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"Aka Et Tu, Brutus?" : The deliverance of Climate Change Justice and Regulatory Regime

 

Seminar on Global Environmental Policy and Law

Semester 98-1

Class Reflection Paper

李崇菱 Tsung Ling Lee[1]

R95A41013

 

        The much anticipated climate negotiations in Copenhagen ended in failure last week as it failed to conclude any binding legal instrument; the collapse of international negotiations between 193 countries to produce a binding treaty highlights the inherent political difficulties in conducting international negotiations, even though the failure to do so would result in foreseeable catastrophic consequences. While the blaming game continues long after the conclusion of Copenhagen, the outcome of the 2009 Copenhagen negotiation is a general three-page last minute statement, the “Copenhagen Accord,” as compare to the 1997 negotiations in Kyoto where it produced a detailed twenty-page document, the “Kyoto Protocol”. While President Obama characterized the new Accord as “an important first step”, the disappointing Copenhagen Accord nevertheless reveals one simple political reality, the apparent lack of political will to sign a just and binding climate change treaty is because the negotiations were conducted based on national interests. The traditional reliance on dialogues based on state-centric thinking when tackling a transnational problem is essentially doomed to failure from the beginning, as the premises for negotiators to bargain are based and confined by national interests, thus the big picture, that is, the common interests are often disregarded during the haggling process, as each country bargains and seeks the best bargain solution curtailed and defined by national interests instead of global interests. 

 

I. Multilevel Engagements and the deficiency of the Copenhagen Accord

        However, because past patterns of extreme weather and climate trends have revealed larger regional variations, such as droughts in wet regions and floods in dry regions;[2] the difficulty and political hindrance in agreeing on a feasible global action, signals the need for decision makers to exert influence elsewhere. Particularly when dealing with climate change, which is essentially transnational issue, then engagements at multilevel would be far more effective and suitable to deal with the scale and magnitude of the problem. Hence, at international level where no binding agreement can be reached, then at sub-national, national, local levels, actionable measures must be taken to compensate for the failures at international level. In other words, when the deliverance of climate change justice is unattainable through the “top-down” approach, then the exertion of force must be mobilized from elsewhere, in order to force the climate regime to change at international level. Mobilized worldwide grassroots action concurrently with national legislators across the world, could initiate and set forth momentum to force actions at international level. Sub-national governments must work together as they share and experience the same weather patterns, and are at better positions to formulate adaptations suitable to the regional context; as well as building on knowledge and infrastructures through collaborative means, would enable them to share expertise and draw from other’s experiences, and in the long run, resources are better utilised to combat global warming. Hence, with engagements at multilevel which exert pressures at international level and in term influence political decision process would more or less compensate for the miserable attempt of saving the world in Copenhagen.

 

II. Climate change justice and Policy Instruments

        One of the problematic characteristic of climate change, as illustrated and manifested clearly in Copenhagen is that those who are in the best position to address the problem are often those who caused it, as well as being those with the least immediate incentive to act. Although to tackle climate change requires uniform and collective action, as all parts of the world can determine the course of future climate patterns, the reality is, not all parts of the world will suffer equally. Island nations are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather and the rising of sea levels with a rise of degrees, while others will suffer relatively little as they are better equipped with adaptation technology and wealth, and ironically, locate on parts of world least affected by climate change. As such, the inherent distributional dimension of climate change means that to achieve the needed international cooperation and coordination is essentially exceedingly difficult. Long term sustainability is only possible through strong political wills and coalition at international level. Nevertheless, in the absence of effective global climate regulatory regime, how individual state-actors chose to implement and execute their own climate mitigations must not be overlooked as it reveals the quiet green revolutions at national level, and the determination of domestic policymakers to step ahead and to survive in the global competition in mist of climate chaos.

 

        Institutional reforms at national level are critical to understand the dynamics and the state of play of individual state actors. Most importantly, the study into climate policy adaptations in the United States and China, the two biggest carbon emitters in the world, reveals both the United States and China do take climate change seriously, though neither of them are committed nor willing to manifest this commitment at international level. Interestingly, the two nations with different socioeconomic and cultural structure, also adopted different policy instruments to combat climate change. The most discussed climate policy instruments, “the command and control” regulation which applies uniform emission limits on polluters, regardless of each firm might has different emission reduction costs. Whereas economic incentive instruments ensure that polluters face direct cost incentives to mitigate emission at the lowest possible cost, thus indirectly enforce behaviour change of firms at individual level. Beside these two commonly discussed policy instruments, whether government subsidise and invest in climate innovations and technologies also affect the future climate discourse. Interestingly, this is where China and the United States departed as the socialist China through its authoritarian regime reinforces their commitment to new energy technology investment via state political power. Whereas as the capitalist United States, encourages technology innovations through private investments and venture capitalism, all of which are dependent on market mechanism.

 

A. China and the 863 Program

        Since 2006 when China surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest carbon emitter, and if China’s emission rate is constant at present rate, the country will emit more greenhouse gases in the next three decades than the United States has in its entire history.[3] Thus the question is not longer confined to China’s ability to combat climate change, but rather, how China implement its national policy will affect other countries. As once the largest oil exporters in East Asia, China faced the problem of energy security as the prosperity of the country was exclusively dependent on oil tankers imported from distant lands. At the same time, China derived its electricity supply as much as eight per cent from coal, all of which hasten climate changes that undermine China’s future stability. As rising sea levels is potentially threatening to China more so than in any other country as it create more environmental refugees on Earth, even than its small neighbour, Bangladesh.

        Recognising the future threats to their survival, Chinese leaders in 2006 embarked and endorsed a new commitment to new energy technology, and boosted funding for research and set targets for installing wind, solar panels, hydroelectric dams, and other renewable sources of energy.[4]In 2008, China became the largest manufacturer of solar in the world, and renewable energy alone attracted USD 150 billion in new investment. So long as China can ensure a continued growth rate of fifteen percent per annum would ensure that renewable technologies would be equal footing with oil, gas, and coal in the next two decades[5]. China’s President Hu Jintao, declared to the world in October this year China must “seize pre-emptive opportunities in the new round of global energy revolution.” The rate and scale of China’s ambition is astonishing. David Sandalow, the United States Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs in an interview for New Yorker article, remarked on China’s effects in renewable energy is “extraordinary”, and the implication for American, is clear: “Unless the United States makes investments, we are not competitive in the clean-tech sector in the years and decades to come”.

 

        The 863 program, named after the year and month of its inception, is responsible for spurring out innovations regardless of risks and costs, which usually deter private company. Unlike western venture capitalism, the notion of attempting to pick “winners and losers” is not common in China; rather through its centralized power and enormously generous government funding, highly experimental projects are likely to survive through to the developmental stage. For example, for R & D expenditures in China, between 1991 and 2005, investment in energy research has grown in nearly fifty fold. Moreover, R & D investment amount to seventy billion dollars in 2007 alone. Nevertheless, despite China’s energy investment which is competitive in terms of scale and size, its infamous Chinese bureaucracy tradition might hinder its success. As an editorial last year in Nature summaries it, “An even deeper question is whether a truly vibrant scientific culture is possible without a more widespread societal commitment to free expression.”[6]

B. The United States and its Energy Policies

        Whereas in the United States, the world’s second largest greenhouse gases emitter, energy policies have gone differently. President Jimmy Carter announced in April of 1977 when America went into the hunt for new energy sources, as result of the second Arab oil embargo, as the “moral equivalent of war”. Public investment in energy research was nearly quadrupled in funding, and the United States comfortably lead in clean technology by the mid-nineteen-eighties, where more than fifty per cent of the world’s solar cells and ninety per cent of the wind power were manufactured in the United States. When the Regan administration came into power, the deregulation and acting on a pledge to abolish the Department of Energy, investment in energy research also were reduced, which continued for another quarter of a century. By 2006, the United States government was investing $1.4 billion a year on clean energy. The alarming fall startled the American scientists, and warning came in 2005 in the form of a landmark report titled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” produced by the top science advisory body, the National Academics, which urged the government to boost energy investment written in strong languages by Steven Chu, then the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and now the Secretary of Energy, and Robert Gates, the former C.I.A. director and now the Secretary of Defense —“We fear the abruptness with which a lead in science and technology can be lost—and the difficulty of recovering a lead once lost, if indeed it can be regained at all.”[7]The call was responded by the Congress in 2007 but the Bush Administration questioned the credibility and dismissed the possible role government can play, the investment role the Bush Administration believed should be left to the private sector, and the funding was never allocated. The Obama Administration vowed to restore American’s lead in science and technology, where the input of governmental funding and investment are at a level not seen since the space race. While busy repairing the energy legacy of the Bush Administration, Obama remarked “The nation that leads the world in twenty-first-century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the twenty-first-century global economy,” and in his usual charm and charisma, encouraging and assuring for Americans in characteristically Obama style, “I believe America can and must be that nation.” The injection of more than thirty-eight billion dollars into the Department of Energy for renewable energy marked the determination of the Obama Administration.

 

III. Conclusion

        While the Copenhagen did not deliver any binding agreement, as Ban Ki-moon bluntly admits that the Copenhagen Accord “many will say it lacks ambition”, the Accord put together informally by America, China, India and South Africa, and was incorporated into the conference’s conclusion on the last minute, sketches briefly long term co-operative action against climate change. The deficiency of the Accord and its inadequate response to combat climate change signals the need to look elsewhere, as the pressures for state-actors to commit and engage must come from elsewhere. The examples of China and the United States’ energy policies highlight the quiet green revolutions at home even though the world two biggest emitters are reluctant to commit at international level. Climate change justice could only be possible if collaborative actions are taken as it is the most efficient route, nevertheless, as from their respective energy policies at present, both China and United States are investing heavily in energy sectors, because their respective future economies are deeply entrenched. Therefore the failure at international level must be compensated elsewhere and multilevel engagements more or less compensate for the failed attempt in the long run.

 

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