The Politics of Climate Change

The day will come when our sun will expand sufficiently to subsume the planets Mercury and Venus. By then, planet Earth will be on fire and life as we know it will cease to exist here. No need to reach for the Valium. It will be approximately four billion years before this happens. However, there is a much more immediate problem for Earth. According to the United Nations, if dramatic changes are not made now in the manner in which energy is generated, in thirty years’ time climate change will make life markedly worse.

The report on climate change released by the UN last week contrasted the specific rate of warming with likely additional warming. The difference between an increase in 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius is dramatic. The report by eminent scientists who, apparently, have no axe to grind highlighted the effects of a potential devastating chain reaction of tipping points for the world’s climate.

People, if not their leaders, seem to accept our planet is getting hotter. We know that over hundreds of thousands of years, Great Britain has been covered by ice more than once and has also been a desert. But I believe the UN scientists who highlight the extraordinary damage caused by use of fossil fuels. Something more needs to be done urgently.

The director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University has set out numerous negative repercussions which will arise in a warmer world: increased health risks, such as heat stroke; drought; wildfires; shifts in growing areas for crops, for example in USA, the Midwest could become the best growing area for cotton and corn; broader spread of disease; a benefit of living in a colder climate is that winter kills insects such as mosquitoes; more moisture in the atmosphere will cause big precipitation events so it will be rainier and snowier; there will be increased flooding and rising sea levels, melting ice at the poles and greater storm precipitation, not to mention damage to sea life.

The world needs leadership, especially from its major polluters, China, Russia and the United States. China is not a democracy. The people do not vote for their leaders. The Chinese leader has changed his country’s constitution and he is now chairman-for-life. Over the past two decades, Chinese administrations have overseen a phenomenal growth in power stations, some coal fired, others nuclear, to generate sufficient energy to make China into the world’s leading manufacturer. What chance is there of persuading the current Chinese leadership to stop burning fossil fuels and find another way, despite the fact that China is a signatory to the Paris Accords? How will the agreement be enforced against the Chinese?

Russia has no manufacturing industry worth mentioning. How many of you have gone to a shopping mall, picked up an item and exclaimed: “Wow! Made in Russia.” Russia’s wealth emanates from supplying energy, gas, oil and coal. What would persuade them to stop? The damage to the Russian economy would be huge. Russia is a signatory to the Accords but has not ratified the treaty.

As for the United States, the current administration has promoted the renewal of coal mining and steel manufacturing from old plants fuelled by coal. No wonder the voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are Trump fans. He has given them jobs. In addition, Trump decided to withdraw America from the Accords, a landmark agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future. Why did America withdraw? Some believe Trump wants to undo everything with the Obama stamp. More likely, the Accords got in the way of the Trump administration’s desire to deregulate dirty industry and create jobs, part of the Make America Great Again program.

The world is crying out for climate change leadership. I look at world leadership and find little sign of it. The EU is too engaged in squabbles about Brexit to look at the big picture. The countries who should lead - China, Russia and United States – are the three, major offenders on use of greenhouse gases. They are too fixated by and concerned with promoting their countries interests at the expense of global interest.

As I look back in history, there was one man, former President Richard Nixon, who might have led the world out of this environmental black hole. I hear you laughing. Tricky Dicky, the liar and discredited President of the Watergate affair, how could he be the choice? First, he presided over détente with Russia as he brought the closed Chinese society back into world citizenship. He was masterly in the way he played these two nations off against each other in the cause of peace. Second, he was the first modern environment President. It came as a surprise when, in his second State of the Union address, he outlined the major steps in a series of environmental programs.

Nixon sent dozens of environmental proposals to Congress, including a revised Clean Air Act, 1970, one of the most significant pieces of environmental legislation ever passed. There was a major shift in the federal government's role in air pollution control. The legislation authorized the development of comprehensive federal and state regulations to limit emissions from both stationary (industrial) sources and mobile sources. Nixon created two new agencies, the Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency, to oversee environmental matters. The agencies remain in charge, although Trump has installed anti-environmentalist chairmen to destabilise their work.

Nixon is no more, nor is there anyone of his intellect available among the current crop of world leaders to help the world out of this climate predicament. As a truly long shot, I’d choose Bill Clinton. His administration had a strong record on environment. Since 2000, he has played a prominent role in the World Economic Forum, so he knows all the players. And he is a silky and skilled negotiator. But that’s the extent of my solutions. I regret to write that I do not see a likely way out of the road to hell. People of my age won’t see the deluge but I fear for the future of my children and grandchildren.