February 8, 2010

Wall Street Journal Asia/Europe

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed support for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its leader, Rajendra Pachauri, at a local energy conference in New Delhi Friday. The move has surprised many observers, but it may prove to be politically astute.

The IPCC’s credibility is in tatters. From climategate to glaciergate, Amazongate, natural-disaster gate, and now Chinagate, the revelations of bad science keep coming. Given all that, plus the much-publicized flap between Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Mr. Pachauri over the science behind “melting” Himalayan glaciers weeks before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, superficially one might have expected the Indian government to jettison Mr. Pachauri as soon as possible.

But Delhi isn’t just offering him and the organization rhetorical backing. At Friday’s annual flagship event of the Energy and Resources Institute—which Mr. Pachauri has headed for almost 30 years—the prime minister offered to provide technical assistance through a newly established glacier research center. The government has also formed a network of scientific institutions to develop domestic science and research capacities on climate issues.

The explanation for this support is simple: It is in the Indian government’s interest to perpetuate a weak IPCC and a toothless Mr. Pachauri at its helm. Given the recent scandals, the IPCC is hardly in a position to lobby India for carbon concessions. No one from the IPCC can again cavalierly dismiss their critics as promoting “voodoo” science or “vested interests,” as was Mr. Pachauri’s wont. By offering scientific support to the IPCC, the Indian government is actually confirming its lack of confidence in the U.N. body’s scientific credentials.

Mr. Pachauri is now in his second term as the head of IPCC. He is not a climate scientist—or indeed a scientist at all. He is an able science administrator who built his institute from scratch. Influential governments in the rich world probably accepted Mr. Pachauri not just for his redoubtable skill in institution-building, but also in the hope that by placing an Indian like him at the head of IPCC, he might be able to influence Indian policy.

That’s important because after all, if countries like China and India do not subscribe to any commitment to reducing emissions, developed countries’ best efforts will not have any significant impact. Having bought the idea of man-made global warming, rich countries had to try and ensure that developing countries fell in line.

But in democratic India no leader can afford to ignore the developmental aspirations of the people. Even if some Indian elites want to sell the future of the country by agreeing to some form of restrictions on energy usage—and thus on economic growth—in the fiercely competitive world of Indian politics they stand no chance.

The IPCC was created as a way to make the world, particularly the poor, fall in line and support expensive climate-change initiatives by overwhelming them with the apparent authority of the world’s leading technical body on the subject, backed by a supposed scientific consensus. This attempt was doomed to fail, because scientific inquiry does not respect consensus, and orthodoxy is anathema to scientific progress.

There is some poetic justice in this whole drama. Countries like India that were always apprehensive of institutions like the IPCC now prefer to keep it twisting in the wind. The rich countries that gave birth to the idea of the IPCC cannot afford to disown it without exposing their own underlying design. They could try to replace its head, in the hope that the new face might be able to rebuild the credibility of the institution. But having tasted blood, there is no reason why India and China should let the current advantage pass so easily.

The IPCC has been checkmated, as have so many other U.N. institutions before it. This is the inevitable consequence of the desire for global government under the misguided belief that ordinary people do not know what is in their own interest. With the deepening of democratic ideals, people power can no longer be overturned so easily. The failure of the IPCC shows that sovereignty still lies with the people, not with the aspirants for global government.

Mr. Mitra is director of the Liberty Institute, an independent think tank in New Delhi.

Link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703427704575051130546785628.html

‘The 2001 IPCC report also overstated the connection between climate change and malarial infections. Understandably, the top selling books by climate sceptics published in the last few years all feast on the weak scientific evidence for this assertion. These books usually quote the specialist in insect-borne diseases, Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who has strenuously and effectively attacked the idea that increasing temperatures will necessarily produce a rapid rise in the incidence of insect-borne diseases. Professor Reiter points out that malaria transmission is a complex matter and that rising temperatures are only weakly linked to an increasing incidence of malaria. (The illustration at the head of this article provides us with some sense of just how complex malaria is). Why, he and others have asked, if temperature is so important, did the disease disappear from countries like Britain just as the climate was warming at the end of the ‘Little Ice Age’ during the 18th and 19th centuries?’

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/13/climate-change

Julian Morris: The premise of Copenhagen was always dubious. Some non-government organisations have billed it as the last chance to save the planet from anthropogenic global warming. Vested interests – such as those who have made money from the European emissions trading scheme – saw it as an essential vehicle for  perpetuating their business models. Both groups want binding restrictions imposed on future carbon emissions. But the economic cost of such restrictions would likely be far larger than the benefits. Given that premise, it would be better if Copenhagen were to end with no agreement.

Of course, it could have been otherwise: the Framework Convention on Climate Change requires parties to seek cost effective ways to address climate change. In principle, actions could be taken to reduce barriers to adaptation, for example. Many of these would cost little and would have significant advantages. But those barriers to adaptation often benefit the elite in poor countries. In Ethiopia for example, restrictions on property ownership and trade reinforce existing power structures. Foreign aid has a similar effect, since elites are able to use it to insulate themselves from democratic accountabilty. Indeed, it is no surprise that the version of adaptation promoted by political leaders in Copenhagen focuses only on what can be done by central government through aid-funded projects.

Given those political realities, the absence of substantive agreement during the first week is probably a good thing. The question is whether the stand-off can hold out till the end, or whether political leaders will feel obliged to agree to do “something”, no matter how counterproductive.

Julian Morris is an economist, author and director of The International Policy Network.

Commenting on today’s walkout by African nations at the Copenhagen COP15 climate meeting, Barun Mitra, director of an Indian NGO attending the Copenhagen negotiations and representative of the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, stated:

“Today’s walkout at the Copenhagen climate conference is purely a negotiating tactic because there’s so much money at stake. Copenhagen is no longer about climate — it’s about cash and corruption, both for poor and wealthy countries. By accepting restrictions on carbon emissions in exchange for cash, the world’s poorest countries are offering to prevent growth and perpetuate poverty. Ultimately, this could be a tragic repeat of the aid industry in the 1960s and ‘70s, when the leaders of some of the world’s poorest countries stuffed their Swiss bank accounts — all in the name of the poor.”

The offers countries made on emissions reduction prior to Copenhagen appear to be insufficient to prevent a 2-degree global temperature rise. Should industrialised nations or developing countries be expected to raise their offers first?

Julian Morris: Neither rich nor poor countries should “raise their offers”. We do not yet know enough about climate processes to say what level of greenhouse gas concentrations would result in a global mean temperature rise of 2-degrees. Nor do we know whether 2 degrees warming would be “dangerous”.

For mild warming, adaptation is almost certainly the most cost-effective option. It is feasible that humanity could adapt at relatively low cost to a warming of 4 degrees (see e.g. the various reports at www.csccc.info). But for that to be possible, it is essential that existing barriers to adaptation be removed; especially restrictions on trade and weak property rights.

Worryingly, the introduction of restrictions on emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as further transfers to the governments of poor countries (including those done in the name of “adaptation”, or through REDD) would likely inhibit adaptation at the individual level.