numbers, not adjectives — D. J. C. MacKay

2  Climate Cooperation

Will humanity be able to resist burning all the world’s recoverable fossil fuels, and avoid rampant climate change resulting from the associated >+4°C temperature rise?

There are only two possible routes to succeeding. One is that renewable energy becomes cheaper than fossil fuels for practically every possible use. This could eliminate the economic incentive to use fossil fuels, halt the rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and avoid further warming. The other possibility is that we agree not to use fossil fuels because of their impact on the climate, even if their immediate price (not counting the climate effects) is smaller than the alternative. I’ll discuss these in turn.

Renewable energy sources such as wind and especially solar power have become cheaper. Some recent headlines even claim that renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels. Such statements may be confusing the marginal cost of adding capacity to an existing grid, with running a grid. The problem being that renewables are intermittent, but grids are expected to deliver uninterrupted power for not too widely fluctuating prices. Since storage of electricity at scale is expensive, marginal cost and carbon free grids are very different. Secondly, some uses of energy, for example cement and steel production and air transport are very difficult to decarbonise. Thirdly, decarbonising infrastructure may require very large investments, and remember we are trying to make the case that renewables only might be the cheaper option.

It doesn’t seem clear, that global societies will rapidly completely decarbonise purely through short term economic presures. If the demand for fossil fuels falls, their price may fall, creating an even tougher hurdle for the renewables. There are physical limits to how efficient processes can get, and energy demand has a tendency to rise. But of course, it is difficult to predict the future, and we cannot know for sure. While I’m very much in favour of expanding renewable energy, I just don’t think it can all be achieved from purely short term economic incentives. Whatever your predictions in this regard, it would be prudent to entertain alternatives, in case price on its own is insufficient. If it turns out, that price alone is enough, we can always back off from other solutions.

2.1 Cooperation

Agreeing not to burn fossil fuels because they cause global warming is difficult. That’s because if you burn fossil fuels, you get all the benefit, but the “cost” in terms of global warming is shared by everyone. Therefore, it is in your selfish interest to continue using fossil fuels. But if everyone does that, we cause global warming. Therefore, it’s in our collective interest not to burn fossil fuels, and thereby avoid continued warming. One problem is, that there is no global government, which could implement such rules. Instead, we have to cooperate to agree not to do it, because we have a collective interest in this outcome. Cooperation will only work if all participants do their fair share. One immediate issue is that all nations are different, so a prerequisite for even starting the think about cooperation is to define what is meant by “fair”?

Fairness, is of course subject to moral and ethical judgement. You may think that it will be impossible to get near global agreement about what fairness means in a climate context. However, this skepticism misses an important point. We don’t have to all agree precisely on what is fair, we only have to agree on something being “fair enough” to be better than the alternative. And because the alternative (ie not agreeing to limit climate change) is going to be very bad for the living conditions of the coming generations, we have some tolerance on our working definition of fair. Which is encouraging. So, the first practical step needs to be to set out some specific definitions of “fair”, and ask which nations can agree to these principles. Once a definition gains traction, it can form the basis for a coalition of the willing, a cooperative agreement built around this principle.

Brief aside: Note, that I’ve phrased the cooperative as a coalition of the willing. Ideally, one might hope for universal approval, but this is likely unachievable in practice. Insisting on unanimity unfortunately gives single nations the power to disrupt, a property which we may recognise from the UNFCCC COP meetings. A large majority cooperative would be collectively preferable to no cooperative. In practice, a successful cooperative with partial membership would presumably implement sanctions towards non-members.

In order to make this fairly abstract discussion a but more concrete, let’s propose a specific concrete notion of fairness. It is understood, that this is just a proposal, it’s not to have absolute validity in any sense, other than being a principle which might form a basis for cooperation which is better than the alternative. Other suggestions, which may more accurately reflect nation’s preferences may develop.

Equitable Climate Principle: Every person in the world has equal rights and responsibilities for our global shared atmosphere. Equal rights to the atmosphere in the climate context in particular means equal per capita rights to emit greenhouse gases. In the event that one nation want to exceed the average per capita annual greenhouse gas emissions, compensation would have to be payed to the cooperative at a price per ton of excess CO₂e agreed by the cooperative, and equal for all nations, to be shared equally on a per capita basis.

Some nations may subscribe to this principle. Others may prefer a different formulation. For example, the equitable proposal ignores historical emissions, which have differed significantly. The relevant question is not whether some nations may have gained an advantage over others through their historical emissions, the question is only: is this proposed principle something which we think would be better than the alternative. Another example would be that some industrialised nations may think it fair that they get a relatively larger per capita allowance because their society uses more energy; this would be akin to the to so-called grandfathering principles, which also underpin the notion of relative reductions commonly used for NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions). Again, the question isn’t whether this is fair in an absolute sense, but whether it is better than the alternative. Finally, note that the equitable principle above is in some sense the opposite of the common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) principles adopted by the UNFCCC COP framework.

What constitues a good proposal? A good proposal should rely on simple principles, have universal applicability, and be a clear moral and ethical compass. It should be general enough to apply to all sorts of societies, but specific enough to be able to form a concrete basis for a strong cooperation.

2.2 Next Steps

What are the concrete steps to further this agenda?

1. continue efforts to promote renewables and improve efficiencies
2. ensure that your friends, family, colleagues, community and politicians understand that cooperation is the only way, if price and efficiencies of renewables alone are not enough
3. further the process of generating consensus on what climate fairness means to communities.

While we hope that lower prices and efficiencies may solve the climate problem, prepare for the alternative by enabling the basis for climate cooperation.