A new kind of partnership: Researchers question whether our scientific institutions can solve the climate dilemma, arguing that daunting pressures require a new degree of political cooperation.
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Tricky diagnoses abound, whether the field is medicine, auto repair or high finance. For climate change the problem is magnified: Those who have spent decades diagnosing the problem have no power to write the prescription.
Scientists have the knowledge, but politicians and social institutions hold the power. Channels between them are rudimentary at best, many analysts say. Without a fundamental shift in emphasis, they caution, the scientific infrastructure so painstakingly erected to identify the problem will find itself impotent to ensure that global warming will be mitigated and civilization will adapt to its inevitable impacts.
"It's not clear to me that climate science has ever been well-aligned with social institutions that will have to respond to climate change," said Daniel Sarewitz, director of Arizona State University's Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes. "What we're beginning to see now, as the debate over the first-order conclusions of climate change science wanes, is that the two actually have nothing to do with each other."
Take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The world authority on climate change synthesizes disparate scientific findings on climate from around the globe. Those summaries by mandate must remain "policy neutral."
And so the IPCC and other scientific bodies offer little guidance to policy makers confronting the daunting pressures and details of a disrupted climate, whether it be fortifying levees, shifting energy policy, capping emissions or moving low-lying villages.
The solution, many experts agree, is a new level of cooperation on all political levels, from county commissions on up through the United Nations.
Where to start?
At the top is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC. Created at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the convention is more famous for its 1997 addendum known as the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto established concrete targets for reducing heat-trapping gases, with industrialized nations pledging to cut emissions to an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States did not sign it.
Kyoto has plenty of controversy: Only a third of global emissions are subject to the protocol; Greenhouse-gas emissions actually rose 24 percent from 1990 to 2004; China, now the world's leading producer of heat-trapping gases, faces no limits. But it also provided leadership and binding international targets. In countries that signed the treaty, Kyoto has helped spur renewable-energy subsidies, tougher energy-efficiency standards and the European Climate Exchange, a cap-and-trade market for emissions credits.
Diplomats have been ramping up for a post-Kyoto climate treaty for years. Talks in Poznan, Poland in December 2008 yielded little more than pledges to keep talking.
All hopes on a Kyoto successor now rest on this December's UN conference in Copenhagen. But American politics will probably get in the way, said Elliot Diringer, director of international strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
"If the U.S isn't ready to take a position, others won't, either," he said.
Domestic legislation would have to be passed first, Diringer said. But a key senator, Democrat Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, has said Congress is not likely to tackle the issue before 2010, given the financial crisis and other priorities. Still, Diringer said, he thinks Copenhagen could yield a concrete path forward with specific agreements to be negotiated.
"You could legitimately argue that the UNFCCC should be – and is likely to be – the place where things come together," he said. "But it won't all come from there."
Given the disarray at the top, some are looking to drive change from the grassroots, starting with education.
"The real answer is to not let anybody grow up anywhere in the world without realizing that their lives depend on ecosystem services, and that the availability of ecosystems services is tied quite tightly to how many people there are, how much one consumes and what kind of technologies are used to service that consumption," said Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford University professor of population studies.
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8 Comments
Add CommentVery good article. Shell is keenly interested in seeing additional coverage pointing out that a concerted action is required by governments to create long-term, market-based policies to manage climate change. Science and policy must converge to make this happen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery good article. Shell is keenly interested in coverage pointing out that a concerted effort is is required by governments to create long-term, market-based policies to manage climate change. Science and policy must converge to implement meaningful climate change solutions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlobal warming is real, but the way we have chosen to fight it is ineffective and will bankrupt us. Greenhouse gases already in the upper atmosphere are by definition irreversible (defined as 1,000 years or more even if we stop all greenhouse gas emissions today all over the world). What we can do is fund more research on geoengineering technologies to block, scatter, or reflect back approximately two percent of the sun's light/heat energy before it penetrates our atmosphere. This would not be a permanent solution to the problem of global warming and adverse climate change, but these technologies can not only stop but even reverse global warming the moment they are deployed. First we will have to fund the R&D and testing of the varied technologies available to us. Then we can deploy them and keep them operating to buy us the time to go green gradually without bankrupting ourselves. We will have the time to implement the Obama alternate energy plans, etc., but meanwhile we will be able to use the energy resources we already have such as clean coal (we still need more work to sequester the carbon dioxide produced by coal fired power plants, but we have more coal than any other country in the world, and we must use coal or we will not be able to compete and to get back our manufacturing industries). A consumer economy is a weak economy. We must make things that we can sell and export. Summary: We need to fund both the Obama alternate energy plan, but at a slower rate which we can afford. At the same time we must develop and deploy geoengineering technologies to buy us the time to go green at a rate we can afford, and at the same time have all of the energy resources that we need right here in our own country. Our climatologists, atmospheric scientists and astronomers mostly agree with this approach, but they are afraid to say anything too publicly for fear of losing their jobs and their reputations. Green hysteria has the upper hand, but the greens don't know anything about science or economics. Wake up, America. We can not only employ both approaches at the same time, but we must use both approaches to survive. The rest of the world will go along with us and buy these technologies from us if we develop them. Al Gore was half right -- global warming must be stopped, but we have to use science to accomplish this necessary goal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Ultimately, responding to global warming is a political issue." --Lorrie Goldstein, Sun, 16 March 2008
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"What I learned in the past few years is that politicians often adopt convenient policies that can be shown to be inconsistent with long-term success, given readily available scientific data and empirical information on policy impacts." --Dr Jim Hansen, NASA
In my opinion, severe carbon dieting is politically unfeasible, so politicians will give lip service to the necessity for carbon dieting while adopting incompatible policies.
"Even with the most assertive emissions-reduction targets, we're not talking about a real reduction in CO2 levels, we're talking a reduction in the rate of growth. Either we have to question the nature of industrial society, or we have to consider other solutions." --Jay Michaelson, Boston University, 2 April 2008
On the other hand, my opinion is also that the real cuprit is people who advocate unfeasible policies like severe carbon dieting, not the politicians who say what people want to hear, then do what people really want done.
"Japan, like the European Union, hasn't let its failure so far to meet Kyoto emissions-reductions targets stop it from setting even more ambitious goals, like a 50% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050. But how to do that? If getting within shouting distance of Kyoto's targets could cost Japan $500 billion, how much would it cost to cut emissions twelve-fold more?" --Keith Johnson, WSJ, 19 March 2008
Any carbon diet strategy would be dependent upon clean coal:
"The vast majority of new power stations in China and India will be coal-fired; not "may be coal-fired"; will be. So developing carbon capture and storage technology is not optional, it is literally of the essence." --"Breaking the Climate Deadlock," Tony Blair, June 26, 2008
But, Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, has estimated that capturing and burying just 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon d ioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide -- a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars. "Beware of the scale," he stressed."
"I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't: we may not be able to stop global warming. We need to begin curbing global greenhouse emissions right now, but more than a decade after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the world has utterly failed to do so. Unless the geopolitics of global warming change soon, the Hail Mary pass of geoengineering might become our best shot." --Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine, 17 March 2008
Can we not educate people on greener ways of living and then support that by incentives at the family level introduced by the government! All this talk of intergovernmental panels and global consensus on 2012 and beyond may address only a part of the problem unless voluntary involvement of people at large are ensured.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEverything is energy. Quantum physics is beginning to discover that everything is made of the same building blocks: waves, vibrations, frequencies, oscillations of energy from spirit to matter with a return current of matter to spirit. When the return current gets blocked the result is an imbalance much like a dead sea, all input and no (or very little) output resulting in stagnation and decay. The earth is out of balance because we are out of balance. We long ago cut ourselves off from the One Source of all life when through our pride we declared ourselves separate and unworthy to be what we were intended to be. Thus with no where to go, the Light, Energy and Consciousness with which we were originally endowed began to densify, stagnate and decay. The flow of life to us was diminished. And, endowed with the power to create we began to create in error misqualifying even the trickle of energy we still recieve from the Source. Fortunately there have been compassionately connected beings who have again and again come to help us learn to re-connect to the Source, otherwise we would be in a far worse state than we are in. Life seeks balance. We are in an accelerated period of time when misqualified energy is seeking redemption, what goes around comes around, sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. The densified, misqualified energy we have spewed forth can only be transmuted and changed by the power of Pure Light, Pure Energy, Pure Consciousness called forth from the original Source. We have that power. We can set aside our pride and egos and humbly ask for forgiveness. We can choose to forsake the carnal mind that thinks it has all the answers but does not. We can choose to go within our own hearts and make contact with the Higher Mind with which we were originally endowed. There is a law of octaves or frequencies that prevents those in those higher planes from interfering in the affairs of those in denser planes unless those inhabitants command them to enter in. They have the answers, they have the solutions, they have the energy needed to free us from current circumstances, even global warming, problems in the economy, wars, etc., etc. But, we must command and demand that they do so on our behalf. These are not aliens in flying saucers. These are beings of great light and attainment who long ago overcame circumstances similar to our own and returned to the Source as they were intended to do. They are known as the heavenly hosts and by other names, many that you do know. Call to them, they MUST answer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm a mechanical engineer and routinely, as part of my attributions, I do predictive assessments of machines operational conditions. Very often, much more than I would like, I have said that a certain machine needed to be stoped for maintenance during the next few days and I heard back: "can't we just run the machine (plant) for a few more month until the next plant scheduled maintenance?". Obviously, managers (and governments as well) are not aware that we can't change a progressing failure cause-effect relationship whithout interfering radically upon the system. Ultimately, the machine will stop all by itself, without asking anyone for permission and with damages far more extensive than there would should it have been stoped earlier.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey!!! I think I get it through all this babbling about beings of Light and the original Source! If some 99% of the world's inhabitants would return themselfs to the Light by cutting their own throats or ingesting poison then there would be less people left to destroy the environment! We're all going to dye anyways right?
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