February 2011
A time and a place ENERGY AND WATER
In the fifth and final part of her series on carbon capture and the challenges presented by global warming, Carla-Leanne Washbourne discusses the international politics and bureaucracy within the policy setting strategies of climate control
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hroughout this series of articles we have considered the who’s, how’s and wherefores of climate mitigation, from basic management solutions such as stricter regulation and implementation of carbon abatement technologies, to carbon capture and storage technologies and solar radiation management techniques. In this final column we will consider the source of overarching control over the application all of these ideas — legislation and policy. Climate change is a global phenomenon, necessitating a global approach to its management. From the outset of a global scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate influence this has proven problematic. At the most basic level, most of these schemes require a fixed ‘price’ of carbon as a pollutant to be determined, against which emitters will be required to pay upfront for their emissions or be economically penalised for over-emitting through a carbon credit allocation structure. This system would also theoretically allow global ‘trade’ in carbon as an economic commodity. The lack of international and regional agreement on carbon reduction targets has led to a stalemate between many of the globes largest current emitters and growing industrial economies.
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Legislation must not be at the cost of development but must be allied to it”
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Disagreement regarding relative merits and complexities of carbon trading schemes, allocations, payments and ultimately ownership of emissions has led to the unsatisfactory conclusion of recent climate action meetings. Most geoengineering technologies and other large-scale physical interventions are some years in development away from being implemented in the real-world as legitimate climate control solutions.
The lack of an international agreement on carbon reduction targets has led to a stalemate among nations, according to Carla-Leanne Washbourne.
Their development is inherently tied into policy setting with respect to climate change, with funding for these projects only becoming available when it is prudent and timely for governments and private investors to provide it. Recent political activities have tended to create obstacles in the roll-out of more adventurous climate control technologies, due to unresolved practical and environmental concerns. In late 2010, for example, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity agreed a moratorium on geoengineering. This sounds damning, but in reality simply limits the industrial-scale implementation of geoengineering technologies prior to the provision of evidence that they will
not cause discernable ecosystem and biodiversity damage. This, however, does mean that these technologies require an unprecedented, overarching international collaboration in data collection, development and investment if they are to be approved and effectively utilised. Little can be achieved in limiting anthropogenic climate change without the support of legislative bodies and policy writers; an effective adoption of climate policy requires, above all else, cooperation between countries, between industries and between individuals. These changes cannot be achieved unilaterally — global values of carbon must be appropriately and sensitively fixed in order to ensure economic stability for both economically developed and developing nations, legislation must not be at the cost of development but must be allied to it. Evaluation of and investment in physical climate change interventions should also be made with the same considerations. Nations must decide upon their respective responsibilities in the creation and mitigation of the climate crisis and only after these basic agreements are made will the legislative climate be appropriate for effective, large scale, multilateral action to begin.