Climate Change Strategies and Approaches

Introduction

Whatever way one looks at it, climate change remains among the greatest global challenges of this century This climate change has been linked to the greenhouse effect where increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has resulted in the trapping of reflected long wave infra red radiation of the sun. The origin of these gases is from man’s activities of energy use and industrial processes with the combustion of fossil fuels being the greatest contributor. The result of this greenhouse effect has been an upward increase in average global temperatures over the past few decades.

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This paper examines the global implications in terms of human, economic and environmental effects of climate change and what can be and is being done to limit them. The implications are examined with regard to international commitments to curb global warming and its effects such as the Kyoto Protocol (UNFCCC 2008:12). The paper adopts a prisoner’s dilemma approach of further commitments by Annex I party’s of the Kyoto mechanism who also happen to be the biggest producers of greenhouse gases (Read 1994:3-5). The chosen countries are USA, UK, China and Brazil and in addition to their global commitments the paper also examines what each is doing individually to mitigate the impacts of climate change (Miller & Spoolman 2009:278).

Prisoner's dilemma

The Prisoner’s dilemma concept is a game theory analysis that looks at the benefits of two or more individual’s cooperating on a common goal or one or all of them defecting from the cooperation. The concept is such that higher yields result from a selfish choice of defection from the common goal. However, the catch for defection is such that “if both defect, both do worse than if both cooperated” (Axelrod 1984:32). The thing about this theory though is that in facing many present day challenges, cooperation among different parties is necessitated and ought to continue in order to achieve mutual goals and targets.

When it comes to climate change and its global impacts, cooperation among nations seem as the most logical of steps. However, this cooperation is not as simple as the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, which involves two parties, but is much more complex due to involvement of more parties (Axelrod 1997:4-5). In global climate change policies, the industrialized nations or Annex I parties make use of the Kyoto Protocol mechanism of transaction rules so as to maintain their economies while meeting set out targets on greenhouse gas emissions (UNFCCC 2008:77,80).

The rise of the use of carbon trading concept in meeting assigned amounts of greenhouse emissions is very similar to Axelrod’s ‘tit for tat’ strategy in the prisoner’s dilemma (Axelrod 1984:36-38). Industrialized nations such as the US take advantage of carbon trading by ‘buying’ the assigned greenhouse gas emission amounts of developing countries so as not to hurt their industrial output due to exhausting of emission’s assigned amounts. In this relationship, American industries continue on their maximum output levels, while developing countries receive grants for the amount of greenhouse emissions they trap. It is a win-win situation for both as the cooperation ensures that both parties get what they want.

Effects of Climate Change

The effects of climate change include erratic weather patterns, hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms, desertification, rise in surface temperatures of the sea and adverse effects on agricultural productivity (Cline 2007:3-5). The severity of such occurrences varies depending on what part of the world the event is taking place in. Some of the worst hit places on earth by hurricanes happen to be the locations south of the US between the Caribbean ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Global warming has been credited for causing changes in the patterns and severity of hurricanes (Miller & Spoolman 2009:274). The effects of global warming on causing unpredictable and extreme weather and climatic events such as prolonged precipitation has forced the American government to take steps towards limiting these effects (Miller & Spoolman 2009:274).

The effects on Europe on the other hand are experienced in terms of changes occurring in the North Pole. The polar ice caps and the resulting rise in sea levels is a realistic danger for northern Europe (Maslin 2009:17-18). Due to its proximity to the North Pole, the northern Scottish shores are bound to experience these adverse effects significantly. Other effects on

Northern Europe include the potentially damaging effects that adverse weather changes could have on the agricultural productivity of the nation (Cline 2007:1-2).

In Asia, rise in surface water temperatures in the seas has resulted in increasingly powerful and destructive tropical storms and typhoons occurring in the region surrounding the Sea of Japan which experts attribute to the effects of global warming. In the hinterland, erratic weather patterns due to the accumulation of huge amounts of greenhouse gases has seen these region experience heavy downpours that result to flush floods and landslides and in some cases severe lack of precipitation has caused drought and desertification among other effects (Wei 2007:1-2). The effects on Latin America are not much different either with floods, landslides and desertification recently becoming the order of the day.

Nation’s strategies and approaches used to mitigate climate change

America: USA

The North America continent has the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on earth, the USA. The economy of America is very reliant on the combustion of fossil fuels for heat in industry, production of electricity and powering its motor vehicles. The net result of these activities in the US is that emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, has been increasing annually despite the government and other stakeholders continually claiming that America will reduce its emission output. The reason for this continual rise is quite simple; the American economy is to the most part overly dependent on the use of fossil fuels as its major source of energy. According to Aizebeokhai (2009:873), experimental observation results from the Hawaiian satellite station, Mauna Loa Observatory, show that carbon dioxide fluctuations in the atmosphere resulted to an average 1.5 ppmv (parts per million volume) annual increase since 1860 with continental North America among the worst affected areas.

The increased negative effects of climate change have seen Americans demand more from their government in terms of capping down on emissions. These demands have resulted in congress passing legislation and policies aimed at making the environmental protection agency (EPA) to be more effective in enforcing environmental legislation. This has been achieved by ensuring that any investors willing to set up industries in the US must meet the laid out conditions in terms of energy usage and emission projections during a strict environmental impact assessment (EIA) that they carry out and submit with their proposal for registration. The EPA will then carry out an independent survey to verify the results of the submitted EIA. Only those that pass are registered and allowed to start operations. The reason for verification is that industries cannot be trusted to give the correct data especially in cases where their bottom line could be affected by the results they submit (Read 1994:141-143). The EPA’s actions though noble are not quite as stringent as the proposals of the Kyoto Protocol (Baer et al. 2011:1).

One of the strategies that is being used by coal power plants is to capture the carbon dioxide emission after being scrubbed in the stalk and recycled or sold off to other industries that use the gas in their production process. The other strategy that is being employed is that of carbon sequestering. Carbon dioxide from industrial process is stored in abandoned gas and oil rigs, coal bends or alternatively pumped undersea sediments in liquefied form (Miller & Spoolman 2009:277). What this has done is to essentially not deal with cutting down on emissions as per the Kyoto Protocol but rather just continue with the same process albeit by hiding away the emissions.

The American law makers have been accused of hypocrisy in dealing with carbon dioxide emissions in their formulation of legislation to deal with emissions and of not being fully committed to the Kyoto protocol (Steurer 2003:344-345). While the EPA has made it increasingly difficult for new coal fuelled power plants to be established, due to the higher costs associated with construction of cleaner power plants, the coal power plant that powers the Capital building in Washington D.C. is the largest carbon dioxide producer in the area (America and Climate Change 2009:1). President Obama’s administration has been the most proactive of regimes against global warming by advocating for a wholesale change with regard to America’s energy use. The president’s strategy involves a cap-and-trade scheme; this strategy involves “placing a limit on emissions that can be produced in the country annually and then auctioning tradable permits to pollute” (America and climate change 2009:1). The downside to this strategy that it encourages firms that can cut down on emissions to do so and those that cannot afford to buy permits in essence do nothing to reduce overall emissions and mitigate the effects of global warming as most industries will prefer to buy permits and continue production profitably rather than invest in new technologies.

Europe: The UK

The European continent is paying the price for its industrial revolution which heavily polluted the environment by use of coal as its primary energy source. The Eurozone members under the banner of the European Union have over the past few years been looking into means and strategies through which greenhouse gas emissions within its member states can be reduced (Berger et al. 2007:1). The aim of the policies and legislations of the EU are to look into short and long term solutions toward the reduction of emissions from the diverse fields of transport, industry, waste, agriculture and energy via the unification of any policies that it comes up with. Such initiatives have shown the EU’s commitment to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact the member states of the EU were among the first nations to put to operation the Kyoto

Protocol, with its then 15 member states in 1998 agreeing to reduce their overall emissions by8%. The UK on its part pledged to reduce its emissions by -12.5% (Berger et al. 2007).

The effects of global warming have not gone unnoticed in the UK, hence the reason why the UK is a major player in the EU efforts on climate change policy formulation. The country was central in the launch of the 2000 European Climate Change Programme (ECCP), whose main aim was the identification of the most cost effective and efficient strategies that could be employed for the continent to achieve the overall -8% reduction in emissions. However there is stiff opposition to some of the ECCP requirements that target less developed members to cap their emissions by 2020 to between 15%-30%, with opponents of the target terming this condition as a ‘neo-colonial approach’ (Stop Climate Change 2008:1). The reason is that although in principle enacting climate change policies is the right thing to do, in practice a nation such as the UK stands to loose financially especially if other EU member states are not as aggressive in cutting down their emissions (Gardiner 2011:309).

The consultative nature of the ECCP was such that the EU member states could use their own custom-made strategy that suited them in meeting the Kyoto Protocol targets. By establishing an EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), more industrialized nations like Britain could take advantage of the scheme that provided free allowances for sectors that met the targets. The scheme was to later evolve into one that strictly meets its set out reduction targets. The UK’s sustainable development (SD) strategy has been vital in the country achieving a -9.3% emission rate between 1990 and 2005, a mere -3.2% of its target of -12.5% but still above the EU target (Berger et al. 2007:1). This achievement is largely due to the UK National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS) under the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which lists greenhouse emissions increase in renewable energy use, adapting to climate change and energy efficiency as four of its main priorities. There is a perception by some scholars who wrote a paper titled the ‘Hartwell Paper’ which criticizes the curbing of emissions since it has failed to make any significant impact globally and instead countries like Britain can do well in using carbon tax to develop clean technology independently without being tied down by commitments such as the ECCP and Kyoto Protocol (Black 2010:1).

Asia: China

The major economies of Asia also happen to be among the leading pollutants and sources of greenhouse gas emissions on earth. Among these economies are China, India, Japan, and South Korea who are to the most part highly industrialized. China’s recent economic growth has come at a cost to the environment; the country gets most of its electric power for use in homes and industry from the combustion of coal in power plants. Apart from use in power generation, coal is also widely used in the industrial and mining sector. In fact China is the largest consumer of coal globally. The result of this hunger for energy is that the Chinese are also the largest emitters of greenhouse gases worldwide (Buckley 2012:1). Increasing environmental awareness by the government has resulted in the country taking a different approach with regard to environmental pollution. Initially the government had concentrated on expanding and developing the economy with little or no regard to the possible negative impacts to the environment. This change to accommodate environmental effects has largely been due to the Chinese wanting to play an increasingly major role in international policy and if it continued to ignore a globally important issue such as global warming, its international credentials would at the very least look suspect (Gardiner 2011:311).

The Chinese have now gotten on board with international efforts to cut on emissions. The government of China through the National Leading Group on Climate Change has involved a high powered membership headed by the prime minister in an effort to link considerations on climate change to the governments agenda of programs for socio-economic development (Wei 2007:2). The result of some of the changes is that per capita carbon dioxide emissions in 2004 were at 3.65 tons, which reflects a 49.5% drop from the 1990 levels. The other strategy involved is that of increasing adaptive capacity and raising public awareness. In 2007, the Chinese government aimed to reduce per unit GDP energy consumption by 20%, increase use of renewable energy to reach 10%, and increase by 50 million tons the carbon sink from the 2005 levels. Such a commitment sees the Chinese in a tight spot, whereby they are forced to sacrifice on assured financial gain in order to become environmentally correct in its commerce (Baer et al. 2011:2).

The National Climate Change Program also aims to use building capacity and technology in international cooperation projects. China has been reluctant to go through with all international obligations on climate change due to the effects it may have on its global commerce output and the suspicion that in it is treated with in the international community since it is the largest greenhouse producer (Watts 2010:1). However it is in everyone’s best interest to include China in every effort to deal with climate change since any efforts that exclude the Chinese is surely doomed to fail. China also understands the need to evolve with changing times and effectively get on the global warming bandwagon since it cannot afford to be seen as prioritizing GDP growth over environmental impacts (Paltsev et al. 2012:1).

Latin America: Brazil

Latin America emissions of greenhouse gases is dominated by Brazil which happens to be among the largest ten economies of the world and the world’s number eight emitter of greenhouse gases, and number three emitter in developing countries after India and China (La

Rovere & Pereira 2007:1). The position of Brazil has always been pro mitigation of global warming projects and international commitments. The country demonstrated its commitment to the pledge it made at the Copenhagen climate talks by transforming the international agreement into a national legislation (Robinson 2010:1). Such commitments are understandable for Brazil as the country has always been very environmentally aware on fossil fuel emissions to the atmosphere, with Brazil having the lowest fossil fuel greenhouse emission among the top economies of the world standing at 17% in 1994 (La Rovere & Pereira 2007:1). This shows the awareness levels of Brazil in identifying the importance of being a front runner and encouraging other major economies to continue with meeting their Kyoto units, because familiar by nations such as China to comply with the Protocol inevitable has negative effects on Brazil who do not burn as much fossil fuels, so for Brazil, it becomes an win-win situation for it if all nations are party to an international binding agreement (Baer et al. 2011:3).

Brazil is home to the largest biodiversity ecosystem in the form of the Amazon which is responsible for acting as a carbon sink site. The dangers of deforestation of the Amazon complicates the natural process of carbon dioxide sequestering by the natural vegetation which is one of the key mitigation process in curbing climate change. Brazil’s low emissions of fossil fuels started by accident when the nation in the early 1970s was faced by increased crude prices coupled with a plummeted international sugar prices which forced the country to blend ethanol from sugar and crude oil to meet its energy needs. This blend fuel gives less carbon dioxide emissions than petrol from crude. The government has been able to lower energy wastage and by extension greenhouse emissions through strategies such as the 1985 PROCEL which is a conservation program for electric energy targeting both the supply and demand side. In 1999, PROCEL was estimated to have avoided 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide in 1997. The

Brazilian congress built on the progress of the PROCEL program by passing a new law in 2002 called the PROINFA, which aims at promoting the use of renewable energy by giving out incentives and channeling renewable energy power to the national grid (La Rovere & Pereira 2007:1).

Brazil has been at the forefront of promoting the use of renewable energy throughout Latin America. In a meeting with environmental ministers from Caribbean countries and Latin America, they set a target of having 10% of their energy from renewable sources at the World Sustainable Development Summit in May of 2002 (La Rovere & Pereira 2007:1). This cooperation by Latin American countries has without doubt served to increase the goal of mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions within the South American continent, championed by Brazil and collectively being enforced by other countries in the region. Brazil’s recent discovery of vast amounts of offshore oil reserves in the deep sea off its coast brings into question the long term commitment of Brazilian law makers and industry (Robinson 2010:1). The new question that now arises is whether on the eve of discovering such significant crude reserves, Brazil still ought to follow through with its Copenhagen commitments even if it means sacrificing potential boosts in GDP just so as to meet emission targets.

Conclusion

The effects of global warming and climate change are problems that need to adopt comprehensive and participatory approaches that include all nations in international cooperation’s aimed at mitigating climate change. By taking into account four nations from different parts of the world, America, Britain, China, and Brazil, the paper shows the prisoner’s dilemma that they face in their efforts to meet their emission quotas. Challenges that they face are mostly of economic nature where their legislators and industry representatives would wish to continue with business as usual in their energy use but still recognize and are weary of the implications of not cooperating in the fight against climate change. The universal fear is that if any or all of these nations pull out of their international commitments, others nations will inevitably follow and the results would be catastrophic for global efforts on climate change mitigation.

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