Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (16 page)

“The idea that we already possess the ‘scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon problem’ is true in the sense that, in 1939, the technical and scientific expertise to build nuclear weapons existed,” he told me, quoting Socolow. “But it took the Manhattan Project to make it so.”

Hoffert’s primary disagreement with Socolow, which both men took pains to point out to me and also took pains to try to minimize, is over the future trajectory of CO
₂
emissions. For the past several decades, as the world has turned increasingly from coal to oil, natural gas, and nuclear power, emissions of CO
₂
per unit of energy have declined, a process known as “decarbonization.” This has slowed the growth of emissions relative to the growth of the global economy; without it, CO
₂
levels today would be significantly higher.

In the “business as usual” scenario that Socolow uses, it is assumed that decarbonization will continue. To assume this, however, is to overlook several emerging trends. Most of the growth in energy usage in the next few decades is due to occur in places like China and India, where supplies of coal far exceed those of oil or natural gas. (China, which is adding new coal-fired generating capacity at the rate of more than a gigawatt a month, is expected to overtake the United States as the world’s largest carbon emitter around 2025.) Meanwhile, global production of oil and gas is expected to start to decline—according to some experts in twenty or thirty years, and to others by the end of this decade. Hoffert predicts that the world will start to “recarbonize,” a development that would make the task of stabilizing carbon dioxide that much more difficult. By his accounting, recarbonization will mean that as many as twelve wedges will be needed simply to keep CO
₂
emissions on the same upward trajectory they’re on now. (Socolow readily acknowledges that there are plausible scenarios that would push up the number of wedges needed.) Hoffert told me that he thought the federal government should be budgeting between ten and twenty billion dollars a year for primary research into new energy sources. For comparison’s sake, he pointed out that the “Star Wars” missile-defense program, which still hasn’t yielded a workable system, has already cost the government nearly a hundred billion dollars.

A commonly heard argument against acting to curb global warming is that the options now available are inadequate. To his dismay, Hoffert often finds his ideas being cited in support of this argument, with which, he says, he vigorously disagrees. “I want to make it very clear,” he told me at one point. “We have to start working immediately to implement those elements that we know how to implement
and
we need to start implementing these longer-term programs. Those are not opposing ideas.”

“Let me say this,” he said at another point. “I’m not sure we can solve the problem. I hope we can. I think we have a shot. I mean, it may be that we’re not going to solve global warming, the earth is going to become an ecological disaster, and, you know, somebody will visit in a few hundred million years and find there were some intelligent beings who lived here for a while, but they just couldn’t handle the transition from being hunter-gatherers to high technology. It’s certainly possible. Carl Sagan had an equation—the Drake equation—for how many intelligent species there are in the galaxy. He figured it out by saying, How many stars are there, how many planets are there around these stars, what’s the probability that life will evolve on a planet, what’s the probability if you have life evolve of having intelligent species evolve, and, once that happens, what’s the average lifetime of a technological civilization? And that last one is the most sensitive number. If the average lifetime is about a hundred years, then probably, in the whole galaxy of four hundred billion stars, there are only a few that have intelligent civilizations. If the lifetime is several million years, then the galaxy is teeming with intelligent life. It’s sort of interesting to look at it that way. And we don’t know. We could go either way.”

Chapter 8

The Day After Kyoto

When the Kyoto Protocol went into effect, on February 16, 2005, the event was seen as a cause for celebration in many cities around the world. The mayor of Bonn hosted a reception in the Rathaus; Oxford University held an “Entry into Force” banquet; and in Hong Kong there was a Kyoto prayer meeting. As it happened, that day, an exceptionally warm one in Washington, D.C., I went to speak to the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Paula Dobriansky.

Dobriansky is a slight woman with shoulder-length brown hair and a vaguely anxious manner. Among her duties is explaining the Bush administration’s position on global warming to the rest of the world, a task that, on the occasion of Kyoto’s entry into force, seemed peculiarly unenviable. The United States is by far the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases in aggregate—it produces nearly a quarter of the world’s total—and on a per capita basis is rivaled only by a handful of nations, like Qatar. Yet the United States is one of only two industrialized nations that have rejected the Kyoto Protocol, and, with it, mandatory cuts in emissions. (The other outlier is Australia.) Two of Dobriansky’s assistants accompanied me into her office. We all took seats in a circle.

Dobriansky began by assuring me that despite how it might appear, the Bush administration took the issue of climate change “very seriously.” She went on, “Also let me just add, because in terms of taking it seriously, not only stating to you that we take it seriously, we have engaged many countries in initiatives and efforts, whether they are bilateral initiatives—we have some fourteen bilateral initiatives—and in addition we have put together some multilateral initiatives. So we view this as a serious issue.” I asked her how, then, the administration justified its position on Kyoto to it sallies. “We have a common goal and objective,” she replied. “Where we differ is on what approach we believe is and can be the most effective.” A few moments later, she added, as if expanding on this statement: “The bottom line here is, in grappling with a serious issue, we believe we have a common goal and objective, but that we can take different approaches.”

The remainder of our brief conversation followed much the same lines. At one point, I asked the undersecretary if there were any circumstances under which the administration would accede to mandatory caps on emissions. “Our approach has been predicated on: we act, we learn, we act again,” she said. In response to a question about how urgent the problem of stabilizing emissions was, she replied, “We act, we learn, we act again,” and in response to a question about what would constitute a “dangerous” level of CO
₂
in the atmosphere, she said, “Forgive me, I’m going to repeat myself: we act, we learn, we act again.” Dobriansky told me twice that the administration’s approach to global warming encompassed both “near-term actions and long-term actions” and three times that it saw economic growth as “the solution, not the problem.” I had been instructed that Dobriansky could spare no more than twenty minutes. According to my digital recorder, after fifteen minutes and thirty-five seconds one of her assistants announced that it was time to wrap things up. As I was getting ready to leave, I asked Dobriansky if there was anything more she wanted to say.

“I’d say this to you,” she replied. “We see this as a serious issue. We have vigorously and robustly put forth a climate change policy to address these issues, and we will continue to work with other countries to address the issue of climate change. Basically and fundamentally we have a common goal and objective, but we are pursuing different approaches.”

On paper at least, the United States, along with the rest of the world, has been committed to addressing global warming for nearly fifteen years. In June 1992, the United Nations held the so-called Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which was attended by more than twenty thousand people. Representatives from virtually every country on the globe met there to discuss and ultimately endorse the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. One of the earliest signatories was President George H. W. Bush, who, while in Rio, called on world leaders to translate “the words spoken here into concrete action to protect the planet.” Three months later, Bush submitted the Framework Convention to the U.S. Senate, which approved it by unanimous consent.

In the English version, the Framework Convention runs to thirty-three pages. It starts with vague statements of principle (“Acknowledging that change in the Earth’s climate and its adverse effects are a common concern of humankind…”; “Concerned that human activities have been substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases …”) and works its way through a long list of definitions (“ ‘Climate change’ means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity”; “ ‘Climate system’ means the totality of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere and their interactions”) before finally arriving at its objective. This is: the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

Every country that signed on to the Framework Convention accepted the same goal—avoiding DAI. But not every country accepted the same obligations. The treaty distinguished between industrialized nations, which, in U.N.-speak, became known as the Annex 1 countries, and basically everyone else. While the latter group agreed to take steps to “mitigate” climate change, the former agreed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. (In diplomatic terms, this arrangement followed the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.”) Article 4, paragraph 2, subparagraph b of the Framework Convention spelled out what compliance meant; it instructed Annex 1 countries, which include the United States, Canada, Japan, and the nations of Europe and the erstwhile Eastern bloc—to “aim” to return their emissions to 1990 levels.

As it turned out, submitting the Framework Convention to the Senate was one of George Bush Senior’s last acts as president. Bill Clinton reaffirmed U.S. support of the convention, announcing, shortly after taking office, on Earth Day 1993, that the nation was committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. “Unless we act now,” he said, “we face a future in which the sun may scorch us, not warm us; where the change of season may take on a dreadful new meaning; and where our children’s children will inherit a planet far less hospitable than the world in which we came of age.”

Yet even as Clinton was reasserting the nation’s commitment, emissions in the United States and indeed around the globe were continuing to rise. By 1995, pretty much the only countries that were making any progress toward compliance were former members of the Soviet bloc, and this was because their economies were in free fall. Meanwhile, as emissions continued to go up, what had initially seemed a rather modest goal—returning to 1990 levels—started to look more and more ambitious. Several rounds of often bitter negotiations followed—in Berlin in March 1995, in Geneva in July 1996, and, finally, in Kyoto in December 1997.

Technically, the agreement that emerged from the Kyoto session is simply an addendum to the Framework Convention. (Its full title is the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.) The protocol has the same goal as the convention—avoiding DAI—and hews to the same principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.” But for vague exhortations, like “aim,” the protocol substitutes mandatory commitments. Exactly what these commitments are varies slightly from country to country, based on a combination of historical and political factors. The nations of the European Union, for example, are supposed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions 8 percent below 1990 levels and to do so by 2012, the year that the protocol lapses. The United States, meanwhile, has a target of 7 percent below 1990 levels, and Japan has a target of 6 percent below. The treaty covers five greenhouse gases in addition to CO
₂
—methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—which, for the purposes of accounting, are converted into units known as “carbon dioxide equivalents.” Annex 1 nations can meet their targets, in part, by buying and selling emissions “credits” and by investing in “clean development” projects in non–Annex 1 nations, like China and India.

Even as Kyoto was being negotiated, it was clear that the treaty was going to face opposition from many of the same senators who had voted in favor of the original Framework Convention. In July of 1997, Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, and Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, introduced a “sense of the Senate” resolution publicly warning the Clinton administration against the direction that the talks were taking. The so-called Byrd-Hagel Resolution stated that the United States should reject any agreement that committed it to reducing emissions unless concomitant obligations were imposed on developing countries as well. The Senate approved the resolution by a vote of 95–0, an outcome that reflected lobbying by both business and labor. (The Global Climate Coalition, a group that was sponsored by, among others, Chevron, Chrysler, Exxon, Ford, General Motors, Mobil, Shell, and Texaco, spent some $13 million on an anti–Kyoto Protocol advertising campaign.)

From a certain perspective, the logic behind the Byrd-Hagel Resolution is unimpeachable. Emissions controls cost money, and this cost has to be borne by somebody. If the United States were to agree to limit its greenhouse gases while economic competitors like China and India did not, then American companies would be put at a disadvantage. “A treaty that requires binding commitments for reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases for the industrial countries but not developing countries will create a very damaging situation for the American economy” is how Richard Trumka, the secretary-treasurer of the AFL–CIO, put it when he traveled to Kyoto to lobby against the protocol. It is also true that an agreement that limits carbon emissions in some countries and not in others could result in a migration, rather than an actual reduction, of CO
₂
emissions. (Such a possibility is known in climate parlance as “leakage.”)