Written by Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC (December 5^th 2011)

In the early years of the Conference of the Parties (COPs) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the European Union along with the Nordic countries was generally seen to be in the vanguard of both climate science and of dealing with the crisis through binding agreements to reduce greenhouse emissions, such as the Kyoto Protocol. Even someone as politically conservative as Margaret Thatcher gave leadership on the climate issues, at least, verbally. In her now famous speech to the Royal Society on September 27^th 1988 she told the assembled scientists, “For generations we have assumed that the efforts of humankind (mankind) would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world’s systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (populations, agriculture, and the use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the systems of the planet itself.”

The European Union was also in the forefront of countries which were tackling greenhouse emissions and were also willing to make significant funding available to poor countries to protect themselves against the massive problems which climate change is, and will continue to cause to poor countries. During the Presidency of George W. Bush when the US negotiators were denying the reality of climate change, European research centres such as The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change Centre constantly conducted seminars and briefings during the various COPs debunking much of what the US negotiators were saying. In the process many people, including myself were educated about the finer points of climate change.

The Impact of the Financial Collapse in 2008

But things began to change, especially after the financial collapse in 2008. The global financial crisis overshadowed both COP 14 at Poznan in Poland and COP 15 at Copenhagen. Copenhagen was supposed to deliver a fair, ambitious and binding deal on climate change. Over 100 hundred leaders from countries around the world, including the newly elected President Obama, descended on Copenhagen in what was expected to be a victory parade. In fact it turned into a political nightmare. Presidents and Prime Ministers had to return to their countries with nothing in their hands expect a toothless Copenhagen Accord.

Things have become much worse economically in Europe in the run up to COP 17 in Durban this year. European leaders and many of their people are now almost entirely focused on their own financial woes and even their survival. For example on the third day of the Durban Climate Conference, almost every item on the front page of the Financial Times was devoted to the financial crisis which is sweeping through European. Not a word about COP17.

Already Greece, Ireland and Portugal have been forced into punitive bail-out deals with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission. These swinging cuts are eroding the living standards which these countries have achieved during the past two decades. The headlines on the front page of the Financial Times on December 1, 2011, “Central Banks’ move lifts markets,” made it clear that politicians around the world are afraid that the problems in European economies would spread across the Atlantic and even on to the new Asian Tigers of China and India. They fear that this will plunge the world, not just into another recession such as experienced in the 1970s, but into a depression like the one which swept across the world in the late 1920s and lasted through much of the 1930s, in some places right up to World War II.

Britain is also on the rope, financially

European financial problems are not confined to the euro. On the same front page, Sean O’Connor and Sarah Neville report on a recent study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies in Britain. The headline says it all “Britons will be worse off in 2015 than in 2002.” What people find most worrying is that politicians and economists do not seem to be able to devise a viable system which will lift countries of out the mess which was caused by reckless lending by banks which were poorly regulated. When the bubble burst, the taxpayer was left to pick up the costs which run in to hundreds of billions of pound. Most people do not believe in the current financial mantra which claims that drastic cuts in expenditure will pave the way to economic growth in three or four year. Ordinary people believe that those who lent money recklessly should now share the burden of solving the current financial crisis before it further crushes people and exacerbates environmental damage.

Tens of thousands of people marched in various cities across Britain on November 30^th 2011 to express their angry at the government’s austerity initiatives – tax hikes, reduced pensions and poorer public services. They are angry at being forced to pay for a financial crisis which they did not cause. Many are what The Guardian called ‘strike rookies’ who until now would not support industrial strikes. Now they are fearful about what the future holds for them and possibly their children. Seamus Milne wrote in The Guardian that “when real incomes are being forced down for the majority, as directors’ pay has risen 49% and the bank bonuses have topped £14 billion, that’s an aim most people have no problem identifying with. Across the entire workforce there’s little disagreement about who’s been ‘reckless’ and ‘greedy’ and it isn’t public sector workers.” [1]

Where will the money to deal with climate change come from?

Furthermore, in the light of the precarious condition of the public purse right across Europe, finding the vast sums of money to meeting climate targets and obligations is going to be difficult. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that holding global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius means cutting emissions by 85% by 2050. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that this will require an investment of $18 trillion by 2035.[2] Convincing ordinary people who are already hurting to commit vast sums of money to reducing emissions will not be easy. It calls for leadership qualities which few of our politicians actually possess.

A Collapse of the Euro would be a disaster for climate policy

Sadly, the focus of European political leaders this week is not on the climate negotiations in Durban but on whether the euro, and even the union itself, will survive. The collapse of either would have a profound effect on the architecture of European climate policy. Writing in the NewScientist in October 2011, David Strahan, who is a former BBC correspondent, stated that “for a start the Emissions Trading System would be unlikely to survive. True, the ETS has been widely criticised as ineffectual, but the system at least imposes an international framework which could be strengthened and expanded. That would all be swept away, along with any obligation for countries to deliver their 2020 targets on emissions, renewable and energy efficiency.” [3]

Europe adopting a more hard line position

One of the first disappointments for many participants from CSOs organisations here at Durban is in the figures for latest mitigation targets which have already been submitted by the EU. They are certainly not ambitious. The EU has pledged a 20% cut in emissions by 2020. But emission reductions in the EU in 2009 were already 17.3% below 1990, so a 20% target for 2020 is practically already achieved. In addition, if the EU implemented its existing renewable energy and efficiency targets, this would result in a domestic emission reduction of 25% by 2020 as acknowledged by the European Commission in the Low Carbon Roadmap published in March 2011. Where are the ambitions of a 30% or even 40% reduction by 2025 which were floated in Bali four years ago gone?

Abandoning the Kyoto Protocol

It also appears that the EU has gone wobbly on the Kyoto Protocol (KP), even though it was one of the architects of that Protocol back in 1997. Countries such as Russia, Canada and even Japan have indicated that they will not sign up to a second phase of the KP unless other developed and newly industrialised countries such as China, India, South Africa and Brazil also come on board. Joanna Mackowia-Pandera, the Polish undersecretary of state for the environment, has said that, “It’s very important that other major economies join in the effort (to combat climate change). It would not make sense for only the EU to take on a second commitment under the Kyoto Protocol,”

Most environmental organisations here at Durban are alarmed at the prospect of the KP being buried here at Durban. They are pushing for a second phase of a legally binding treaty with the negotiations between the parties to be concluded by 2015, so that the treaty can come into effect by 2018. The EU seems to be stalling on this and supporting an eight year second commitment but the sting in the tail is that it would only come into effect by 2021. The scientists are clearly saying that such delays could be disastrous.

Not everyone in Europe is happy with the role being played by the US and EU here at Durban. The ‘Old Labour’, straight talking and often straight punching Lord John Prescott called a spade a spade when he told the BBC on December 2^nd 2011, that those who are attempting the scupper Kyoto are hurting the poor.