The Politics of Climate Change (2 page)

What social psychologists call ‘future discounting' further accentuates Giddens's paradox – more accurately, one could
say it is a sub-category of it. People find it hard to give the same level of reality to the future as they do to the present. Thus a small reward offered now will normally be taken in preference to a much larger one offered at some remove. The same principle applies to risks. Why do many young people take up smoking even though they are well aware that, as it now says on cigarette packets, ‘smoking kills'? At least part of the reason is that, for a teenager, it is almost impossible to imagine being 40, the age at which the real dangers start to take hold and become life-threatening.

There is a high level of agreement among scientists that climate change is real and dangerous, and that it is caused by human activity. A small minority of scientists, however – the climate change ‘sceptics' – dispute these claims, and they get a good deal of attention in the media. Many other, less expert, contributors have taken their side. Someone can always say, ‘it's not proven, is it?' if it be suggested that he should change his profligate ways. Another response might be: ‘I'm not going to change unless others do.' Yet another reaction could be: ‘Nothing that I do, as a single individual, will make any difference.' Or else he could say, ‘I'll get round to it sometime', because one shouldn't underestimate the sheer force of habit. I would suggest that even the most sophisticated and determined environmentalist struggles with the fact that, under the shadow of future cataclysm, there is a life to be lived within the constraints of the here-and-now.

Politicians have woken up to the scale and urgency of the problem and many countries have recently introduced ambitious climate change policies. Over the past few years, a threshold has been crossed: most political leaders are now aware of the hazards posed by global warming and the need to respond to them. Yet this is just the first wave – the bringing of the issue onto the political agenda. The second wave must involve embedding it in our institutions and in the everyday concerns of citizens, and here, for reasons just mentioned, there is a great deal of work to do. The international community is on board, at least in principle. Negotiations aimed at limiting global warming have taken place at meetings organized by the United Nations, in an attempt to get global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They are still continuing, but have
produced little in the way of concrete results so far. There has been far more talk than there has been tangible action.

Much of this book concentrates on climate change policy in the industrial countries. It is these countries that pumped most of the emissions into the atmosphere in the first place, and they have to take prime responsibility for controlling them in the near future. They must take the lead in reducing emissions, moving towards a low-carbon economy and making the social reforms with which these changes will have to be integrated.

We do not as yet have a developed analysis of the political innovations that have to be made if our aspirations to limit global warming are to become real. It is a strange and indefensible absence, which I have written this work to try to repair. My approach is grounded in realism. Some authors say that coping with climate change is too difficult a problem to be dealt with within the confines of orthodox politics. Up to a point I agree with them, since quite profound changes will be required in our established ways of political thinking. Yet we have to work with the institutions that already exist and in ways that respect democracy.

The state will be an all-important actor, since so many powers remain in its hands, whether one talks of domestic or of international policy. There is no way of forcing states to sign up to international agreements; and even if they choose to do so, implementing whatever is agreed will largely be the responsibility of each individual country. Emissions trading markets can only work if the price of carbon is capped, and at a demanding level, a decision that has to be made and implemented politically. The one major supra-national entity that exists, the European Union, is heavily dependent on decisions taken by its member nations, since its control over them is quite limited.

Markets have a much bigger role to play in combating climate change than simply in the area of emissions trading. There are many fields where market forces can produce results that no other agency or framework could manage. In principle, where a price can be put on an environmental good without affronting other values, it should be done, since competition will then create increased efficiency whenever
that good is exchanged. However, active state intervention is once again called for. The environmental costs entailed by economic processes often form what economists call ‘externalities' – they are not paid for by those who incur them. The aim of public policy should be to make sure that, wherever possible, such costs are internalized – that is, brought into the marketplace.

‘The state', of course, comprises a diversity of levels, including regional, city and local government. In a global era, it operates within the context of what political scientists call multilayered governance, stretching upwards into the international arena and downwards to regions, cities and localities. To emphasize the importance of the state to climate change policy is not to argue for top-down government. On the contrary, the most dramatic initiatives are likely to bubble up from the actions of far-sighted individuals and from the energy of civil society. States will have to work with a variety of other agencies and bodies, as well as with other countries and international organizations, if they are to be effective.

One can't discuss the politics of climate change without mentioning the green movement, which has been a leading influence on environmental politics for many years. It has had a major impact in forcing the issue of climate change onto the political agenda. ‘Going green' has become more or less synonymous with endeavours to limit climate change. Yet there are big problems. The green movement has its origins in the hostile emotions that industrialism aroused among the early conservationists. Especially in its latter-day development in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, the greens defined themselves in opposition to orthodox politics. Neither position is especially helpful to the task of integrating environmental concerns into our established political institutions. Most green parties have now joined the mainstream. Yet just what is and what is not valuable in green political philosophies has to be sorted out.

It isn't possible – or so I shall argue – to endorse any approach which tries in some sense to ‘return to nature'. Conservationism may be a defensible value, but it has nothing intrinsically to do with combating global warming. Indeed, it may even hamper our efforts. As a result of the advance
of science and technology, we have long since crossed the boundaries which used to separate us from the natural world. More of the same will be needed, not less, if we are seriously to confront problems of climate change. Partly for this reason, I reject one of the core ideas of the green movement – the precautionary principle: ‘Don't interfere with nature.' Moreover, in seeking to stem climate change, no matter what is often said, we are not trying to ‘save the planet', which will survive whatever we may do. The point is to preserve, and if possible enhance, a decent way of life for human beings on the earth.

The word ‘green' is in such widespread use that I have no hope of dislodging it. But it is now more of a problem rather than any help when it comes to developing policies to cope with climate change. I shall avoid using the term in what follows.

A whole range of questions has to be asked and answered. I list only a few briefly here. Later in the book, I try to respond to all of them, no doubt with varying degrees of success.

To cope with global warming, a long-term perspective must be introduced into politics, domestically and internationally. There has to be some sort of forward
planning
. ‘Planning' is not a word with particularly pleasant connotations, since it conjures up images of authoritarianism on the one hand and ineptness on the other. Planning fell out of favour partly because it was oppressive and partly because it didn't work. If there is to be a return to such an endeavour, what form should it take?

And then there is the issue of coping with
risk
and
uncertainty
. Climate change politics is all about risk and how to manage it, and the notion appears on almost every page of this volume. We can't know the future; the philosopher Karl Popper used to say that if we could, it wouldn't be the future. The long-term thinking needed to counter climate change has to operate against the backdrop of uncertainty. It is often possible to assign probabilities to future events; but there are many contexts where existing knowledge is stretched thin and large areas of uncertainty loom. What political strategies are needed to confront this range of problems?

In democratic countries governments come and go. Moreover, in real-life contexts many issues jostle for attention,
including immediate questions of the day, which at the time may seem overwhelmingly important. In such circumstances, how is continuity of climate change policy to be maintained? Climate change, I shall argue, is not a left–right issue. There should be no more talk of ‘green being the new red'. A cross-party framework of some kind has to be forged to develop a politics of the long term, but how? Countering climate change will cost money – where will it come from? Countries that are in the vanguard of climate change policy, as the developed countries have to be, could face problems of competitiveness. Their industries could be hampered by having to compete with goods that can be made more cheaply elsewhere where there are no environmental taxes or regulatory restrictions. How big a problem is this likely to be? Certainly, many business firms and employers' groups have used it as a basis for dragging their heels as far as climate change initiatives are concerned.

Finally, there are many difficult questions surrounding technology. Investment in renewable energy resources is crucial in countering climate change. Yet those resources won't develop in some sort of automatic way, nor will they be stimulated by the operation of market forces alone. The state has to subsidize them, in order for them to be competitive against fossil fuels and to protect investment in the face of the fluctuations to which the prices of oil and natural gas are subject. Technological change can only be predicted to a limited degree. How should governments decide which technologies to back? Like climate change, energy has suddenly come into the limelight as a fundamental problem for many nations and for the world as a whole. The underlying causes are to some degree the same. The energy needs of the industrial countries have created most of the emissions that are causing global warming. The rapid economic growth of developing nations, especially China and India, given their immense population size, is putting further strain on available energy sources, as well as increasing the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Responding to climate change has to be closely integrated with questions of energy security. It has become conventional to say so these days, but I have been struck by how loosely connected in most writings they actually are.

At what point will the world begin to run out of oil? There is intense discussion about when world oil and gas supplies will peak – in other words, when half or more of them will have been consumed. If the peak in world oil supplies is in fact approaching, then serious problems loom. Modern society is very heavily based upon oil not only insofar as energy is concerned, but also because oil figures in so many of the manufactured goods which figure in people's lives. Some 90 per cent of the goods in the shops involve the use of oil in one way or another.

Whether oil production is close to peaking or not, we are living in a civilization that, as far as we can determine future risk, looks unsustainable. It isn't surprising that the past few years have seen the emergence of a doomsday literature, centred on the likelihood of a cataclysmic breakdown. Other civilizations have come and gone; why should ours be sacrosanct?

Yet risk is risk – the other side of danger is always opportunity. We must create a positive model of a low-carbon future – and, moreover, one that connects with ordinary, everyday life in the present. There is no such model at the moment and we have to edge our way towards it. It won't be a green vision, but one driven by political, social and economic thinking. It can't be a utopia, but utopian strands will be involved, since they supply ideals to be striven for. A mixture of the idealistic and the hard-headed is required. No quick fix is available to deal with the problems we face – it's going to be a slog, even with the breakthroughs we need, and in fact must have. The prize, as I shall argue below, is huge. There is another world waiting for us out there if we can find our way to it. It is one where not only climate change has been held at bay, but where oil has lost its capacity to determine the shape of world politics.

Where do we stand at the moment in terms of the risks posed by global warming? What are our chances of limiting or containing them? A great deal hangs, of course, upon our assessment of just how serious those risks actually are. Here we are dependent on the findings, and the prognostications, of science. Perhaps the risks have been exaggerated and we haven't got too much to worry about? Could the sceptics be right to say the dangers are much less than the majority of
climatologists believe? The possibility does exist, but it is slim. The scientific findings are very robust, and based on many different types of observation. Moreover, as I shall discuss in what follows, it is at least as likely that the dangers of climate change are actually
greater
than the majority of scientists think. Unlike most of the sceptics, disturbingly, those who make such arguments are practising scientists – some of them very eminent ones.