Exchange ideas and stop looking for a global deal 2011/11/30 at 9:59 pm
If anyone is aware of the slow progress of multilateral talks it is London lawyer James Cameron. He will go to Durban with the World Economic Forum delegation, as chairman of its climate agenda council.
In an interview this month he told the Herald: I always go, because Ive been there since the start – before the start, because I was the first person from the legal profession to write about the need for an international convention on climate change. Ive been doing this since 1988.
Founder of Baker amp; Mackenzies climate practice, Cameron worked on the original United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol as an adviser to small island states, and is now vice-chairman and founder of the London private equity and advisory firm Climate Change Capital, which invests $US1.5 billion in funds in green buildings and clean technology across Britain, Europe and Asia.
Cameron, who has a host of influential positions including on the British Prime Minister, David Camerons, business advisory group and the board of GEs Ecomagination venture, says the world should stop expecting the annual Conference of Parties negotiations under the UN framework will deliver a breakthrough deal.
Instead, the talks should evolve towards countries – and companies – updating each other on their progress towards emissions reduction goals in a continuing process of mutual education and problem solving.
We have to somehow recast the headlines, Cameron says. Stop expecting a global deal every year. Start acknowledging its a global process thats just going to roll on. We should start using that process to show and tell.
Cameron, who is half-Australian and has studied and worked here, was in Sydney when the federal governments carbon price package passed through Parliament. He said that given this countrys fragile environment there was no doubt the package was in Australias national interest, which lies in garnering the assistance of others to solve this collective action problem called climate change, including through the UNs climate talks.
So Australia turns up, its done something now. Show it. Explain. Now that it has an emissions trading scheme, Australia could talk constructively with South Korea, China, California, Chile, Mexico, Brazil – which have all either delivered or are working on similar carbon pricing regimes and all of which are grappling with the same resource depletion issues.
I could engineer a discussion with the ministers of all those countries and find huge common ground.
Cameron would add another dimension to the UNs annual climate talks, which is there in a kind of anarchic form already but which Id like to see much better organised.
Id like to see that annual event look a lot more like a trade fair. A lot more like a well-organised exchange of both ideas and technologies, he said. You turn up and you see whats being done, you see what innovation is taking place.
I think we have slightly mis-cast this process. I would like to see it evolve, de-risk this kind of have we saved the world or have we not saved the world? stuff.
Incrementalism? Cameron, a self-described alarmist on climate change, does not play down the urgency of action. On the day of this interview, the IEA had just released its 2011 world energy outlook that warned the door to 2 degrees is closing and we cannot afford to delay further action to tackle climate change.
Cameron marvelled at the agencys increasingly strident tone on climate, recalling that he and its chief, economist Fatih Birol, had often been in opposing corners on the issue. For many years hes been on platforms that Ive been on and weve been set in opposition except that he had an independent mind and he was extremely skilled at articulating argument and therefore there was always some common ground to be found when we would discuss climate change or clean energy.
But this is really significant. This is a fossil-fuel-based organisation making these arguments. This is a guy trained in mainstream energy, paid for by mainstream energy, making these arguments. Where does the IEAs money come from? They are the main providers of data to the fossil fuel industry. Its their house.
However, Cameron does not believe the way forward lies in either stoking fears of dangerous global warming or further political polarisation. I dont think the climate change issue has got anything whatsoever to do with left or right politics. Almost think its a shame the left has claimed the issue to itself. Because I dont see any possibility of resolving such a complex problem, distributed over such a wide area, with all of us implicated, without very high levels of co-operation.
You need to align interests of all types. And the notion that if you happen to have political beliefs to the right of the spectrum that disables you from understanding climate change, or participating in the problem solving, is so ridiculous. Its an outrage that our political system has enabled this problem to be formulated in that way. We desperately need credible figures in our public life to stop polarising the issue.
The problem is acute, he notes, in countries like Canada and Australia that have powerful resource industries. By contrast in the more diversified economy of Britain there is a determination to tackle climate change that crosses the political spectrum.
In May the Energy and Climate Secretary, Chris Huhne, announced that Britain would seek to halve its emissions by 2025, compared with 1990 levels, making Australias 5 per cent cuts by 2020 (against 2000 levels) seem paltry. Despite domestic economic fragility and the European debt crisis, and pressure within cabinet led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, Cameron does not believe Britain will backslide on its aggressive targets.
Theres a real risk of [backsliding], we see signs of it, theres worry all across the environment movement that its happening. But I dont believe there is any resiling from the commitment to be found in either the PM or the Deputy PM, who are connected on this issue.
Their coalition is dependent upon this issue. You just have to understand that when the political cycle is so closely associated with the serious, 24-hour alarm about the state of sovereign debt in the EU, it is not surprising that the big systemic long-term issues are put to one side. But they have not been forgotten, and those commitments are real.
Youve got to bear in mind that we do not have, in the UK, anything like the equivalent of a business lobby against action on climate change. We dont have the same profile to our economy, so our resource companies are relatively less powerful. Its a more diverse economy and larger economy. But we also dont possess an economy thats growing significantly. The debt-to-GDP ratios in Australia are to be dreamt of in No. 10 and 11 Downing Street.
With a strong economy, Asian growth driving demand for our resources, and plenty of opportunities in clean technology – if only as a natural hedge for our reliance on fossil fuel exports – Cameron says we have nothing to fear from a carbon price. Exactly the opposite, in fact: Australia is in a blessed position.
paddy.manning@fairfaxmedia.com.au
Twitter: @gpaddymanning