Day 5 at Climate Talks: Squaring the circle: reconciling rapid economic growth and GHG mitigation
L-R: John Drexhage, IISD; Jiahua Pan, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; and Matthew Bramley, The Pembina Institute.
John Drexhage, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), described Canada’s unique situation and sensitivities with regards to the post-2012 dialogue, detailing Canada’s high rates of population and economic growth compared to rest of the G8.
Deborah Murphy, IISD, introduced “A way forward: developing an effective Post-2012 climate regime,” which outlines five scenarios: daughter of Kyoto; back to UNFCCC; contraction and convergence; global tax; and anarchy reigns. She highlighted Canadian stakeholders’ rating of each scenario for addressing environmental integrity and economic development.
Christian Egenhofer, Centre for European Policy Studies, noted that while economic growth is flat within the EU as a group, some new member States have higher growth. He explained that the bubble scheme enables member States to share the collective mitigation burden and stressed the growing emissions from freight transport.
Hironori Hamanaka, Institute for Global Environment Strategies, related some challenges in reconciling economic growth and emissions mitigation in Asia, including: the low priority of reducing emissions; availability of low quality fossil fuels; growing middle class; and weak institutions. He also stressed the need for investment in research and development, flexibility of intellectual property rights and technology deployment.
Jiahua Pan, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, underscored developing countries’ concerns, stressing that high economic growth is transitional. He advocated: increasing energy efficiency; using renewable energy; reducing deforestation; and ensuring the growing middle class does not follow the West’s high consumption patterns. He highlighted industrial relocation of high energy production to developing countries and the need to pay attention to non-climate policies. He suggested progressive taxation on per capita emissions above basic needs.
Matthew Bramley, The Pembina Institute, noted other considerations in allocating emission targets, including: the equity principle; per capita rights to emit; ability to pay; and historical responsibility. He said Canada’s recent position on post-2012 targets was “unhelpful and unfair” and stressed the need to acknowledge national differences.
Rob Bradley, World Resources Institute, outlined why the US will still account for major growth in emissions and called for a change to clean technologies in major economies.
Participants discussed: the contraction and convergence scenario; high energy intensity of oil production in Alberta’s tar sands; and the embedded emissions in China’s exports. They contrasted the US transport emissions with China’s industry intensive emissions.
More information
http://www.iisd.org
http://www.ceps.be
http://www.wri.org
http://www.iges.or.jp
http://www.pembia.org/climatechange
http://www.rcsd.org.cn
Contacts
John Drexhage <jdrexhage@iisd.ca>
Deborah Murphy <dmurphy@iisd.ca>
Christian Egenhofer <christian.egenhofer@ceps.eu>
Hironori Hamanaka <hamanaka@iges.or.jp>
Jiahua Pan <jiahuapan@163.com>
Matthew Bramley <matthewb@pembia.org>
Rob Bradley <rbradley@wri.org>
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