From science to statesmanship

Editorial
The Guardian, Saturday 14 March 2009

Acid oceans, rising seas and a planet so parched that half of it ends up being uninhabitable. Science fiction writers have long played with such ideas, but this week they were being set out in the course of science proper. Experts came to Copenhagen to update the projections which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published as recently as 2007. From average temperatures to deforestation, their forecasts show that the news is turning from bad to worse. The few morsels of more heartening analysis - such as the suggestion that the total destruction of the Greenland ice cap might be slightly more remote than we suspected - only served to underline that the dire overall picture was not the product of apocalyptic occultism, but of hard research conducted with open minds.
At the meeting's close, its conclusions were passed to the Danish prime minister - a neat way for the scientists to signify that they have done their bit, and it now falls to the politicians to pick up the agenda. The boffins were sufficiently scared by their findings to breach the usual self-denying ordinance against discussing policy. They insisted that something big must be done urgently; even if that is accepted, though, there is still lots for statesmen and women to talk about at their own Copenhagen summit in December. Their job is to devise a replacement for the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. The task will be shaped by shifts in politics and trade as much as by changes in forecasts about the climate.
Since the haggling over Kyoto, politics has evolved in ways which should expand what is possible. As Beijing starts to grapple with the damage the planet's slow roasting will inflict, it is becoming possible at least to imagine a carbon compact that could meaningfully tie in the developing world, something off-limits at Kyoto. Equally significant is political change in America. The point here is not merely the departure from the Oval Office of a man whose instinctive sympathies were with the deniers. Important though that is, it is as well to recall that even before George Bush's day the Clinton administration proved unable to secure the ratification of Kyoto. No, the real point is the wider collapse of the Bush brand of ultra-conservatism. There are still deniers and isolationists on Capitol Hill but, intellectually beaten and diminished in number, they may no longer be the obstacle to progress they once were.
While the politics are more propitious than last time the world got round the table to discuss climate, the globalisation of economic life ensures that there is now an awful lot more to thrash out. Kyoto held countries responsible for the carbon pumped out within their own borders. That principle had the great merits of simplicity and transparency, but now that so much pollution is being churned out in the poor world to service the needs of the rich it is an approach that will no longer do. Only last year China officially knocked the US off the top spot in the CO2 league table, and yet a new study this month has established that half of the rise in its emissions are down to its manufacturing of goods for export. Morally, there can be no doubt that where the west is consuming the polluting products, the west must face the consequences. A consumption-based system would, however, be too complex for the weak global institutions that currently exist to monitor and enforce.
The mismatch between economic globalisation and a political world still fragmented on national lines has just been exposed by the banking crisis. When the risk is physical rather than financial meltdown, the stakes are higher still. Either economic integration must be complemented by stronger global governance or else the only way to save the planet will be to put globalisation into reverse. The former is the better option, but it will take leadership. If that emerges in Copenhagen, the city will go down in the history books as wonderful indeed.