The Politics of Climate Change

by Anthony Giddens

  Political reform is always, in principle, possible, and achieving it is normally the key to progress in other areas. Some of the world’s poorest countries have managed such reform in the past, most importantly China. In the 1960s the country faced ruin as a result of the policies of Chairman Mao. The subsequent leadership took the decision to change direction, resulting in the economic success that is such a feature of world society today.

  On the face of things, the nations that make up the ‘bottom billion’ are threatening to drop off the edge of world history, since they are locked into a deteriorating cycle from which most other nations have, in large measure, escaped. Ethical reasons alone demand that the rest of the world community cannot sit by while local tragedies unfold. But in the context of climate change, there are important material reasons why the more affluent nations cannot remain uninvolved. The pressures created by climate change and increasing energy scarcity, sketched out at the beginning of the chapter and throughout this book, could cause the problems of the bottom billion to be dispersed around the world as a whole. What has happened in Sudan is an awful reminder of how global struggles may play out if ways are not found to contain and reshape them.

  Oil and geopolitics

  The fate of the bottom billion is likely to have a major influence on how far international terrorism will continue to be a prominent feature on the world scene. The states where the poorest live frequently display a lethal combination of terrorism, international crime, drugs and money-laundering.

  Where these states are also oil-producers, their history tends to be even more blighted. It would be difficult to overemphasize how important oil and gas have been in shaping world politics in the decades since the end of the Second World War. As Thomas Friedman says, when historians look back at our era, they might well conclude that one of the most important geopolitical trends was the influence of oil wealth over the changing centre of gravity of Islam.19 In the early post-war years, that centre of gravity was located in Cairo, Istanbul, Beirut, Casablanca and Damascus, all in their way cosmopolitan cities offering the hope of progressive modernization. At that time, many Muslim nations were relatively liberal and there was widespread talk of the need to separate church and state on the Turkish model.

  Yet because of the growing importance of oil, and the dominant position which the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia hold in its production, conservative interpretations of Islam have become much more prominent than they used to be. Saudi Arabia is the guardian of two of the holiest mosques of Islam, in Mecca and Medina. ‘Desert Islam’, aggressive and reactionary, was originally shaped by poverty; now it is in possession of untold wealth. The half-century-old pact with the US kept the ruling family in place and, in turn, helped conservatism to flourish.

  ‘Oil is the enemy of freedom’ – is it possible to make such an apparently absurd theorem stick? Without too much over simplification, the blunt answer is ‘yes’, and the reasons why are well known. What Friedman calls the First Law of Petropolitics brings an impressive range of cases together.20 The tiny kingdom of Bahrain, he observes, led the way among states in the Gulf in holding free parliamentary elections, ones in which women could vote and stand as candidates. Bahrain was the first such state in which oil was discovered, about three-quarters of a century ago – but much more recently, it was also the first in which it started to run out. The leaders of the country began to think in terms of diversifying the economy, which in turn led to the beginnings of political reform.

  Following Tunisia and Egypt, Bahrain was the third country in the Middle East to experience an attempt at democratic revolution in early 2011. In spite of partial reforms, up to that point little of a concrete nature had changed. When these uprisings first started, the initial response of the oil-rich states was bribery. Several rulers announced cash payments to be made to citizens to try to keep them quiescent.

  Friedman has undertaken a systematic study of the relationship between the fluctuating price of oil and political change. His ‘Law’ states that the higher the price of oil, the more likely an oil-producing country is to turn autocratic. Political leaders get popular support from the rentier income flowing into the country and feel free to ignore what opposition groups may say, and indeed, to some large degree, what the rest of the world thinks too. Oil-rich governments use their revenues to bypass the need for taxation, thereby avoiding the pressures that come from tax-payers, who normally demand accountability.

  Oil money promotes the use of patronage, creating an inner group of rulers; that self-same revenue makes possible the creation of an elaborate system of police, security services and surveillance. Michael Ross argues that it is not only conservative Islam which produces the subordination of women; it is the dominance of oil money as such. Since there is little economic diversification, there is no chance for women to join the non-agricultural workforce, which in turn has the effect of keeping the birth rate high.21 There are 23 countries in the world which get a large part of their income from oil and gas; not one of them is a democracy in anything but name. Of course, all this might change as a result of the events that have convulsed the Middle East. At a minimum, they are likely to have a far-reaching impact on the relationship between oil and politics.

  Russia is now in the grip of a small elite drawing its power almost wholly from revenue provided by oil, gas and mineral reserves. The symbiotic, yet tense, relationship between the EU and Russia has attracted a great deal of commentary. Some 40 per cent of the EU’s gas supplies, 30 per cent of its oil and about a quarter of its coal come from Russia. EU–Russia relationships need to be normalized, a task that is routinely spoken about but, so far, not realized. From a climate change point of view, a major concern of a continuing EU–Russia dialogue should be a reopening of Russia’s oil and gas industry to European, and then to other foreign, investment.

  Large-scale new investment is needed to reduce the profligate way in which energy is produced (and used) in Russia. It has been estimated that the volume of gas flared off in the country each year is equivalent to a quarter of total Russian gas exports to Europe.22 Leaky pipelines add substantially to this total. In the meantime, Russia won such a liberal deal at Kyoto that there is no motivation to control emissions. Russian commitments to reduce leakage should receive international support and encouragement, as should moves to raise energy prices for consumers, although neither is motivated by climate change considerations. On the back of high oil prices, Russia adopted a forceful stance in international relations.

  Vladimir Putin’s notion of sovereign democracy has nothing to do with democracy as ordinarily understood and everything to do with sovereignty – with the assertion of Russia’s right and capability to act as a great power. The EU is rightly encouraging its former East European member–states to diversify their sources of energy supply and move towards full-cost pricing for consumers (although EU leaders objected when Russia tried to force the Ukraine to make such a move overnight), but with little impact so far. The sole exception is the Czech Republic, which has built an oil pipeline to Germany and has concluded a long-term gas deal with Norway.

  These considerations show just how much there is to play for, should the industrial countries be able simultaneously to reduce their dependence on oil and lower their carbon emissions. The famous ‘curse of oil’ does not only apply within nations, but to the world system as a whole, since the need to sustain a steady flow of oil plays such a large part in contemporary geopolitics. If the industrial countries could break away from their wholesale dependency on oil and natural gas, it would be a major benefit not only for them but, perversely, also for the producer nations. It would help bring about one of the most far-reaching realignments of international relations in history.

  One does not have to envisage a future in which the developed countries will become autonomous in respect of their energy supplies, which for most is neither practicable nor desirable. Interdependence – for example, in the shape of large-scale smart energy grids po
wered by renewable technologies – will continue to be a fact of life and has a clear positive side, in terms of the pooling of resources. But it will become far more possible than it is now for them to be protected from system breakdown by the capacity for significant energy self-provision. To repeat a constant theme of this book, what is important is that it should not be provided by a return to coal.

  Coalitions and collaborations

  The large bulk of greenhouse gas emissions is produced by only a limited number of countries – as far as containing global warming is concerned, what the majority of states do pales in significance compared to the activities of the large polluters. Moreover, only a limited number of states have the capability seriously to pioneer technological innovation relevant to climate change – rules governing knowledge transfer and investment from these countries to others will be more important than universal accords.

  An approach based on agreements or partnerships between individual nations, groups of countries and regions makes sense – and could eventually act to strengthen more universal measures. The Kyoto agreements already recognized several different clusters of countries, incorporating varying provisions for them.23 As one author remarked: ‘It is increasingly becoming clear [that] the Kyoto Protocol is less a global agreement than a set of differing regional approaches.’24

  The experience of the World Trade Organization offers a parallel. It has proved impossible to reach agreement on the Doha round of negotiations within the WTO, but progress on trade negotiation was made through regional and bilateral agreements. More than 200 such agreements are currently in operation. Studies have shown that such deals can support the overall objectives of the WTO’s multilateral trading system rather than, as might seem to be the case on the surface, act to undermine them. Regional agreements have allowed countries to go beyond what has been possible to achieve universally; but these concordats have subsequently paved the way for progress made at the level of the WTO.

  It makes sense for the big polluters, especially in aggregate terms, to get together in a regular way to try to push forward climate change policy that has bite. There is a forum already in existence that can serve as one of the agencies for such a task: the Major Economics Forum (MEF), which represents the world’s 17 largest economies, including therefore a range of industrial and developing countries. In 2009 the MEF set up a Global Partnership to promote low-carbon technologies and develop other means of reducing emissions – acknowledging climate change to be ‘one of the greatest challenges of our time’.25 The main focus is upon ‘technology action plans’ that focus upon 80 per cent of global CO2 created by energy production.

  Each of the plans supplies detailed programmes addressed to national governments. They analyse the contribution that can be made to carbon reduction in the case of each technology or programme, identify barriers and best practice strategies to overcome them, and specify government action that can be taken on a concrete level to further such strategies.

  The risk of undue complexity is evident, but the G20 can and probably should have a role in active climate change policy. Prior to Cancun, the G20 leaders pledged that they would ‘spare no effort to reach a balanced and successful outcome’ there. In their meeting in Seoul in 2010, a robust statement about confronting climate change was made, but contained little detail.

  It will be highly important to ensure that the poorer developing countries – the bottom billion – are not excluded and that their voice is heard. In a certain sense, it is right and proper that the ‘developing world’ is now divided in two. The days when the more successful emerging economies used to argue that the industrial countries have caused global warming, and that therefore they must exclusively be responsible for cutting carbon emissions, thankfully are over. The poorest nations, however, cannot at present be expected to engage in mitigation. For them, development is the highest priority, while adaptation takes precedence. The key issues – addressed in principle in the Climate Fund proposed in Copenhagen and Cancun – is that financial assistance and technological resources on the large scale should flow to such nations. Of course, a nest of problems and complexities is buried in such a bland statement, given the enormous difficulties the bottom billion faces.26

  The US and China

  It might be thought improbable that the US and China could collaborate in a serious way on energy and climate change issues, but there is a precedent.27 During the Cold War period there appeared to be no chance that the main adversaries, the US and the Soviet Union, could negotiate fruitfully with one another. Yet, as Senator Joseph Lieberman has observed, such collaboration did develop, and it met with some success.28 At the outset of the arms control talks between the two protagonists, each was extremely wary of the other. Yet an effective interchange was achieved, with concrete results in terms of arms reductions. Lieberman points out that there is something of a parallel between the arms race of the Cold War and the competition for energy resources that is getting under way now.

  Michael Klare suggested some while ago that a starting-point could be the setting up of an annual top-level US–China energy summit, led by the president of each country. It could be modelled on comparable meetings held at the height of the Cold War. The main aims were to minimize possible conflicts in the hunt for resources and to work out shared energy initiatives for the future, based on the fostering of low-carbon technologies. The objective would be to create a full bilateral infrastructure, where officials, scientists and business leaders form joint committees and working-groups.

  A preliminary ‘memorandum of understanding’ for the creation of an energy dialogue between the two nations was already signed in 2004. In October 2008 it was announced that three Chinese companies, including the country’s biggest state-controlled company, China Mobile, would join the non-profit Climate Group, which is backed by some leading Western businesses. The other two Chinese corporations are Suntech, the third largest solar energy manufacturer in the world, and a privately owned firm, Broad Air Conditioning. Western businesses involved include BP, BSkyB, Nike and Tesco. China Mobile aims to reduce the energy intensity of its activities by 40 per cent by 2020. Other Chinese companies have also enquired about joining the group, whose goal is to cover more than 100 of the world’s biggest firms.

  At the meetings at Copenhagen, as mentioned in chapter 8, the Chinese played an odd game of ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ with the Americans. The Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, avoided President Obama until Obama gate-crashed the meeting that led to the setting up of the Accord. Neither Obama nor Hu attended the summit in Cancun, where Hillary Clinton represented the US. The two countries worked together much better than had been the case in Copenhagen. Clinton said afterwards that the US–Chinese cooperation was critical in forging the agreements that were reached. She added that it was time for ‘both nations to translate the high-level pledges of summits and state visits into action’.29

  In January 2011 President Obama and President Hu met in Washington and agreed to enhance cooperation on climate change policy, renewable technology and technological transfer. They welcomed a recent announcement of joint work plans to be developed under the auspices of the US–China Clean Energy Research Centre, launched late in 2009. The work plans cover energy-efficient buildings, CCS and electric vehicles. More than 150 US and Chinese researchers will collaborate on the programme. Both leaders endorsed a statement of intent signed by the US Department of Energy and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology on sharing data on electric vehicle projects in Los Angeles and Shanghai. As with all agreements, the test is in the implementation – what will emerge of practical consequence and when?

  India and Brazil

  The Indian government stands aside to some degree from China and Brazil in its attitudes to climate change policy. In the aftermath of Cancun, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated that the emerging nations are not in a position to cut emissions, since they must place primacy upon economic development. Singh argued that, vast tho
ugh it is in terms of territorial size and population, India only accounts for a relatively small proportion of total global emissions. The observation is true in terms of emissions per person. In aggregate terms, India is the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases worldwide. Moreover, it has high growth rates – growth propelled at present almost wholly by fossil fuels.

  However, the Indian leadership played a constructive role both at Copenhagen and at Cancun. During the Cancun meetings, environment minister Jairam Ramesh hinted that India might reconsider its current position. At the moment, it has set a voluntary target of reducing energy intensity by 20 per cent over 2005 levels by 2020. A National Action Plan on Climate Change was published in 2008, but lacked detailed proposals and contained no specific targets. Substantial investments are planned in solar and nuclear technology.

  Several recent reports have stressed how consequential climate change will be for India, and are likely to prompt a more ambitious attitude on the part of political leaders. Some 70 per cent of the summer flow of the river Ganges comes from meltwater from high snow fields and glaciers. Like almost everywhere else in the world, the glaciers are shrinking. Monsoon weather affects large parts of India; as climate change proceeds, many rivers will be vulnerable to the lethal mixture of flooding and drought that global warming brings in its train in such areas. The country has some of the most densely populated coastlines in the world, threatened by rising sea levels.