The Age of Global Warming: A History

by Rupert Darwall

  She was met with boos and catcalls.

  Japan, in a series of circumlocutions, avoided explicitly accepting or rejecting the proposal.

  To applause and cheers, South Africa’s Marthinus van Schalkwyk said that the suggestion that developing countries were not willing to assume their full responsibilities was ‘most unwelcome and without any basis’. They were saying voluntarily they were willing to commit to measurable, verifiable mitigation actions. ‘It has not happened before.’ The US should reconsider its position.

  Brazil said the text was a balanced and fair basis.

  More cheering.

  US-born Kevin Conrad for Papua New Guinea unleashed more. The US should either lead or get out of the way, conference-speak for the US to do the opposite and fall into line and accede to the position of China, India and the rest of the G77.

  The US was isolated.

  Dobriansky indicated she wished to speak again. ‘We’ve listened very closely to many of our colleagues here,’ she said. The US had come to Bali ‘very committed’ to developing a long-term, global greenhouse gas emission goal. It was also committed to giving very serious consideration to the views of Japan, Canada and the EU, to lead to a halving of global emissions by 2050. It had sought agreement on the principle that commitments should be measurable, reportable and verifiable, including emission reduction or limitation objectives in a way that ensures comparability between countries’ different circumstances. ‘We have all come a long way here,’ Dobriansky continued. The US just wanted to ensure that everyone acted together – ‘we will go forward and join consensus’.

  Later that day, the White House released a statement welcoming the outcome of the talks. Many features of the decision were ‘quite positive’. But it also had ‘serious concerns’. The negotiations needed to proceed on the basis that emissions cuts solely by developed countries would be insufficient.

  It is essential that the major developed and developing countries be prepared to negotiate commitments, consistent with their national circumstances, that will make a due contribution to the reduction of global emissions.[26]

  Had Dobriansky been right to reverse her position and join the consensus? The result, as she indicated, fell short of what the US was seeking. In particular, there was no explicit recognition of the need to limit the rise or to reduce developing counties’ emissions. The effect of the Berlin Mandate had been to preclude any discussion of emissions limitations for non-Annex I countries. In this respect, Bali was a breakthrough. The principle of developing countries taking on commitments to limit or reduce their emissions was on the table.

  No power on Earth was strong enough to compel China, India and the other major developing economies to accept commitments on emission reductions against their will. What Bali achieved was keeping the option on the table that they might do so voluntarily, avoiding a second Kyoto and an almost certain Senate rejection. If Dobriansky had not acceded, the US would have been blamed a second time for derailing the climate change negotiations. It was a gutsy call and a class performance.

  The Bush administration would bequeath its successor a viable negotiating framework. At Copenhagen two years later, the world would discover just how far leading developing countries were willing to go.

  On 15th September 2008 Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection.

  The impact on the Second Environmental Wave was similar to the Egyptian army smashing through the Bar Lev Line on the First. After Lehman, the language and the rhetoric were the same, but the intensity had gone. Saving the planet became less important than rescuing the banking system and staving off global economic collapse.

  There was an additional effect. The West, specifically its governments, which seemed, or presumed, to have the answers to the world’s problems, were suddenly exposed.

  They didn’t.

  * It agreed on a twin-track approach, establishing a new Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the convention in addition to an existing Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties, under the Protocol.

  * Gore’s speech at the Bali conference on 13th December 2007 is one of the most significant he made on this or any other subject. At the time of writing there is no transcript on Gore’s website at http://blog.algore.com/2007/12/ but there are a number of websites with video of the speech and a fairly complete transcript, from which the quotes used in this chapter have been checked, can be found at http://www.irregulartimes.com/gorebalispeech.html

  * It was adopted as 1 (b) (ii) of the Bali Action Plan. The placement of the word ‘enabled’ differed from the version read out in the morning session, but the two versions were functionally identical.

  [1] Ban Ki-moon, Address to the High-Level Segment of the UN Climate Change Conference, 12th December 2007 http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/search_full.asp?statID=161

  [2] Prince Charles, ‘Bali offers a vital chance to take tough decisions’ in the Financial Times, 29th November 2007.

  [3] K.L. Denman, G. Brasseur, A. Chidthaisong, P. Ciais, P.M. Cox, R.E. Dickinson, D. Hauglustaine, C. Heinze, E. Holland, D. Jacob, U. Lohmann, S Ramachandran, P.L. da Silva Dias, S.C. Wofsy and X. Zhang, ‘2007: Couplings Between Changes in the Climate System and Biogeochemistry’ in Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Solomon, p. 512.

  [4] ibid., p. 502.

  [5] Ban Ki-moon, Address to the High-Level Segment of the UN Climate Change Conference.

  [6] The Princes of Wales’s Corporate Leader Group on Climate Change www.princeofwales.gov.uk/content/.../Bali%20Communique.pdf

  [7] David Adam, ‘Climate talks progressing despite US opposition to targets, Benn says’ guardian.co.uk, 12th December 2007.

  [8] Elizabeth Rosenthal & Andrew Revkin, ‘Science Panel Calls Global Warming “Unequivocal”’ in the New York Times, 3rd February 2007.

  [9] Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, ‘2007 Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists’ http://www.climate.unsw.edu.au/news/2007/Bali.html

  [10] IISD, Earth Negotiations Bulletin Vol. 12 No. 349, 10th December 2007, p. 1.

  [11] David Adam, ‘US balks at Bali carbon targets’ guardian.co.uk, 11th December 2007.

  [12] IISD, Earth Negotiations Bulletin Vol. 12 No. 354, 18th December 2007, p. 15.

  [13] Adam, ‘US balks at Bali carbon targets’.

  [14] David Adam, ‘Kerry blasts Bush for resisting Bali climate goals’ guardian.co.uk, 10th December 2007.

  [15] Paula Dobriansky interview with author, 29th September 2011.

  [16] Dobriansky interview with author.

  [17] Earth Negotiations Bulletin, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Vol. 12 No. 354, 18th December 2007, p. 1.

  [18] Alister Doyle, ‘“A better world, for you and me,” in Bali’ Reuters, 12th December 2007.

  [19] IISD, Earth Negotiations Bulletin, Vol. 12 No. 346, December 2007, p. 1.

  [20] ibid., Vol. 12 No. 347, 7th December 2007, p. 1.

  [21] ibid., Vol. 12 No. 350, 11th December 2007, p. 1.

  [22] ibid., Vol. 12 No. 352, 13th December 2007, p. 2.

  [23] ibid., Vol. 12 No. 353, 14th December 2007, p. 2.

  [24] Catherine Brahic, ‘Al Gore tells Bali the inconvenient truth on US’, in the New Scientist, 13th December 2007

  [25] The account and quotes presented here are drawn from a four part video posted on YouTube starting with ‘Bali climate summit final plenary / part1’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkubjGSBA9o&feature=related

  [26] Dana Perino,
Office of the Press Secretary, ‘Statement by the Press Secretary’ 15th December 2007 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/12/print/20071215-1.html

  31

  Showdown in Copenhagen

  If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children ... this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal...

  Barack Obama, 3rd June 2008[1]

  President Obama, acting the way he did, definitely eliminated any differences between him and the Bush presidency.

  Lumumba Di-Aping of Sudan on behalf of the G77, 19th December 2009[2]

  According to the Met Office, 2008 was the tenth warmest of the last one hundred and fifty-eight years. As recently as the 1970s or 1980s, globally 2008 would have been considered warm, observed climate scientist Myles Allen of Oxford University, ‘but a scorcher for our Victorian ancestors’.[3]

  Evidently the Victorians were made of sterner stuff. Without global warming, many parts of the world would have experienced arctic conditions. 2008 began with China’s worst winter for half a century. Heavy snow closed the Chinese steel industry and killed one hundred and twenty-nine people. For the first time in living memory, snow settled in Baghdad.

  For Britain and other parts of Northern Europe, the summer was marked by the lack of direct sunshine and South America was experiencing a particularly cold winter. Australian skiers had one of their best seasons, with snow depths around twice the previous ski season. In the spring, it snowed in sub-tropical southern Brazil – ‘If snow is rare, to get accumulation is astonishing,’ the Metsul Brazilian weather centre reported – and in October, Sydney had early summer snow.[4] As Parliament debated the Climate Change Act, London had its first October snowfall since 1934. The tenth warmest year on record closed with freak snow storms in Southern California and up to eight inches of snow fell in Las Vegas, a record for the most snow in the month of December since official records began in 1937.[5]

  Disbelief about the exceptional warmth of 2008 extended to American consumers, who bought record numbers of snow blowers. Sales of the machines were up ‘high double digits’ over the previous year, one chain reported, particularly among the heavier-duty big-ticket models, spurred by December weather that broke more than two thousand snowfall records.[6]

  ‘When climate scientists like me explain to people what we do for a living we are increasingly asked whether we “believe in climate change,”’ Vicky Pope, the Met Office’s head of climate change advice, wrote in February 2009.[7] To Pope’s dismay, a November 2008 poll for The Times found that only forty-one per cent of those surveyed accepted as an established fact that global warming was taking place and was largely man-made. Only twenty-eight per cent believed that global warming was happening and that it was ‘far and away the most serious problem we face as a country and internationally’. Awareness of the scale of the problem resulted in people taking refuge in denial, Pope explained.[8]

  On a pre-inaugural whistle-stop tour in January 2009, Barack Obama spoke of the dangers of a planet ‘warming from our unsustainable dependence on oil’.[9] A poll suggested the view was held by a minority of his fellow citizens. Forty-one per cent of Americans blamed global warming on human activity, compared to forty-four per cent who thought long-term planetary trends were the cause. The numbers were a sharp reversal from a similar Rasmussen poll taken in July 2006, when forty-seven percent blamed global warming on human activity compared to thirty-four percent who viewed long-term planetary trends as the culprit.[10] A Pew poll suggested that Americans did not view global warming as a priority, the issue coming twentieth out of twenty (down from eighteenth in a January 2007 poll).[11]

  In July 2009, President Obama joined other leaders for his first G8 summit. The venue had been switched to L’Aquila in central Italy after it had been struck by a severe earthquake. Since the previous G8, a financial earthquake had hit the global economy. Now the financial crisis was yoked together with climate change and the elimination of poverty in an all-encompassing mega-crisis, the G8 leaders stating their determination to tackle these ‘interlinked challenges’ with what they hopefully called a ‘green recovery’.[12] ‘A shift towards green growth will provide an important contribution to the economic and financial crisis recovery,’ the G8 claimed.[13]

  Recognising the ‘broad scientific view’ that the average global temperature should not rise more than 2oC above pre-industrial levels, the G8 wanted ‘to share’ the goal of cutting global emissions by at least fifty per cent by 2050. Global emissions would have to peak ‘as soon as possible’. It would imply that developed countries would have to cut their emissions by eighty per cent or more.[14]

  On the summit’s second day, a meeting of the Major Economies Forum indicated limited willingness to share the G8’s self-imposed burden. Affirming the 2oC goal, the Major Economies leaders – which included Brazil, China, India and South Africa – agreed on work to ‘identify a plan for substantially reducing global emissions’ by 2050. However, its declaration avoided reference to any emissions reduction target.[15]

  Speaking on behalf of the G8, Silvio Berlusconi stated that ‘the active agreement of all major emitting countries through quantitative mitigation action was regarded by the G8 as an indispensable condition to tackling climate change’.[16] Nonetheless, the G8 praised the Forum’s ‘constructive contribution’ and looked forward to a global, wide-ranging and ambitious post-2012 agreement in Copenhagen.[17]

  As in 2007 and the lead up to Bali, there was a steady drum-beat to the COP in December. In September, Ban Ki-moon hosted a climate change summit at the UN attended by more than a hundred world leaders. None was as dedicated as Britain’s Gordon Brown, one of the first leaders to say he would be attending the COP.

  In October, Brown hosted a meeting of leaders’ representatives of the Major Economies Forum at Lancaster House. There were less than fifty days to reach an agreement and avoid catastrophe, Brown declared. ‘In just twenty-five years the glaciers in the Himalayas, which provide water for three quarters of a billion people could disappear entirely,’ Brown told them, recycling a discredited IPCC claim.[18] ‘Failure to avoid the worst effects of climate change could lead to global GDP being up to twenty per cent lower than it would otherwise be,’ Brown said, repeating the most alarmist claim of the Stern Review, one that had collapsed under critical scrutiny, ‘[a]nd that is an economic cost greater than the losses caused by two world wars and the Great Depression.’[19] Developed countries had to come forward with offers of finance, Brown said. He had been working on a $100 billion per year package in ‘predictable public and private funding by 2020’.[20]

  There was a fragility that hadn’t been apparent two years earlier. It was evidenced in the shrill reaction to the fall-out from the release of the Climategate emails in November. Writing in The Times, former chancellor Nigel Lawson slammed the integrity of the scientific evidence deployed by the IPCC to base far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions. ‘The reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished,’ Lawson wrote.[21]

  Climate secretary Ed Miliband branded Lawson and other sceptics ‘climate saboteurs’. He accused them of being ‘dangerous and deceitful’ for misusing data and misleading people in an attempt to derail the Copenhagen conference.[22] Brown then weighed in. ‘With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics,’ Brown told the Guardian. ‘We know the science. We know what we must do.’[23]

  It was delusory to believe a small group of climate sceptics might sway governments’ assessment of their national interest and swing the outcome at Copenhagen. The bluster betrayed insecurity. The air was coming out of the balloon.

  Still more dramatic were political developments in Aus
tralia. At Bali, Kevin Rudd had been the COP hero. By a single vote in a 1st December party caucus ballot, the opposition Liberals ditched Malcolm Turnbull and his policy of cooperating with Labor to pass Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. In came Tony Abbott. Two months before, Abbott had described climate change as ‘absolute crap’ – something the newly elected leader now described as ‘a bit of hyperbole’.[24] The next day, the Australian Senate voted down the ETS for the second time. If Rudd had the courage of his convictions on the ETS, he could have called a double dissolution and fought an election on climate change. He blinked. Rudd’s hold on power was slipping, a victim of climate change.

  Copenhagen provoked millennial expectations among some of the committed. Tom Burke, NGO leader, government adviser, corporate environmental guru and academic extraordinaire, boldly declared 2009 the most important year in human history.[25] The World Council of Churches asked churches around the world to ring their bells on the Sunday midway through the conference. Bill McKibben, a leading environmental activist and Sunday school teacher, spoke of the special role of churches. ‘Where I live, in the United States, before we had radio when somebody’s house caught fire, we rang the church bells so that everybody would know and come out to do something about it,’ McKibben explained. ‘Well, something’s on fire now.’[26]