China-US conflict reveals central climate issue

Is the focus on economic growth the reason why most commentators have low expectations of the current climate change conference in Cancún? Credit: UNFCCC

The nightmare of a battle between arguably the world’s dominant powers – the US and China – has become reality. And although it’s a diplomatic and not a military war, lives are still at stake, because the battleground that they’re fighting over is the world’s climate. Both argue that the other’s refusal to limit CO2 emissions further is preventing meaningful worldwide emissions cuts at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico, this week and next. To successfully tackle global warming, a solution to this conflict is vital.

Yet neither side wants to back down, because since the industrial revolution countries’ wealth and power and their CO2 emissions have been intimately related. This can be understood by the fact that the world’s richest countries emit the greatest amounts of greenhouse gases per person, while the poorest countries emit much less. According to the “Carbon Footprint of Nations” website, in 2001 the US emitted 28.6 tonnes per person while China emitted 3.1 tonnes per person. In 2008 the average level of emissions globally was 6.9 tonnes per person. Last year’s UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen agreed to try and limit global warming to 2ºC from 1980 to 2100. Based on the UN’s medium growth-level population scenario, climate modeller Joeri Rogelj predicts that emissions must fall to 5.8 tonnes per person by 2020 to stay below this limit.

Who emits wins?

The Climate Village at the UN Negotiations in Cancún, Mexico. Credit: UNFCCC

Reducing poverty is considered an international priority, and the UN organises diplomatic processes to tackle this problem too, within its Millennium Development Goals. Developing countries like China and India would argue that their recent rapid economic growth is helping to achieve this aim. But that growth has now seen China overtake the US as the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter – even though it still emits much less per head.

If the world wants to stop climate change, someone has to accept restrictions on their greenhouse gas emissions. Which people should this be? And how much can they emit? If every country in the world cut their total emissions by the same amount this would make it much harder for the poorest countries to resolve their poverty. This would be unacceptable to China and countries like it, who want to bring emissions per head into line with richer nations.

Yet developed economies hold their freedoms dear, with perhaps the most obvious example of this being among some Republicans in the US. They are more likely to see restrictions on individual freedoms as distasteful, and seem to have become more sceptical about climate science as a result. A restriction on the amount of fuel you can burn is bad enough. A restriction so that poorer countries can burn more could be seen as a completely unacceptable socialist scheme.

The current US goal – cutting emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 – is equivalent to just 3 percent below 1990 levels. By contrast China’s current pledge is a 1 percent reduction from their “business as usual” growth, although this could rise beyond 10 percent if certain conditions are met. To put this into context, scientists believe that global emissions should fall by 50 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 to have just a 50:50 chance of keeping warming below 2ºC.

The big question

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa Cantellano becomes president of the UN Climate Change Conference at its opening ceremony. Credit: UNFCCC

Will politicians representing the rich and powerful – who are least likely to be affected by climate change – sacrifice the opportunity to further their wealth and power to alleviate poverty elsewhere in the world? Will politicians from the developing nations sacrifice their opportunity? Not if we continue to look at the conflict in this way. However, there is still hope.

While the idea of restricting our own freedoms is an uncomfortable one, there remains a strong moral argument across the political spectrum that we should take responsibility for our own actions. One of the key challenges of global warming is that CO2 is chemically very stable, and stays in the atmosphere for a long time. Despite China’s recent growth, its total emissions from 1900 to 2005 are around half those of the US.

Developed countries, with the highest emissions per person and the longest histories of emissions, therefore are responsible for the larger proportion of the CO2 in the atmosphere. They have a responsibility to tackle the problems that these CO2 concentrations cause. Some have at least partly accepted this responsibility – the EU has committed to reduce its emissions by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels, which could rise to as much as 30 percent.

As adults, voters across the world must take responsibility for their actions every day. The facts of climate change – as discussed on this blog over the past 11 months – now mean that countries must take responsibility for their carbon binge over the past couple of centuries. It’s each of our responsibilities to make sure that we deal with the resulting environmental hangovers, and do our fair share of the clean-up, both at the individual and national level. And even if the Cancún negotiations fail to bring the world nearer to an adequate agreement, we must press our leaders to keep trying.