Experts call for pact on global warming

The Times
May 29, 2009
Gary Duncan in Munich

A deal this year to tackle global warming is the only way to avoid climate change, experts said on Thursday.
As governments prepare negotiating positions for the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December, pressure on leaders to reach agreement on a global compact was heightened as some economists and climate change experts said that national strategies to cut carbon emissions will fail.
The warnings came at an international debate on climate and energy at the annual Munich Economic Summit, organised by the CESIfo think-tank based in the Bavarian capital and the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, and supported by The Times.
Professor Hans-Werner Sinn, president of Munich's Ifo economics institute, attacked efforts to curb global warning by reining-in demand for energy. These efforts were futile and doomed to fail as they did not take proper account of how oil-producing countries would react, he said.

Measures to combat climate change focus on cutting amounts of carbon pumped into the atmosphere by curbing fuel use across the West, and so reducing the amount of fossil fuels extracted from the Earth. But Professor Sinn believes that because of the economics and politics of oil-producing states, they will keep up present levels of production of oil and gas even if lower Western consumption cuts the price they are paid for fuel.
The influential professor, one of Germany's top economists, believes that producing countries will keep up their output despite lower earnings as they will bet that climate change fears will lead to even tougher curbs and still lower prices in the future.
Addressing the Munich Summit, Professor Sinn insisted that only by ensuring that every big energy-using nation signed up to a global deal to curb energy use and emissions could these problems be circumvented.
Professor Sinn's analysis was dismissed by other experts at the conference, although they agreed that a comprehensive global deal was essential.