COP21: A Potluck Dinner in Paris

THE NEW YORKER - John Cassidy

The decision to forgo a formal treaty was made partly to assuage the concerns of the world’s two biggest polluters, the United States and China. Credit Photograph by Laurent Vu / Pool / SIPA USA via AP

Now that the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference is under way in Paris, two main issues arise: Will an agreement to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere be reached? And, if so, will it do any good? The answer to the first question is: almost certainly. The answer to the second question is: some, but not enough.
The good news is that, after more than twenty years of trying, the nations of the world are finally closing in on a deal that has the backing of all the major polluters. This much was clear from Monday’s opening ceremony, which attracted a host of global leaders. If politicians like President Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t think a positive outcome was likely, they wouldn’t have made the trip.
Of course, it is always possible that the negotiations, which are scheduled to last for nearly two weeks, will break down, as they did in 2009, when a similar meeting was held in Copenhagen. For at least two reasons, though, that seems unlikely. First, despite talk of the need to reach a legally binding agreement on climate change, the Paris conference isn’t aimed at producing an actual treaty. While some parts of the deal, such as the arrangements for monitoring the targeted emission levels, may well be codified, participation in the process will be voluntary, and enforcement will rely largely on peer pressure. The hundred and ninety-three participants in the talks have given up on seeking to forge a direct successor to the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which saw most advanced nations (but not the United States) agree to limit emissions. Instead, they have agreed to hold a huge potluck dinner, in which each country brings what it can.
The U.S. delegation is bearing a promise that, by 2025, the United States will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by twenty-eight per cent compared to the 2005 level. The European Union says that, by 2030, it will cut emissions by forty per cent compared to the 1990 level. Russia is pledging a cut of twenty-five to thirty per cent relative to the 1990 baseline. Mexico says that, by 2030, it will reduce emissions by at least a quarter relative to a “business-as-usual scenario.” Malaysia says that, by 2030, it will have cut emissions by forty-five per cent relative to the 2005 level. And so on. (The Web site Carbon Brief has compiled a useful list of these pledges, and has analyzed a number of them in depth.)
The decision to forgo a formal treaty was made partly to assuage the concerns of the world’s two biggest polluters, the United States and China. With the Republicans controlling the Senate, there was virtually no chance of a treaty being ratified in this country. Not much has changed in this regard. In 1997, when many advanced countries signed the Kyoto treaty, the first concerted global effort to limit carbon emissions, a frustrated Clinton Administration didn’t even bother sending it to Capitol Hill.
China, for its part, has always insisted that countries should be allowed to tackle climate change in their own way and at their own pace, rather than being subjected to binding international agreements. (In Copenhagen six years ago, China’s recalcitrance was a major reason for the failure to reach a deal.) Speaking in Paris on Monday, Xi repeated this message. What has changed—and what, more than anything else, makes a deal in Paris possible—is that the Chinese government, for its own reasons, has decided to get (somewhat) more serious about tackling air pollution and global warming. The key moment came a year ago, when China agreed to cap its over-all carbon emissions by 2030. Since then, senior party officials have said that this date could be brought forward to 2025.
With the potluck-dinner model in place and China having confirmed its attendance at the table, finalizing the agreement will come down to securing the backing of India and other developing countries. In an op-ed in Monday’s Financial Times, Prime Minister Modi reminded everyone about the basic inequity at the heart of climate-change policy: advanced nations, such as the United States, industrialized by burning lots of fossil fuels, and now they are asking developing countries to forgo this path. “Justice demands that, with what little carbon we can still safely burn, developing countries are allowed to grow,” Modi wrote.
That is the grand principle at stake. The practical sticking point is money. At Copenhagen, rich countries said that they would provide a hundred billion dollars a year in aid and investment to help poor countries develop greener forms of power and adapt to climate change. Modi and other leaders from the developing world are understandably keen to nail down this commitment and see it expanded. Ultimately, however, it seems unlikely that they will block an agreement. “India will do its part for success in Paris,” Modi concluded in the Financial Times.
But what would success mean for the big picture? To the skeptics, not very much at all. They say the deal under consideration is too small, too vague, and too late to prevent a dangerous rise in temperatures. “The underlying condition continues to deteriorate,” Dieter Helm, an economist at Oxford University, writes in a new edition of “The Carbon Crunch,” his 2012 book. “In 2012 another two parts per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide (CO2) were added to the atmosphere, followed by another 2.8 ppm in 2013 and roughly the same again in 2014. Roll forward to 2030 and the total will be close to 450 ppm, up from the current 400 and close to twice pre-industrial levels—a Paris agreement notwithstanding.”
Originally, the Paris agreement was meant to hold the global rise in temperatures to two degrees centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), relative to pre-industrial times. Largely because of all the coal-fired power stations that China, India, and other countries have built in recent years, many climate-change experts now believe that, regardless of what happens in the next couple of weeks, this ceiling will be breached. Scientists associated with the United Nations recently acknowledged that, even if the Paris summit is a success, it will likely only be enough to contain warming to 2.7 degrees Celsius. And many others involved in tackling climate change think that this is an optimistic assessment. “It’s nice for people to talk about two degrees,” Bill Gates told The Economist’s Joel Budd recently. “But we don’t even have the commitments that are going to keep us below four degrees of warming.”
Defenders of the Paris approach say that it’s the best option that is politically feasible. Efforts to produce a more rigid, top-down multinational agreement have foundered, as have moves to promote a global tax on carbon, which many economists advocate. The potluck-dinner approach has gained widespread support, and it could arguably establish a common framework that can be strengthened going forward. Once each country has issued its carbon-emissions target, its progress will be monitored by U.N. experts. Further summits will be held, and new targets could be issued. Over time, the optimists say, the process of tackling carbon emissions will “ratchet up.”
Perhaps that will happen. For now, though, there is no agreement on how the ratchet will work. The United Kingdom and other European countries are said to be pressing for summits to be held held every five years, at which new targets would be set. India and other developing countries appear to be resisting a fixed timetable. And even if such an arrangement is reached, there remains the question of how much time the world has left in which to reduce carbon emissions.
Until recently, the academic consensus was that, given current emissions rates, we had about thirty years left before burning more carbon would cause a dangerous rise in temperatures. (In this context, “dangerous” is defined as an upward move of more than two degrees centigrade.) Now, though, some experts are suggesting that the trigger point could arrive in fifteen to twenty years. Whatever happens in Paris, it is generally agreed that over-all emissions will still be rising in the period leading up to 2030, which means that, if the pessimists are right about the trigger point, it could be too late to prevent a drastic shift in the earth’s climate.
Of course, climate-change science is imprecise, and the long-term forecasts that it generates can always be challenged. At best, they are educated estimates. But one thing seems clear: in tackling this mother of all economic externalities, humankind is leaving it late.