Common Interest, Common Sense

In the midst of global economic turmoil, scientific projections about the consequences of a warmer planet may seem more remote to countries negotiating a climate change treaty this week in Buenos Aires. Fears that warming temperatures could raise sea levels, alter rainfall patterns and wreak havoc on food production systems could temporarily take a back seat to the social and economic concerns posed by the global financial crisis.

But economic turmoil will eventually settle down, as it has in the past. A change in climate, however, could stay with us for generations. Industrialized countries were correct to assume responsibilities in Kyoto last year to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Now they need to ratify and implement their commitments.

It is entirely possible for economies to grow and to provide increased energy services while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting the environment. Some countries, including China, Mexico, Brazil and the United Kingdom, are already taking bold steps to use cleaner energy and improve energy efficiency. Developing countries are doing so to contribute to their own sustainable development. But they need to do more, as do industrialized countries.

It is not true, as some commentators maintain, that developing countries have done little to reduce their emissions. With assistance from organizations such as the United Nations Development Program, they are adopting energy conservation measures and new technologies that could help fuel their development without contributing to global warming.

A number of developing countries are taking a serious look at expanding renewable energy options to provide electricity to more than 1.5 billion people living outside conventional power grids. In Zimbabwe, for example, an entire solar industry is being created to provide energy services to rural communities. Brazil, a pioneer in the use of ethanol, is developing new methods to harness biomass.

China, home to 21.5% of the world’s population, has sharply reduced subsidies for coal and has improved energy efficiency in its industrial sector by modernizing or closing down highly polluting enterprises. Without these and other actions, China’s emissions of carbon dioxide, a principal greenhouse gas, would be 50% higher than it is today. China emits 13.5% of global carbon dioxide emissions. That is second only to the U.S. (25%), and China has been projected to overtake the U.S. in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 at its current rate of economic development. China’s accumulated concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, however, may not catch up to the U.S. until the middle of the next century.

While some will no doubt use such trends to argue that industrialized countries should not accept new targets for lowering their greenhouse gas emissions if developing countries do not do the same, the reasoning does not hold water. Developing countries continue to use far less energy and pollute less than their wealthier counterparts in absolute terms and on a per capita basis. And their lack of access to energy for normal household and productive tasks reinforces the poverty that imprisons more than a billion people.

The 1998 Human Development Report estimates that one-fifth of the world’s people living in the highest income countries contribute 53% of the carbon dioxide emissions that fuel global warming. The poorest fifth contribute just 3%. The irony is that the very poor live in the communities that are most vulnerable to coastal flooding and other climate-induced disasters.

With a projected rise in sea level, Bangladesh, for example, could see its land area shrink by 17%, although it produces only 0.3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, rainfall is expected to become scarcer in the midlatitudes where most developing countries are located. This would have a major impact on their ability to feed themselves in the years ahead.

Developing countries have an important role to play in preventing global warming; they understand the urgency better than most. Wealthier nations also have a powerful incentive to help poorer countries identify and implement new energy options while enacting their own sustainable development programs.

Nations rich and poor need to act out of common interest and common sense. Globally, we breathe the same air, fish in the same oceans and rely on the same climate systems for our daily bread. The obstacles lie not with cost or with a lack of options, but rather with the mind-sets of policymakers. This is our major challenge at the Buenos Aires conference.