ECI Annual Review 2006/2007 - Environmental Change Institute ...

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6 The Road to San Gimignano The recent Stern Review on the economics of climate change has made an asteroidal impact on the global warming debate and keeps sending shockwaves across civil society – in the UK and abroad. Many researchers from the Tyndall Centre, the ECI and the Potsdam Institute have provided crucial scientific evidence underpinning that review, which marks – at last – the beginning of a new era: now is the time for solving – rather than denying, ignoring, ridiculing, or just endlessly discussing - the climate problem. German Government seems to have grasped “The this challenge and will make the climate-energy nexus a top priority of its G8-EU twin presidency in 2007. This means that the fragile Gleneagles baton is properly passed on and that the haphazard “entente cordiale” on sustainability between the UK and Germany is about to grow stronger - and more systematically. The German Chancellor Ms Merkel has asked me to advise her on the pertinent scientific aspects for the forthcoming G8-EU agendas and on the mediumterm Kyoto-plus negotiations. Is there anything I can recommend to her, apart from carefully studying the Stern Review and to watch out for the 4th IPCC Assessment Report (InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which is due in early 2007? Let me touch upon two issues of overriding importance. First, the current state-of-the-art estimates of the multiple potential damages associated with anthropogenic global warming (as reflected in the Stern Review) are highly unsatisfactory. They may grossly overrate those damages since the analysis does not genuinely account for the adaptive elasticity of societies. Even worse, however, is the fact that they may fatally underrate the negative consequences of unbridled climate change. This has to do with the still unfalsified hypothesis that human interference with the atmosphere might activate a number of switches in the Earth System (“tipping elements”) that could interact through teleconnections and positive feedbacks to bring about a “domino dynamics” that transforms the planetary environment in a radical - but not entirely unprecedented - way. Let us not forget that our old globe has been turned into a snowball as well as into a hothouse in the past, by natural forces alone. Finding out whether something comparable could happen under human pressure in the future may well be the “Number 1” scientific challenge of the decade. My gut feeling is that a thorough Earth System analysis employing fully integrated simulation models will safely rule out the possibility of anthropogenic “runaway greenhouse” phenomena. Yet that analysis needs to be done, and fairly soon, and it will demand commitments and resources on the Manhattan Project scale. As the latter term is widely stigmatized for understandable reasons, I have suggested a San Gimignano (SG) Project – bearing in mind that this beautiful medieval town is often dubbed “the Manhattan of Tuscany”. After all, we can do with a bit of humour in our serious world-saving business. Second, the recent Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 12) in Nairobi has shed a harsh light on the intensifying crisis of multilateral climate diplomacy. Thus, even if an analytic SG I Project confirms that confining global warming to 2ºC above the pre-industrial value ensures planetary climate stability, there is no guarantee whatsoever that the world community is actually able to hold that temperature line. Progress towards an effective post-Kyoto regime seems excruciatingly slow, while the winds of climate change appear to blow stronger every month. Here is where a strategic SG II Project, an Apollo Program-calibre innovation effort to decarbonize the global energy systems, needs to kick in. The economic aspects of such a crash program are sketched in a special issue of the Energy Journal (Edenhofer et al. 2006, see below), which also served as a crucial source of information for the Stern Review. But what about the political implementation? There is no world government that could stipulate, top-down, some 50-year plan towards a zero-emissions civilization. There is, however, a promising bottom-up way forward, namely the “Road Atlas” approach. This approach complements the conventional demand logic – set global greenhouse gas emissions caps, allocate politically correct country quota, and trade away regional barriers and inefficiencies – by a supply-side strategy based on individual commitments within a “club of the willing”. The members of this club (nation states, cities, corporations, etc.) develop and submit their specific roadmap towards decarbonisation, indicating criteria, milestones, and measures in the period till, say, 2030. In other words, they all make a public and verifiable statement about how far they are willing to “leap for sustainability” in the mid-term future. Once the figures are on the accounting table, one can add them up to see whether the sum of emissions’ reduction pledges is anywhere near a significant contribution to a climate solution. This approach could generate multiple benefits, not least a powerful realpolitik check inducing interactive amendment of the individual roadmaps and the aggressive recruitment of additional club members. I can well imagine that Germany suggests producing a core atlas in 2007 of pertinent “decarb” strategies for the G8 + 5 countries, i.e., including the US, China and India. This would still be a fairly thin – yet most instructive – compendium with the potential of rapid growth through additional contributions in due course. The club could hold its annual assembly (for reviewing, revising and rejoicing) in San Gimignano. I visited the place just two months ago and found it as ravishing as ever!” Edenhofer, O., Carraro, C., Köhler, J., Grubb, M. (Eds.) (2006) Endogenous Technological Change and the Economics of Atmospheric Stabilisation. A Special Issue of the Energy Journal. Professor John Schellnhuber CBE has recently been appointed ‘Chief Sustainability Scientist’ for the German Government. He is Founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a Distinguished Science Adviser and former Research Director of the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He is also a James Martin 21st Century School Fellow at the ECI.
Tipping Point 2006: Climate and Art Over the last year ECI has contributed to several events that bring together climate researchers and the arts community to exchange ideas about climate change. The first event was held at Christ Church in September 2005 when 60 scientists and artists came together for a two-day meeting to discuss the science, art and communication of climate change. Many of the artists, including authors Ian McEwan and Gretel Ehrlich and dancer Siobhan Davies, were associated with Cape Farewell, a project created by David Buckland that has taken groups of scientists and artists to the Arctic resulting in some powerful artwork as well as teaching materials and new scientific data. In December 2005 the Bodleian quadrangle was the location for Cape Farewell’s Ice Garden, with more than 14,000 people viewing art associated with climate change. In summer 2006 the Natural History Museum hosted ‘The Ship: The Art of Climate Change’ accompanied by a book Burning Ice - Art & Climate Change including essays by ECI Professor John Schellnhuber CBE, James Martin 21st Century School Fellow and an enthusiastic supporter of the climate and art initiative. Director Diana Liverman and senior fellow John Schellnhuber. John also participated in a debate at the Royal Court Theatre. These successful collaborations led to a second Oxford encounter, now called Tipping Point, at Trinity College and the Sheldonian Theatre in September 2006. Attended by a wide range of artists and scientists, including sculptor Antony Gormley. this event was focused on finding solutions to the climate change problem. ECI staff Chris West, Diana Liverman, and Ian Curtis are now contributing, with Tipping Point organiser Peter Gingold, to ongoing discussions with the arts community including plans for a major event at London’s South Bank complex, a Tipping Point meeting in Germany, and a set of spin off events with Cape Farewell in North America.
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Page 25 and 26: Supergen: Highly Distributed Power
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