Copenhagen: don't blame the Chinese – they may be part of the solution

By Tim Collard Last updated: December 20th, 2009

So the Copenhagen conference has provided endless opportunities for cynics like myself to say “I told you so”. But does the lack of a heavyweight deal mean that we have missed out on genuine substance, or just on some good headlines? And can we blame it all on China?
Certainly the Chinese leadership have done nothing to improve their image, with the usual classic communist obscurantist stuff about any internationally validated monitoring being an “infringement of sovereignty”. In other words, take our word for it or sod off. And who, exactly, trusts the Chinese government to provide accurate information? But, leaving that aside, are the Chinese necessarily so wrong in preferring a fairly toothless “declaration of intent” to a set of “binding” commitments?
Let’s look at the commitments that were so tragically missed out on. A strange mixture of means and ends; should the main emphasis have been on a percentage figure for a reduction in emissions, or on a target figure for increase in global temperature? (You may notice that I am keeping well out of the fundamental Anthropogenic-Global-Warming debate, or La Grande Delingpolerie: I am simply assuming that it may be as well to cut carbon emissions in any case, and that alternative energy sources, less dependent on dodgy parts of the world, are obviously a good idea.) Target figures are of course fine, but what would actually happen as limits were approached? Any volunteers to shut down the whole of industry for a year or so? Don’t all shout at once. Even with “binding” targets, the best we could expect is that everybody does the best they can, and if the targets can’t be met they’ll just be ignored or recalculated. So they’re no better than a vague declaration of intent in any case.
But restrictive commitments would have had one great benefit in certain eyes, namely those of the hair-shirt brigade. There are those for whom Western self-denial is not so much a necessary means, as an end in itself: the sacrifice, not the desirable result, is everything. The trouble is that this line really cannot be sold to the developing world: you can’t sell hair shirts to those who grew up in Mao suits. And no deal on the basis of “these restrictions only apply to whitey and not to the dear little coloured chaps” is going to pass muster anywhere west of Suez.
So we’re left cast up on the sharp-edged shingly shores of realism. What realism says is that the problems, whatever they may be, caused by carbon emissions will either be solved by human ingenuity and technological progress or they won’t. On the whole, human ingenuity is where the smart money is. And it so happens that the real fieldwork on alternative, low-carbon energy sources is being done more in China than anywhere else. Because they’re prepared to put the money into it. In the West no one’s got any money, no-one’s prepared to lend anyone any money, and no-one is prepared to invest any money except for the certainty of a large guaranteed income stream. But the Chinese government is prepared to keep the money taps flowing, for the time being at least.
So the Chinese are bound to stop a few brickbats for being part of the problem. But they may be a bigger part of the solution.