The Politics of Climate Change (25 page)

Domestic tradable quotas are the currency units in a comparable scheme suggested by researchers at the Tyndall Centre.
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The principal difference between the two is that the Tyndall scheme includes aviation. The third approach, proposed by Mayer Hillman and Tina Fawcett, involves the allocation of what they call Personal Carbon Allowances, which would cover individuals only.
³⁴
It would apply to all household energy use and personal travel, including flying. Like the other two, it would involve yearly reductions in allocated quotas with early warning given.

The authors of a study of the feasibility of carbon rationing note that the state of the debate at the moment is a somewhat unhappy one. Those who propose such schemes see them as something of a panacea. Others oppose them as being impractical, expensive, open to widespread fraud and likely to favour the affluent over the poor. Both sides base their arguments upon largely untested assumptions about political feasibility, operational feasibility and cost. ‘Practical understanding and analysis', argue the authors – Simon Roberts and Joshua Thumin – are being undermined by ‘ confrontational debate', in which they ‘take second place to the preservation of increasingly entrenched positions'.
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As Roberts and Thumin point out, the introduction of carbon rationing will not immediately make it easier for people to alter their activities. It may well motivate them to act, but will not enable them to do so. Carbon rationing is not therefore a substitute for other policies needed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Roberts and Thumin set out to provide what they say is lacking – a careful analysis of the pros and cons of the approach.

In brief, their conclusions are as follows. Would carbon rationing lead to large-scale fraud? Not necessarily, but to prevent it such a scheme would probably have to be linked to biometric ID cards – themselves highly controversial and likely to be very costly. Even then, it might be hard or impossible to prevent a widespread black market from developing. Would people be able to manage their budgets effectively, or would some founder in the attempt to do so? Research on ordinary household budgeting has shown that most people are good at living within their budgets and keeping track of their finances. However, a significant minority are not good at either. What would happen to them if they mismanaged their carbon budgets is not clear. Would they face fines, or possible imprisonment?

Would carbon rationing favour the affluent at the expense of the poor? Not in every way, because affluent people create more emissions than the poor, especially if aviation is included; they will therefore need to buy from poorer groups. However, just as the better-off have found ways of exploiting welfare systems to their advantage, much the same would be very likely to happen in the case of carbon credits.

Would the public be prepared to accept carbon rationing? According to Roberts and Thumin, we simply do not know – virtually no research seems to have been carried out to assess public response to the idea. Among proponents ‘there is a widespread assumption that [a carbon rationing scheme] will trigger significant change in behaviour . . . but [there is] no evidence of this'.
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It would not be possible to test carbon-rationing proposals through pilot studies. The main reason is that, in order to work, a scheme has to be compulsory.

Roberts and Thumin do not reach any hard and fast conclusions, but on the basis of their observations, my own view is that carbon rationing is impractical and unfeasible. Its apparent attractions are blunted once the idea is carefully scrutinized. I would reaffirm my case made earlier: we will not be able to bludgeon people into submission when it comes to responding to climate change.

Let us return for a brief visit to Sweden. In the Western Harbour area of Malmö, a new housing development is under way. Buildings sporting massive glass panels sit alongside modest timber structures, all surrounded by parks and walkways. Parking space is limited to 0.7 cars per apartment, and the area is connected to the rest of the city by a dense public transport network. Electricity is provided by wind turbines, solar panels and thermal heating. Solar window shades not only help generate electricity, but also reduce direct sunlight, lowering the need for air-conditioning in the summer. The energy-saving dwellings cost no more to build than conventional homes, but use only a third of the energy required by the average domestic dwelling in the rest of Malmö. Waste separation units positioned close to each home, coupled to a system of vacuum waste chutes, provide for recycling.

It isn't clear at present how far such communities can be generalized, or what some of their drawbacks might be. They are an example of the opportunities created by the twin problems of climate change and energy security. Could they be the outliers for broader processes of social transformation? I believe so, because now is surely the time for us to try to come more to terms with what I have earlier called the problems of over-development – put another way, the downside of affluence.

Consider that emblem of modernity, the car. The fate of the car will have a profound impact upon our struggle to limit global warming. Cars and other motor vehicles account for 14 per cent of total world CO
₂
emissions – more if one includes those produced during the course of their manufacture. More than a billion cars have been made since the earliest models were introduced. If car-ow nership and use follow their current trajectory, in little over a decade there will be a billion cars on the roads at the same time.
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In the US, car use plus car manufacture account for fully 60 per cent of the country's emissions; the US produces 45 per cent of all CO
₂
emissions generated by cars worldwide. What is the definition of a ‘pedestrian' in America? Answer: someone who has just parked his car.
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We don't know the extent to which, or how quickly, new forms of propulsion for vehicles, such as electricity from renewable sources, or hydrogen, can come into use on a large scale. Yet, whatever happens to fuel sources, we can already catch a glimpse of the possibility of ‘life beyond the car'.

The attraction of cars has always been that they offer freedom, mobility and speed. Yet the proliferation of cars on the roads negates these very qualities. What meaning do they have when drivers are endlessly stuck in traffic jams? We say ‘stuck in a traffic jam' as though it came from external sources – in fact, every individual driver
is
the traffic jam. Part of the logic of eco-towns is to break dependence on the motor-car, and numerous experiments are being tried within orthodox city environments. For instance, local authorities have introduced congestion charging and traffic calming, and have banned cars altogether from some areas, thereby encouraging people to put a positive value on walking or cycling.

As French economic historian Jean Gimpel has shown, technological ‘progress' is sometimes achieved through reversals.
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For instance, nylon was once touted as the material of the future for clothing. Yet the ‘traditional' cloths of wool and cotton made a dramatic comeback. A possible future (brought about by planning) is certainly likely to be a return to localism, involving networks of small, self-reliant communities (the future that many greens envisage). James Kunstler has remarked that city life will be marked by ‘a return to smaller scales of operation in virtually every respect of travel and transport'.
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Much more likely, and desirable, is that such a tendency will interact with its opposite – a further expansion of mobility, but where transport will change its nature.
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There could be a return to cityscapes that existed before the invention of the car, but which could nevertheless be integrated with a world of high mobility. The driverless car is already here, with its robot driver proven as being more capable and safer than even the most skilled and careful human counterpart. In cars now on sale, high-tech devices already exist that help prevent collisions on fast-moving roads without the intervention of the driver.

A digital system of transport could follow, perhaps
combining driverless with driven cars, all composed of small, ultra-light vehicles. The transportation device would be a ‘personal multimodal pod in which passengers can stay in comfort throughout a journey leaving all the hassle of switching between different transport modes and network levels to the pod'.
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Smart cards would be used to pay and control access. Such a system would rewrite the relationship between the ‘public' and the ‘private'. Real-life travel could be integrated with virtual access within ‘tele-immersion environments'.

Utopian? Well, yes, but also actually at some point quite probable. The division between ‘private' vehicles – the car – and ‘public' transport has already begun to break down. Thus car clubs, where members don't own the vehicles they drive, but have privileged access to them, have sprung up in numerous cities in the US and Europe. It is not difficult to see that such systems could be liberating, as well as add significantly to quality of life. One should also remember that the car is a lethal instrument. The freedom it confers, and the love it can inspire, comes at a terrible price – it has been estimated that some 40 million people have been killed on the roads since the car first made its appearance, greater than the number that died in the two world wars combined.

Whatever happens from now on, climate change is going to affect our lives and we will have to adapt to its consequences. Politics intrudes here just as much as everywhere else and how processes of adaptation will be managed is an issue of prime importance. Just as in the case of controlling emissions, the developed countries have responsibilities towards the rest of the world as far as adaptation is concerned, and in the following chapter I shall discuss what these are.

Initially borrowed from evolutionary biology, the term ‘adaptation' has come into widespread use in the climate change literature. In a way, it is a misleading term, because it implies reacting to the consequences of climate change once it has occurred. However, just like our efforts to limit the warming of the world's climate, adaptation as far as possible has to be anticipatory and preventative.

Adaptation has been described as the ‘poor and derided cousin of emissions reduction'.
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For some while, discussing adaptation was taboo among environmentalists, on the grounds that it would adversely affect efforts directed at combating climate change itself. Times have definitely changed, however. In the discussions at Cancun (see below, pp. 193–5), as much time was devoted to discussion of adaptation as to mitigation. An Adaptation Fund, set up by the UN some years before, has had some flesh put on its bare bones. The fund had been widely criticized for being too difficult for countries to qualify for and for being seriously underfinanced. In future, developing countries will have direct access to it and it will have significantly greater resources to dispense.

In some ways the issues surrounding adaptation are even more complex than those to do with mitigation. For in preparing to adapt before climatic changes have actually taken place, or when they are in their early stages, we have to specify what the
effects of global warming will be, in the many contexts in which they will have an impact. Providing some concepts to help guide our efforts at adaptation is important, because such concepts can help give shape and direction to policy. Let me first underline the relevance of the distinction already made, between adaptation after the event and adaptation oriented to possible futures. I shall speak of
proactive adaptation
(PA) to refer to the second of these categories. Within the limits of our knowledge – and in any real-life context, of funding – PA should be the prime focus of our attention whenever we think about adaptation, although reactive adaptation will certainly be necessary.

PA is about diagnosing and responding to
vulnerabilities
. Vulnerability is once again all about risk – the risk of suffering damage to a valued activity, way of life or resource. Vulnerability is plainly an economic and social phenomenon, not just one concerned with the physical environment. We can't discuss vulnerability without also focusing on its opposite,
resilience
. Resilience can be defined as
adaptive capacity
, the capacity not only to cope in the face of external changes or shocks, but, wherever possible, to respond actively and positively to them. It can be a property of the physical environment, of an individual or of a group. In the first case it is about the capability of the built environment to withstand shocks of one kind or another. It could take the form, for example, of strengthening dykes, or building new ones, in advance of expected increases in vulnerability to flooding. In the second, it refers to qualities of character – the ability to make the best of adverse circumstances, or actively to triumph over them. Defined as a quality of a group, it concerns factors such as the capacity of members of a community to act together rather than to become divided and fragmented; and to be able to modify, or even transform, existing ways of life should it become necessary so to do. Smallholders who grow a variety of crops, for example, will be more resilient than those dependent upon a single cash crop.

Most of the concepts introduced earlier in this book are directly relevant to adaptation. In deciding what forms of resilience to invest in and cultivate, we always have to bear in mind a balance of risks. Adaptation sounds like a version of the precautionary principle, because (as PA) it is a pre-emptive
doctrine – it is intervention taken to prevent or contain future risks. Yet, as in all risk situations, when deciding on a particular strategy, we have to weigh different risks and opportunities against each other. The percentage principle applies.