What if the IPCC were wrong? 7 February, 2010
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Global Warming, IPCC, Peak oil, sustainability.1 comment so far
The credibility of the UN’s climate watchdog has been seriously hit recently through the effective attacks by climate deniers. Several “scandals” (“Climategate”, “Glaciergate” ) have exposed that even the best peer-reviewed study will have its human flaws. Although all these episodes tell us something about the communication war which is being won by the deniers and their sponsors [see NY Times: “Signs of damage to public trust in climate findings”), in essence none of these “revelations” changes anything about the validity of the science. The only thing these stories do confirm is that “predictions” are always a dangerous undertaking. And this goes in two directions. Maybe the Himalayan glaciers will not disappear by 2035 but then the IPCC prediction that the Arctic will be completely ice-free by 2100 has also been invalidated by more recent scientific work. But this “Arcticgate” is, of course, a no-go for the deniers.
That said, I myself start to believe the IPCC’s analysis might indeed by wrong on several accounts. But this assessment has more to do with the absence in the IPCC of certain experts who could throw a different light on certain future developments than with all the “gates” opened by the latest “revelations”. By focusing nearly exclusively on biophysical climate models, the IPCC scientists might be missing some global trends which could seriously affect the way global warming will continue in the future. Let me explain.
There are at least two blind spots in the IPCC’s analysis: the reports ignore the trend of peaking fossil fuels and the effects of a prolonged economic decline.
Since more than 3 years, Swedish physics professor Kjell Aleklett has argued that the worst scenarios of the IPCC are unrealistic because they overestimate the amount of carbon that can be emitted from fossil fuels at an economic price. Aleklett, who is sometimes unjustly placed in the climate skeptics’ camp, argues that we will run out of affordable fossil fuels before these can do the damage which the IPCC predicts (see “The UN’s future scenarios for climate are pure fantasy”). Although his analysis might be incorrect (he might be underestimating the resilience and the lobbying power of the fossil fuels lobby), I think the IPCC would do well to look more carefully into peak energy and its effects in its upcoming reports.
Secondly, the current economic crisis has been a blessing in terms of carbon emissions. Thanks to the global depression, more emissions reductions have been achieved than those resulting from policy measures. What if the 2008-9 economic depression were only the foreplay of a longer economic (and social) descent as a result of declining essential resources? Maybe the current financial crisis is only the first mild sign of a new economic era, where one crisis will follow another and each will hit a little bit harder every time. What would be the effects on the IPCC scenarios?
Am I saying we should forget about the IPCC and its apocalypse scenarios? Of course not, but maybe it is time for the IPCC scientists and the policy-makers to look at the broader picture instead of just fixing all their attention on the climate dimension of our civilization crisis. The IPCC would regain credibility by doing so and the climate deniers would have to re-adjust their flawed strategies.
Progress without GDP-growth? 28 January, 2010
Posted by Willy De Backer in Beyond GDP, Economic growth, European Commission, Financial crisis, Green New Deal, economic crisis, sustainability, sustainable development.add a comment
The thought that we can have human progress without constant economic growth is absolute nonsense for most political and business decision-makers. And their scepticism is understandable. Look at what negative growth has brought about over the last 18 months in terms of people losing their jobs or houses and governments blowing up their financial deficits.
That said, the debate about limits to economic growth and the “post-growth” economy for the developed world is re-igniting. There was a similar debate in the 1970s but it had very little impact on the traditional narrative of societal progress. Now, with the climate crisis, new resource scarcity and other unsustainable trends (biodiversity, water, soil, food), the issue is back on the table, although not yet seriously on the political agenda. Only a “narrower” debate about the measuring of economic growth has reached some policy-makers (the EU’s “GDP and beyond”, the Stiglitz-Sen report for French President Sarkozy and the OECD project “Measuring the progress of societies”).
There are some new developments though which indicate that the subject might become a political hot potato in the next years, especially if the current economic crisis might go into a second round and our developed economies find it hard to get back to 3% GDP growth figures and more.
- In France, there is a strong movement of “décroissance” (de-growth) which gets regular attention even in established media like Le Monde.
- In the UK, the Sustainable Development Commission last year published an excellent study “Prosperity without growth?”, questioning the traditional “green economy” narrative of “decoupling economic growth from its resource use and environmental impacts”.
- Last week, the British New Economic Foundation came out with another, even more radical report which asserts that “Growth isn’t possible” .
- And, last but not least, in an interview with The Ecologist, Deutsche Bank senior economist Pavan Sukhdev says: “I do believe society can get better, people can get happier and economies can get more robust whilst not actually increasing GDP, production or growing in the classical way”.
Unfortunately, at EU-level, these new stories about future prosperity and the REAL transformative agenda are seriously absent from the EU-2020 Post-Lisbon strategy debate.
Davos 2010: right place, wrong story 26 January, 2010
Posted by Willy De Backer in Business and climate change, Climate change, one-planet economy, sustainability, sustainable development.add a comment
It is that time of year again. The time that anyone who has any influence (and the illusion of power) will want to be on the snow hills of Swiss Davos to show off how important he or she is. And yes, I would not mind being there myself but, then again, I probably do not have the story “Davos-man” loves to hear. Nor do I have the influence 
This year’s Davos has as its motto “Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild”.
- Rethink “business models, financial innovation and risk management”;
- Redesign “institutions, policies and regulations”, and
- Rebuild “trust”.
Wonderful how these PR companies always manage to find “3-somethings” for what needs to be done (yes, guilty myself too, this blog being called 3E…).
Problem is: there are a few RE’s missing if we want to have the correct diagnosis of our failing economic system and as every good doctor knows: without good diagnosis, no good medicine.
What about resilience (to the coming shocks of our “long descent”) and re-discovering biophysical limits to growth? After the “Great Reckoning” (Gillian Tett in the FT), maybe it is time to start re-questioning our economic growth paradigm and to review our concept of prosperity?
I wonder when Davos Man will have the courage to tackle those questions. Always ready to come to Davos 2011, Mr Schwab, to put these challenges to your favorite power elites!
On a serious note: Tim Jackson, author of the wonderful “Prosperity without growth” had a great article about the real big questions recently, appropriately called “Beyond the rhetoric”.
Meet the new Green Global Commander-in-Chief 24 January, 2010
Posted by Willy De Backer in Business and climate change, Climate change, Global Warming.add a comment
Time had an interesting story about Richard Branson at the end of last month. Apparently the business “visionary” (some would say “maverick”) has taken Lester Brown’s metaphor of climate change action as being similar to the Second World War mobilization a bit too serious.
“Virgin” Branson has set up the Carbon War Room, a new think tank to harness “the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change”.
I guess this is what happens when some people just have too much money, whereas others are struggling to find the financing for sustainability projects which would really make a difference.
Although I agree with Branson that “the world needs entrepreneurial leadership to create a post-carbon economy”, I am still not convinced that the war metaphor is the best way to go about this. It feels to me a bit too close to that other war metaphor, President Bush’s famous “war on terrorism”.
Why does this climate war metaphor fail? Because there is no REAL enemy but for the enemy of our own greed, our political and business obsession with economic growth and our consumer passion to buy, consume and throw away and replace quickly stuff we actually to not need. So much for “market-driven solutions”! And, oops, as the Time article says: “Branson has no interest in any solution to global warming that would involve cutting back on the growth of business or, ultimately, consumption”.
Lester Brown and Richard Branson seem to forget that a war actually makes a lot of innocent victims and destroys lives. It also quickly leads to the call for authoritarian leaders, prisoners of wars and exceptions to the rules of human rights. Furthermore, even if the metaphor would work, climate change is only one of the theatres of this war. What about the new energy scarcity, water, biodiversity, soil and all the other “enemies”?
I am sorry, Mr Branson, but I guess the road to our peace with nature will have to be a lot less violent but also a lot more difficult than playing Churchill.
The climate change backlash and the case for ecological sustainability 22 January, 2010
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Copenhagen, Global Warming, resource depletion, sustainability.2 comments
More than a year ago I predicted on this blog that there was going to be a public backlash against the political climate change narrative.
The year 2009 confirmed this prediction with several surveys indicating serious decreases in public understanding and awareness of the urgency to tackle global warming. More recently two different events have started questioning the political and social consensus on this issue.
There is first and foremost a communication war being fought which the climate deniers are clearly winning. Although what they have overdramatically labelled “Climategate” does in no way dispel the validity and credibility of the IPCC report of global warming, it has given very effective ammunition to those who want to undermine any past and future policies on carbon mitigation. The latest Himalayan glaciers blunder (“Glaciergate” according to some, for a less ideological assessment, see RealClimate’s “The IPCC is not infallible”) will only add to people’s skepticism about the science and the politics of climate change and it will further undermine the political story of climate change.
Secondly, the failure of the Copenhagen climate top has clearly demonstrated that the complex and costly UNFCCC process does not deliver (and will most likely not deliver at the end of 2010 in Mexico either). For a good overview of the critiques, see Christian Science Monitor (“Kyoto to Copenhagen: Why UN’s glacial global warming talks need overhaul”)
So with the political hegemonic narrative and the transnational negotiating process under fire, what does that mean for policymakers and businesses? Should they just go back to ”business as usual” and forget about the dreams and aspirations for a low-carbon society or a green New Deal? Translated to EU level, is there no danger that the new EU commissioner for climate change will have to fight a five-year struggle to keep climate on the agenda, a non-winnable battle equal in hopelessness like her Scandinavian colleague Margot Wallström in the last five years on EU communication policy?
I have always claimed that for policymakers it is dangerous to look at only one of the sustainability challenges. The exclusive focus of the EU commission (and most governments) on global warming has left them open to the current communication backlash.
The crisis of sustainability is like the Greek mythological Hydra: if you chop off one head, two other ones will grow. As long as you do not target the right spot, the battle with the hydra cannot be won. And this right spot (the heart of the “unsustainability” beast) is not the warming climate, it is our capitalist-industrial economy and the way we are producing and consuming. Our current economic model (which is unfortunately being copied big time by the emerging economic superpowers) is not sustainable in the long run because it has to overexploit the ecological capital which has made this model possible in the first place. What we should be looking for is not the victory in the climate communication battle or to put more efforts in the transnational climate circus. No, what we need is to produce the blueprint and the real life examples for a new resource-constrained, global and equitable prosperity. We do not need 20% or 30% emission targets (which will always be seen as costs to competitiveness no matter how many Stern reports we produce). We do need new much more positive stories of how to work, produce and consume within the one-planet limits and how to transform our ways of life to one of more respect for the limits that this planet sets us.
It is time for the European Union to start focusing on this “prosperity within limits” debate. Unfortunately, in its current new strategy for 2020, there is no indication that the new Barroso commission has understood this REAL challenge to Europe’s future prosperity and competitiveness. Maybe the new climate commissioner can redefine her priorities?
The future of sustainable transport without the hot air 15 January, 2010
Posted by Willy De Backer in Car technologies, Sustainable transport, aviation.add a comment
A new report (“Future of Mobility Roadmap”) published this week by the Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment provides great insight into the challenges and opportunities for future green transport. The Times picked up the report by focussing on the false hopes raised by car producers for an emissions-free transport in the future: “Car companies are raising false hopes of emission-free motoring in order to continue profiting from large, fuel-hungry vehicles, according to a study”.
I would hope the report could be required reading for new transport commissioner Kallas and his Directorate general for Transport.
The decade of ecological limits 29 December, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, economic crisis, sustainability.add a comment
How will historians in 50 years look back on the first ten years of this century? Will they name it the “decade of terror” as the Financial Times (and lots of other media) suggest? Not if you look at the number of people (one in every 10,000 deaths) killed by terror acts, according to Canadian journalist and historian Gwynne Dyer (“The United States empire takes a hit in the ‘Noughties’").
Will it go into history as the “bubble decade”, as CNBC proposes?
Or should we call it the “decade of climate change” (National Geographic), focusing once again on one of the symptoms and not the root cause of what went wrong in the last ten years?
But maybe we should not concentrate on the “bads” and look at the “goods”, the lessons we learned during the last ten years. That is what Paul Krugman does in the NY Times (“The Big Zero”). He looks at all that was promised at the beginning of the decade, the “economic triumphalism” (the New Economy, the Lisbon Knowledge Society) and what was really achieved: “zero job creation”, “zero economic gains for the typical family”, “zero gains” for homeowners and for stocks. No, “what was truly impressive about the decade past … was our unwillingness … to learn from our mistakes”, says Krugman, and he concludes rightly: “So let’s bid a not at all fond farewell to the Big Zero — the decade in which we achieved nothing and learned nothing. Will the next decade be better?”
Before I try to answer that question, let me try to give this decade its proper name. What about the “decade of ecological limits”? I know it might not sound as good as some of the alternatives mentioned but I think it will be closer to what historians will make of it in 40 years’ time.
Because, let’s face it, what we discovered this decade, is that our exuberant, materialistic and consumption-driven Western way of life, when imitated and reproduced by others (China, India, Brazil), will undermine the very fundamentals on which it is built (healthy ecosystems, social cohesion, cheap energy).
Climate change, peak oil, biodiversity collapse, water scarcity and other threats have brought back the debate of the unjustly forgotten and underestimated Club of Rome’s ‘limits to growth” and all the hopes of “green capitalism” born from a new social contract or Green New Deal will still have to prove its ability to live within these new limits. We will need a new global narrative on what is real prosperity and how to achieve it. There are signs of the beginning of this paradigm change but a real working alternative is still a long way off.
I think the next decade will be a decade of protecting (ecosystems and people), conserving (peace and prosperity) and sharing (resources and wealth). What this means for politics is unclear. I am not convinced the current return to neo-Keynesianism and state intervention (which is generally personified by leftist policies) is the right way. We could well see the rise of a new social and ecological conservatism based on values and a new humanistic spirituality.
Whatever 2010 will bring in terms of economic recovery, it will only be a temporary phenomenon and the age of permanent recessions (every time a bit worse) may well be upon us. Others have called this the “long descent”.
The next decade we will hit more of these ecological (and social) limits and if we do not learn to live within these limits, there will be lots of violence, wars and suffering. The “spirit of Copenhagen” does not bode well for the future. Could we be on our way to a repeat of the first fifty years of the 20th century, where we needed two world wars before learning our lessons?
Post-Copenhagen: Danes from another planet and who will save us? 23 December, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Copenhagen, Global Warming, sustainability.add a comment
Here are some more interesting commentaries on the Copenhagen fall-out (see also my previous “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting”)
Thomas Friedman (again, sorry but he is prolific and always good) in the NY Times looks at the “Copenhagen that matters”, the capital of a country where political leaders have had the courage to introduce higher energy taxes to stimulate innovation and stay competitive. Friedman jokes Danes must be from another planet, compared to his own America: “How long are we Americans going to go on thinking that we can thrive in the 21st century when doing the optimal things — whether for energy, health care, education or the deficit — are “off the table.” They’ve been banished by an ad hoc coalition of lobbyists loaded with money, loud-mouth talk-show hosts who will flame anyone who crosses them, political consultants who warn that asking Americans to do anything important but hard makes one unelectable and a citizenry that doesn’t even ask for optimal anymore because it believes that optimal is impossible.”
In Le Monde, French politician and Member of the European Parliament Corinne Lepage is hard on her colleagues: “Il est désormais clair qu’il n’est plus possible de faire confiance aux politiques, devenus des hommes d’affaires et non des responsables politiques, pour reprendre l’expression du président brésilien Lula, pour résoudre les problèmes du monde. Le court terme et les visions géostratégiques l’emportent sur le fondamental : notre survie.
Il restera de l’année 2009 que les dirigeants du monde ont été capables de sauver les banques et de leur allouer des milliers de milliards de dollars sans contrepartie, mais ont été incapables de mobiliser quelques dizaines de milliards de dollars pour éviter la disparition de zones entières, l’exode de millions de personnes, l’accroissement de la famine et de la pauvreté de millions d’autres ou les conséquences humaines des phénomènes extrêmes”. That said, I guess Lepage is still very much dreaming when she thinks civil society and the South can be mobilised in a big climate coalition.
When it comes to what people really want (remember the Spice Girls), I am afraid Eric Le Boucher comes much closer to the truth in Slate.fr when he writes: "La victoire d’Obama et Wen, c’est la remise de l’économie au dessus de l’écologie, ou plus exactement l’émergence de l’idée que la solution ne peut que venir du mariage des deux”. And as to the South: “on comprend que toutes les nations ne sont pas comme les nôtres, riches, vieilles, repues, adeptes de la décroissance. Non, au sud on veut des usines, du chauffage et des voitures!”. What we need, says techno-optimist Le Boucher, is an alternative driven by science and technology and a gigantic investment in research and development. I agree with that point but simply wishing away the ecological limits to technology and growth will not make the world less safe, Eric. You can call this Malthusianism, but the fact is Malthus was right, although he had overlooked the coming oil age.
So when not technology and not politicians nor civil society, who has the key to our common future? Well, as Dan Box states in the (not always pro-business) Ecologist: “Politicians have failed, business is now our only hope”. More on that and on the need for NGOs to rethink and radicalise their strategies after Copenhagen in another post.
EU climate policy after Copenhagen: time to stall or take real one-planet economy leadership? 22 December, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, European Commission, European Union, Global Warming, sustainability.add a comment
The EU is without any doubt one of the biggest losers of the Copenhagen debacle. Not only did its future climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard make a pretty bad impression leading the debates but in the geopolitical Earthquake of shifting global power relations the EU was dramatically absent. Apparently it was not even invited around the table when the final Accord was being discussed between Obama, Wen, Zuma, Lula and Singh.
So how should the EU redefine its climate-energy policy after Copenhagen?
I think it should first of all stop bragging about its so-called climate/energy leadership. It has been a leader more on rhetoric than on real action, even if some of its actions and instruments might have been well-meant. But a genuine European long-term low-resources strategy towards a resilient and sustainable society is still a long way off and the recent EU-2020 document of the commission (the post-Lisbon strategy) is again heavier on hollow phrases than on practical workable solutions. This is, of course, not only the Commission’s fault. The EU-27 are so divided in their understanding of the need and urgency for a green economy that it will always be hard to find a common strategy. But until it is able to redefine its own political project, its influence will keep on waning. This means it should not focus on rhetorical climate and energy targets à la 20-20-20 (or have a big debate now whether it should move to 30%) but it should start to take thought and vision leadership and help its member states to redesign their economic policies from short-term GDP-growth obsessions to a “new prosperity”-based on a “people and planet first” paradigm.
The EU institutions should become the think-tank and avant-garde for Thomas Friedman’s “Earth race”. It should focus on all the amazing pockets of sustainability (in terms of business and governance practices and ideas) which exist within its borders and take real leadership in this quest for new prosperity in an age of declining natural resources.
That said, it will have to resist the recommendations from some “old-economy“ business circles to downgrade its green policies. Now more than ever, it is time to take real leadership, whatever the climate and EU sceptics will say.
Does Tom Friedman read 3eIntelligence? 20 December, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Global Warming.add a comment
The American author and three times Pulitzer prize winner agrees with my analysis two days ago that we need a new race, a race to become the first low-carbon, low-resource country in the world in his latest comment on the outcome of the Copenhagen summit. Friedman argues that we need a new strategy to combat climate change, one which does play to the self-interest of nations instead of the moral arguments about global warming. He wants to replace the “Earth Day” strategy with an “Earth Race” strategy:
“I believe that averting catastrophic climate change is a huge scale issue. The only engine big enough to impact Mother Nature is Father Greed: the Market. Only a market, shaped by regulations and incentives to stimulate massive innovation in clean, emission-free power sources can make a dent in global warming. And no market can do that better than America’s.
Therefore, the goal of Earth Racers is to focus on getting the U.S. Senate to pass an energy bill, with a long-term price on carbon that will really stimulate America to become the world leader in clean-tech. If we lead by example, more people will follow us by emulation than by compulsion of some U.N. treaty.”
That said, I am a bit less optimistic about the wisdom of the market and the vision of political leaders to see the light. Also, as a good American Friedman still believes green technologies will save the day. Maybe he should read 3eIntelligence a bit more
