Copenhagen climate summit: 50/50 chance of stopping catastrophe, Lord Stern says

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6701810/Copenhagen-climate-summit-5050-chance-of-stopping-catastrophe-Lord-Stern-says.html

Copenhagen climate summit: 50/50 chance of stopping catastrophe, Lord Stern says

An ambitious deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions needs to be agreed at the Copenhagen climate summit to give a 50/50 chance of keeping temperatures from rising more than 2C, Lord Stern has said.

Published: 3:21PM GMT 01 Dec 2009

But failure to secure a new agreement could put the world at risk of temperature rises of more than 5C - a change in climate which he said ''could only be described as catastrophic''.

Temperature rises of 5C would ''rewrite'' where people could live and lead to serious extended global conflict, said Lord Stern, whose review for the Government set out the cost of tackling climate change.

And he warned if the Copenhagen climate talks fail it will be ''deeply damaging'' and difficult to recreate the opportunity the negotiations currently provide to shift the world onto a low carbon path.

He called on the European Union to show leadership ahead of the talks by making its offer to cut emissions by 30 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 - currently conditional on efforts by other countries - an unconditional one.

…

[endless october]

1. copenhagen / cap and trade won't work.

building our own nuclear, wind, and solar facilities like we built the interstate highways will.

cap and trade is an expensive failure waiting to happen. if you think China's going to play fair, you have another think coming.

what we need is less war and more public works programs designed to build electrical infrastructure. it's not like we don't have enough people to fill the jobs. and it's not like we don't have enough unnecessary interventionism to eliminate in order to pay for the program.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. I'd be much more willing to scapegoat China if I thought we were doing our share

As it is, although I agree with you in principle (large scale public works programs to build an alternative power supply) the hypocritical swipe at China makes it difficult for me.

It reminds me of the “Cold War” era arms negotiations with the Soviet Union, when Americans would scoff, “Do you think we can trust the Russians to cut their nuclear arsenal?” (As if we didn't have enough weapons in our arsenal to kill every Soviet several times over…)


China’s emissions may be somewhat greater than our own at this point. However on a per capita basis, we’re still way ahead of them…

[endless october]

4. for me, it's about jobs.

if we stay out of cap and trade and build our infrastructure, that's a big net gain of jobs. if we sign up for cap and trade and China cheats, our jobs continue to go there and to other nations that either aren't participating or aren't participating in good faith.

plus, i see proponents positioning themselves to profit from the carbon trade. historically, that benefits no one but those invested in carbon credits.

basically, i see a much better way to do it, and that's what i support.

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Jobs are good, survival is better

No, seriously, I’ve been saying for years I want to hear a political candidate use letters like WPA or CCC. That was one of the things I liked about John Edwards.

A massive “green jobs” public works program is just fine by me. (Please, raise my taxes to help pay for it! I’m serious!)

[joshcryer]

8. I'm behind Hansen's fee and dividend, it would work, guaranteed. But China would be hurt the most...

...by that, since imports get a big ass CO2 duty tax right there at the ports. They would not go for that in a million years.

[joshcryer]

7. China would hate for its exports to have a CO2 cap.

So while we are nasty importers of their goods, they wouldn't want us to actually bare the responsibility for those goods we do consume. So it's going to be a stalemate.

[GliderGuider]

3. Copenhagen is going to present an amazing opportunity

to watch a Prisoner's Dilemma game being played out on an international stage.

All the talk about temperatures, percentages and timelines obscures the most important, and probably insurmountable, roadblock. National self-interest. None of the big players want to risk getting the sucker's payoff.

Estamos tan jodidos.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Oh, I dunno…

In the classic “prisoner’s dilemma” if one of the prisoners decides to cheat, he receives a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

In this case, if one of the prisoners decides to cheat, he gets a bigger last meal than the others.

[joshcryer]

10. I consider it cheating to say "reduce your emissions, but continue buying stuff from us while ours..

...get bigger." That's a clear cheat right there. Instead of the US lowering its emissions, per-capita consumption would stay the same or even get higher as the industrial sector in China grew. Yes, global emissions would be somewhat reduced, but not nearly enough. As Hansen points out the world needs to get rid of coal completely in 20 years or so. That is non-negotiable.

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. OK, perhaps I was being too subtle

In the classic “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma">prisoner’s dilemma,” if one prisoner decides to cheat, the cheater gets no penalty.

In this case, if any nation “cheats” big time, then everybody (including the cheater) deals with the long-term consequences of climate change, although the cheater may enjoy some economic advantage for a time.

[joshcryer]

14. Indeed.

Cheating isn't workable in this situation, though I still think this is a good Prisoners Dilemma because the participants involved believe mitigation is possible. I'm sure China believes that it can even handle sea level rise if it comes to it, due to their mass migration policies in the past. "Oh we'll handle it when it comes." Hell, the US may even see it as mitigatable, given how it has dealt with immigration in the past. "We get a million immigrants a year, we can move that many citizens north if the seas start to rise appreciably."

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. Honestly, sea level rise is a secondary concern to me…

Perhaps because I live nowhere near the ocean.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to see Manhattan, or Boston or… vanishing beneath the waves. I just think there are bigger hazards, like widespread crop failure for example.

[joshcryer]

19. Crop failure can be mitigated, you move to greenhouses worst case.

You aren't going to be able to build enough levies to keep the ports from being deluged.

[GliderGuider]

23. And we aren't going to build enough greenhouses

to feed a couple of billion people.

[joshcryer]

24. I think it's more feasible than 3 meter high levies keeping the ocean out, at least.

I know it would still be daunting. But, when you consider greenhouses vs geoagriculture, it becomes clear which is more environmentally sound.

[OKIsItJustMe]

27. And yet, today, people are starving…

This is with relatively little pressure from climate change (compared to what we can reasonably expect within the foreseeable future.)

So, let’s imagine (for example) that California agricultural areas become unproductive due to a lack of fresh water…

How fast do you suppose we can build greenhouses?

[joshcryer]

28. People starve largely due to wastage.

[OKIsItJustMe]

32. The way I have put it in the past is "We don't have a supply problem, we have a distribution problem

However, do you see that distribution problem being alleviated by large scale crop failures?

[OKIsItJustMe]

26. Well, that explains why famine isn’t a problem in the world today

http://www.un.org/issues/food/taskforce/index.shtml

[joshcryer]

29. Greenhouses allow you to conserve water, evaporation being the major cause of water depletion.

We'll have to go to greenhouses regardless, given that the Great Midwest Aquifer is slowly being drained dry, whole breadbasket of the USA is not sustainable without proper technology. It has been mitigated to some extent with more efficient sprayers (that don't allow the water to evaporate as readily), but it still is a huge problem.

[OKIsItJustMe]

31. I'm aware of how greenhouses work

How fast do you suppose we can build them?

I’d like to see our entire electrical infrastructure rebuilt around renewables, we have the technology we need, but I also understand that this cannot be done over night.

It’s all well and good to say “We can build greenhouses.” That technology is well understood too, but the scale is (and should be) daunting.

[GliderGuider]

16. Here's how the PD translates to Global Warming

The Wikipedia definition of the Prisoner's Dilemma:

If one prisoner testifies (defects from the other) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent (cooperates with the other), the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent.

In my translation, remaining silent (aka cooperation) is defined as "reducing your carbon emissions", and defection is defined as not reducing your emissions.
The underlying assumption is that reducing carbon emissions has an associated economic cost. I know that's arguable, but the assumption seems quite reasonable.

Here's how the game unfolds:

1. If all nations cooperate, all stay on a relatively equal (though lower) economic footing and GW is mitigated. This is the "both remain silent" outcome.
2. If all nations defect, all maximize their economic performance, but GW is not mitigated. this is the "both betray" outcome.
3. If one nation defects, but all others cooperate, the defecting nation maximizes their economic advantage relative to the others. This is a sucker's payoff in which all cooperating nations are the suckers. There may be a chance to bring this situation back to scenario 1 through suasion or coercion, but the temptation for nations that initially cooperated to defect in order to improve their economies will be extremely strong.
4. If one nation cooperates, but all others defect, the cooperating nation is shut out of the economic growth enjoyed by the others. This is the classic"sucker's payoff". The cooperating nation will inevitably be forced to defect by a combination of political and economic pressures.

Scenario 4 terrifies politicians, economists and their corporate overlords. So long as economic shortfall is perceived as a greater and more imminent national threat than climate change, I claim that the probability of Scenario 1 (the only one in which mitigation is assured) emerging from negotiation is nil.

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. (See above)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=219753&mesg_id=219805

My point was that any economic advantage gained by “cheating” will be short-lived (i.e. “a bigger last meal”) since in the end all prisoners (including the cheater) will be executed (i.e. all countries will suffer from “climate change.”)

[joshcryer]

18. Your original point doesn't follow with that.

But no matter, I think we're all on the same page, doing nothing, or cheating, means all parties lose. The problem is that all parties think they can handle the problems.

[GliderGuider]

20. You see it that way, but politicians don't.

Politicians see the issue as one in which known, immediate, quantifiable threats of economic insufficiency are weighed against the unquantifiable, distant threats of GW. Any politician who feels a fiduciary responsibility to their nation and accepts the economic paradigm as its lifeblood will have a hard time making the ethical case for trading off the immediate interests of their country against the long-term interests of other countries. The fact that most politicians are beholden to entrenched corporate interests tips the scale even further in the direction of protecting national economic outcomes.

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. Maybe they’re coming around…

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=219756&mesg_id=219756

[GliderGuider]

22. Or maybe they're going to make sure it fails...

That's why Harper is going. Even if some of them have "honourable" motives it doesn't take many leaders to sabotage a treaty. The problem is that many of those who will go with murder in their hearts will still think their motives are honourable, or at least defensible. And they won't ever tell us anything except the platitudes we want to hear.

[joshcryer]

25. I am going to hold out judgement...

...but Hansen I think said that they (in the sense of government "concern") were pandering. That it was all just a facade. We'll see. Not going to commit to a position until we see what comes of COP15.

[joshcryer]

9. I love that analogy.

GG always putting an interesting spin (or take?) on things.

[joshcryer]

11. One flaw in it, though. One prisoner cheats = both prisoners get the chair.

There's really no benefit to cheating here, mitigation (sea level rise) is not going to be something we can actually deal with.

[OKIsItJustMe]

13. (See above)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=219753&mesg_id=219796
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=219753&mesg_id=219805

[The2ndWheel]

30. That's why you have to knock off the other guy before the cops get him

What's needed is a single global state. That way, there's no competition between nations, only one interest, only one player. We live in a global world, with regional governments. Something has to give. It's either a global world, or a regional world. We obviously can't have both.