that the industrial nations must take the lead in addressing climate change and that the chances of success will depend a great deal upon government and the state. Whatever can be done through the state will in turn depend upon generating widespread political support from citizens, within the context of democratic rights and freedoms. I don’t want to deny that reaching international agreements is essential, or that many other agencies, including NGOs and businesses, will play a fundamental role. However, for better or worse, the state retains many of the powers that have to be invoked if a serious impact on global warming is to be made.
What should the role of the state, as ensuring state, be? Its main function must be to act as a catalyst, as a facilitator, but certainly, as far as climate change and energy security are concerned, it has also to strive for guarantees. These are areas where solutions simply have to be found, and where there are timetables involved. If your living room is a mess, you can wait until you have time to clear it up. We can’t do the same with emissions, as they pile up i
n the atmosphere and oil starts to run out.
These are some of the tasks in which the state has to be prime actor:
1 The state must help us to think ahead. It is the responsibility of political leaders to introduce policies for the long term. For this shift in orientation to come about, there has to be return to planning, in some guise or another. In case it isn’t self-evident, thinking long term is not the same as setting targets for some distant date in the future and then sitting back and relaxing. ‘Rigorous’ targets set two or three or more decades down the line might make government ministers feel good, but really there has to be an all-out concentration upon means. In the Soviet Union, five-, ten-and twenty-year targets were announced with a great deal of huffing and puffing. The results normally fell well short of expectations and new plans would then be instituted. Empty promises for the future won’t do in the case of climate change, since the emissions in the atmosphere continue to mount. Planning, of course, isn’t the sole prerogative of the state. Governments should encourage a shift towards long-term thinking among companies, third-sector groups and individual citizens.
2 Climate change and energy risks must be managed in the context of other risks faced by contemporary societies. Risk and opportunity are the two poles around which a great deal of social and economic policy now revolves. We face a future in which the past history of industrialism, as it were, is rapidly catching up with us, and major adjustments have to be made. However, the risks associated with climate change intersect with a variety of others, locally, nationally and internationally.
3 The state must promote political and economic convergence, as the main driving forces of climate change and energy policy. Both can and should be targets for the short and the longer term, and should form the foundation of forward planning. In the long term, a whole diversity of areas has to be considered, including preparing for the large-scale social and economic restructuring that a low-carbon economy inevitably will involve.
4 The state must make interventions into markets to institutionalize ‘the polluter pays’ principle, thereby ensuring that markets work in favour of climate change policy, rather than against it. In almost all developed countries at the moment environmental costs remain largely externalized. I am dubious about how effective carbon markets as such will be, but there is a great deal that can be done to introduce full cost pricing, and therefore to allow market forces to become centred upon promoting environmental benefits. Government should act to reduce ‘negative externalities’ – situations in which environmental costs are not brought into the marketplace – in order that markets can work to environmental ends.
5 The state must act to counter business interests which seek to block climate change initiatives. Large-scale change is needed here, and at first blush this seems a tall order indeed. For business, especially big business, has a dominant role in contemporary societies. It is able to influence governments, even sometimes hold them to ransom and also influence consumers through advertising and other means. When governments threaten regulation, businesses can simply announce that they will up sticks and move elsewhere – the so-called problem of ‘leakage’. Yet couldn’t all this be turned around and the power of business become deployed to climate change objectives? I believe it is possible, even in the short term, as long as governments act together with enlightened corporate leaders. Here again we see the key importance of economic convergence. Joint action can emerge from a confluence of interests; it doesn’t have to come from a sudden burst of altruism on the part of business firms.
6 The state must keep climate change at the top of the political agenda. For most people, most of the time, global warming is not a worry that intrudes deeply into the routines of daily life. It can drift off the agenda as other concerns come to the fore, or as elections approach. There should be an agreement among competing political parties that climate change and energy policy will be sustained in spite of other differences and conflicts that exist. In addition, climate change should feature in the curriculum of all schools.
7 An appropriate economic and fiscal framework must be developed for moving towards a low-carbon economy. Subsidies are needed if new technologies are to thrive, since, in the beginning, they will be unable to compete with fossil fuels. I shall argue below that a holistic approach is needed to carbon taxation – it will not do just to think in terms of a handful of specific tax measures. The overall tax system needs continuous auditing in terms of its generic impact upon economic behaviour and lifestyles.
8 The state must prepare to adapt to the consequences of climate change, which will now be felt in any case. Thinking ahead in this area is crucial – as in the case of mitigation, we can’t just wait around to see what develops. We must try to anticipate exactly how and where the effects of global warming will be felt and act pre-emptively to counter or minimize them.
9 Local, regional, national and international aspects of climate change policy must be integrated. Without robust national programmes, international agreements will not work. Conversely, however, international collaboration of one sort or another is a necessary condition for coping with climate change.
Is this all asking too much, given the fact that governments often find themselves hemmed in by the pressure of events of the day? The political theorist John Dryzek argues that the combination of capitalist markets, vested interests and state bureaucracy means that government will be ‘thoroughly inept when it comes to ecology’. He adds that ‘any redeeming features are to be found only in the possibilities they open up for their own transformation’.1 The first comment is too dismissive, but I agree with the thrust of the second. Responding to climate change will prompt and require innovation in government itself and in the relation between the state, markets and civil society.
The above points provide the basis for this and the following two chapters. In the current one, I shall discuss what a return to planning might imply, what surveys show about public attitudes towards climate change and how we might keep the issue at the forefront of the political agenda. I will then move on to consider how consistent policy might be maintained between otherwise antagonistic political parties. In the following chapter I discuss technological innovation and what help government might play in furthering it, plus how taxation can play a role. In chapter 7 I move on to the ticklish but necessary topic of the politics of adaptation.
Planning, then and now
Planning was in vogue for some two or three decades in Western countries after the Second World War and was, of course, the very basis of the economy in Soviet-type societies. Between 1928 and 1991, as many as 13 successive national plans were instituted in the USSR. Planning was not only in fashion, but was de rigueur in Western countries too for a lengthy period after the Second World War, before falling into disrepute. In 1949 the economist Evan Durbin wrote: ‘We are all planners now. . . . The collapse of the popular faith in laissez-faire has proceeded with spectacular rapidity . . . all over the world since the War.’2
In the post-war period, ‘planning’ normally meant strong central direction by the state in the interests of overall economic prosperity and social justice. In the mixed economies of the West, it signalled the nationalization of industry, especially those industries seen as strategically important, such as the energy industries, communications and iron and steel. It also referred to the creation of ‘planned communities’, such as ‘new towns’ and garden cities.
The reasons why the world retreated from planning, especially in its more centralized versions, were various. In Soviet-style society it was associated with an authoritarian, oppressive state. Even in the West many came to resent the heavy-handed outlook of government planners – faceless bureaucrats who could intervene in communities without much thought for local concerns or sensitivities. Moreover, centralized planning of the economy, supposed to overcome the irrationalities of capitalism, proved quite unable to cope with the complexities of a developed economic system. Bets were placed by governments on
industries which promptly then went on to fail. Critics such as Friedrich von Hayek were proved correct when they argued that only markets can cope with the enormous numbers of on-the-ground decisions about prices and products that have to be made every moment of the day in modern economies.3
When the counter-revolution set in, from the 1980s onwards, involving widespread privatization, coupled with minimal macroeconomic steering, the very word ‘planning’ came under a shadow and has, until recently, remained there. Yet whenever we think about the future in a systematic way, in the sense of attempting to shape or guide it, planning of some sort is inevitable. The post-war period was one of reconstruction, in which large-scale investments had to be made in order to recover from a situation of immense material damage.
Many forms of planning were in fact carried on ‘below the radar’ by states, even after the time at which the idea fell into disrepute. Governments have had to monitor demographic shifts, for instance, in order to plan ahead for future needs in education, health and pensions. They have had to do the same with roads and railways in terms of future projections of use. Contingency plans have to exist in case of possible disasters. Even as ‘planned communities’ fell out of fashion, so urban planning of one sort or another continued.
The Politics of Climate Change Page 11