China Insists That Its Steps on Climate Be Voluntary:
As a Sunday target date approaches for countries to submit to the United Nations their plans for fighting climate change, China is banding together with other major developing nations to stress that only the wealthier countries need to make internationally binding commitments.
So while China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, might put down in writing its targets for slowing the growth of emissions, it will make clear that those efforts are voluntary steps it plans to take domestically that should not imply a binding international commitment.
The distinction reflects China’s strong desire to cast climate change policy as a sovereignty issue in the aftermath of rancorous negotiations last month at the environmental summit meeting in Copenhagen. It says developed nations, which emitted carbon dioxide without restriction over many decades of industrialization, cannot force developing countries to submit to international policies or regulations.
China is standing by targets it announced before Copenhagen, but previous climate change treaties say targets of developing countries are not internationally binding, said Pan Jiahua, an economics professor who advises the Chinese negotiating team. “On this China will stand firm.”
This position could draw further criticisms from Western politicians who already blame China for weakening the final accord at Copenhagen. In the United States Congress, the chances that lawmakers will pass climate legislation this year are slim, in part because some lawmakers say China and India, where carbon emissions are rising the fastest, are giving much higher priority to maintaining economic growth than to fighting climate change.
So, China is sticking to their absurd “intensity reduction” pledge, and it can’t be binding. India is also going the intensity route[1], but I’m not sure where they stand on the binding nature of any pledges. And the US is pledging a pathetic, inadequate reduction (17% from 2005, or 4% from 1990), with no guarantee that it will get within three time zones of becoming law and actually happening.
Somebody remind me again why we’re supposed to be optimistic.
Someone.
Anyone.
Hello?
Is this thing on…?
You can track who’s promising what via the U.S. Climate Action Network’s page Who’s On Board With The Copenhagen Accord?
[1] Just to be clear: I think it will take a very surprising turn of events for either China or India to realize a net reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020.
Here’s and article which tries to explain that odd gene we posses….
Why do people often vote against their own interests?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8474611.stm
Fascinating article, Paul. Thanks for the link.
I haven’t had a chance to think about it in any detail, but if Westen is right when he says:
——————————-
If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.
They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.
There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.
——————————-
then we are SO freakin’ screwed on both peak oil and climate chaos that there’s no hope for us at all.
If it really is the case that we can’t convinced American voters with facts, then we (meaning my fellow Americans, not humanity as a whole) really are dumber than a sack of rocks.
I’ll have to ponder this a lot more, and try to get my hot little hands on a copy of Westen’s book.
It is odd that this vicious skeptism and denial is mainly rooted in the states!
You could say ‘west’, but the main difference at least is that the political echelons of the rest of the whole freaking world apart from the US right seems to realize that global warming is screwing us big time or soon will be.
Paul, Lou,
am thinking along these lines for quite some time now, but have not reached a satisfying conclusion yet.
There is quite some diverse reasoning in this area for a long time, ofcourse.
There is a paper by William R. Catton, Jr.: The Problem of Denial (1995)
He ponders on the motivation for denial, and argues, that even very intelligent people (scientists, Simon and Kahn in his paper)
are not immune to this disease.
Just three excerpts:
———
…Ramachandran’s explanation for anosognosia says that this form of denial is a way of coping with an insufferable contradiction that confronts stroke patients; their paralysis is an incompatible, identity-threatening anomaly that contradicts their prior experience of themselves and their milieu. …
———
then:
…He (Ramachandran) postulates what he calls an “anomaly detector” as a kind of decision-making center somewhere in the brain. He has not located it specifically, but feels it must be in a part of the brain that usually interacts with the part affected by the stroke his patients have suffered, i.e., the right hemisphere. Anosognosia involves a breakdown of anomaly detection, so the patient is truly unaware of his paralysis and consequent disabilities. …
———
…
By thinking of denial as a defense against intolerable anomalous information, we come back to the classic assertion by Paul Sears (1964,11) that ecology “if taken seriously as an instrument for the long-run welfare of mankind, would … endanger the assumptions and practices accepted by modern societies….”
…
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The other is a review of three books, including ‘The Political Brain’ by Drew Westen
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/131/2/591 (2008)
Some important theses from this:
…
‘the political brain is an EMOTIONAL brain. It is not a dispassionate calculating machine, objectively searching for the right facts, figures and policies to make a reasoned decision.’
…
‘Republicans understand what the philosopher, David Hume, recognized three centuries ago: that reason is a slave to emotion, not the other way around. With the exception of the Clinton era, Democratic strategists for the last three decades have instead clung tenaciously to the DISPASSIONATE VIEW OF THE MIND and to the campaign strategy that logically follows from it, namely one that focuses on facts, figures, policy statements, costs and benefits, and appeals to intellect and expertise’.
…
(Think Al Gore)
…
In the absence of big political ideas that carry conviction, voters’ allegiances appear to be won and lost more easily in the US on these emotional theological issues.
…
Finally, one recommendation in this review:
…
ANOTHER WAY TO PROMOTE THE GREATER INTEREST IS TO DEPOLITICIZE MORE DECISION-MAKING AND PASS ON RESPONSIBILITY TO UNELECTED DECISION-MAKERS WHO ARE EXPERTS.
…
Well, here You see the potentially devastating effects on this above recommendation by the climategate and IPCC Himalayan glacier ‘scandals’, which ofcourse are only minor to my and surely Your judgement.
But who decides whether those are elephants or mouses?
The generally casually informed ‘man on the street’?
NO, he just adds this like a colour-point on his emotional costume.
I’m afraid this is already exploited by lobbying circles:
‘ Do’nt trust the experts/scientists!’
As if scientific evidence and residual doubt (which scientists always have by method!) are on par with each other.
Even scientists are often not aware on their disciplines’ foundational methods!
This worries me a lot!
Best Regards
G.
Some thoughts on ‘climatology’/'climate science’.
Is climatology a ‘science’?
NO. It is not, in the sense that physics or chemistry is a ‘science’.
(Actually, physics is THE ONLY science in the strict sense, and chemistry is just a special branch of physics.)
What constitues climatology, is a bundle of strict methods, which are quite diverse:
Paleoclimatology, atmospheric chemistry, ultimately Physics,to name a few.
In this sense, climatology is quite comparable to archaeology, which applies an
extremely diverse set of METHODS.
This actually is not a drawback, but an advantage. Applying diverse methods to a common cluster of phenomena, this ‘science’ gets more robust.
It is a pity that scientists do not communicate this properly.
Maybe because one has to go deep into the machine-room of science, i.e. the field of ‘Philosophy of science’.
(Which opens a Pandora’s box of deep questions, the Public is not prepared to digest.)
Scientists tend to present ‘facts’, with some conclusions attached, but this does not seem to work with ‘climatology’ anymore.
Why so?
Well. Because it touches some deeper convictions, which go well below ‘dispassionate
views of the world’, like science promotes.
Let me cite Catton, who pondered that also:
“…Ecological understanding of nature’s limits and man’s place in nature contradicts deeply entrenched cultural expectations of ENDLESS MATERIAL PROGRESS. …”
So here You have it:
Given the choice between science (without a subject–every ‘hard’ science is free of a subject–) and an ideology, which somehow integrates the subject, including its hedonistic drives and conceptions of good and evil, the ideology, which confirms the status quo of ones belief-system, wins hands down!
This makes the discrediting of science all the more attractive.
The only one who currently tackles that question in the climate-debate to my knowledge, is Joe Romm.
Is climate change a matter of discourse, or a matter of fact(s)?
Right-wing babble is appeal to emotion, which, I am afraid, correlates with two different types of brain-wiring: Facts over Emotion–vs–Emotion over Facts.
Well.
Would be worth a book on a not unimportant topic.
Best regards
G.
third installment.
Is a primacy of emotion justifyable?
Going deep into the machine-room of human aspirations, one is confronted with the question of primacy of reason versus emotion, irrespective of its shadings.
Here I must confess, that I refuse Dawkins’/Dennetts’ concepton of a fundamentally fragmented mind.
Every thinking person should evaluate this:
Is the human mind just a bundle of competing memes?
A free market of idea-particles, freely floating around and constituting meme-complexes, which form a belief-system?
I resolutely OPPOSE that!
It is an insult to all my aspirations!
Actually there are two basic methods of forming a belief:
1) Centering them around rational pondering.
2) Centering them around emotions.
Left-brain versus Right brain Dominance.
One of the puzzles ANY ‘rational’ person has to cope with, is that ANY Value originates in emotion.
(DaMasio)
OK?
Now, the primacy of (emotional) value is open to limited rational subversion(!).
Being used to misunderstanding, I do not expect it to being different here.
(Sorry).
Just one puzzle (which I am quite sure that it is misunderstood):
‘Is the world worth saving?’
A question which CANNOT be answered whitout a conception of ‘value’, i.e. an integration of our emotional and rational inclinations.
In proposing an answer to my own question:
Is a primacy of emotion (as a worldview) justifyable?
NO.
The basic struggle is about a healing of those opposing drives.
Between suffering und healing, which is, in a deep sense, a religious drive.
I say this as an agnostic, just to be clear.
But we have to examine the root.
And pure rationality does not get us there.
This is the challenge.
Wow, lots to think about (and research) there. Looks like groo just added to work I’ll be doing on my own book. (I was tempted to say something here like, “It’s dark, and my free time has been eaten by a groo”, but I don’t know how many people played Zork back in the day and would get the groo/grue joke. Probably best that I didn’t mention it.)
Thanks.
Lou,
glad You find some value in it.