LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Summer 2009

by Eva Bulling-Schröter

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Sir,

The European Union’s current measures on climate change will not achieve the EU’s mid- to long-term climate targets. Nor would meeting these targets be enough to avoid “dangerous climate change,” which is the ultimate objective of the United Nations’ convention on climate change. These aspects of Anders Wijkman’s argument therefore have my full support.

A recent study by a U.S.-German research team found even more evidence to back up Wijkman’s warnings. It concluded that the threshold for dangerous climate change could be crossed much earlier than previously thought for two main reasons. First, many ecosystems are proving much more susceptible to global warming and rising carbon dioxide concentrations than previously assumed. Thus even modest increases in the global mean temperature risk causing very large impacts, such as melting the Greenland ice sheet. Second, global greenhouse gas emissions in recent years have been close to the upper limits of projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Therefore, it is clear that the EU’s target of limiting global warming to 2O Celsius is an absolute minimum needed to prevent dangerous climate change.

There is one important facet of climate policies that Wijkman neglects: the social dimension. It is well known that international solidarity will be required to stop certain regions suffering excessively from the uneven pattern of predicted climate changes. However, the social impact is much wider than that. For example, ambitious mitigation measures will only be acceptable if they do not increase the gap between rich and poor people within societies. Everyone needs decent access to power and transport, so low-income households will need protection from the cost of necessary restructuring in the energy and transport sectors. Climate measures must therefore be accompanied by expanded social security systems. In many ways, combating climate change and seeking social justice are two sides of the same coin. Social justice can no longer be de-coupled from the fight against the ecological crisis. As the anti-globalisation slogan says: “There will be no green peace without social peace, and no social peace without green peace.”

I support the climate policies and measures proposed by Wijkman with one exception: carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the ground. Since research in this field is still relatively new, and given recent problems with the storage of nuclear waste in Germany, I am very cautious about the prospects of developing successful CCS technologies. I will remain highly sceptical so long as there are doubts about the security of carbon deposits. Unfortunately, energy corporations already use the promises of CCS to legitimize the construction of new “conventional” coal power plants. Currently, more than 20 such coal and lignite power stations are planned in Germany. Once operational, these plants would stop the country from achieving any ambitious climate targets for decades to come.

I also think Wijkman might be short-sighted with regard to the relationship between “market failures” and the ecosystem crises. Surely the question is not about market failures, but whether the forces inherent within the market system - which drive corporations to maximize profits and economies to expand endlessly - can be sustainable at all.