IPCC Official: “Climate Policy Is Redistributing The World’s Wealth”

NZZ am Sonntag: Mr. Eden, everybody concerned with climate protection demands emissions reductions. You now speak of “dangerous emissions reduction.” What do you mean?

Ottmar Edenhofer: So far economic growth has gone hand in hand with the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. One percent growth means one percent more emissions. The historic memory of mankind remembers: In order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas. And therefore, the emerging economies fear CO2 emission limits.

But everybody should take part in climate protection, otherwise it does not work.

That is so easy to say. But particularly the industrialized countries have a system that relies almost exclusively on fossil fuels. There is no historical precedent and no region in the world that has decoupled its economic growth from emissions. Thus, you cannot expect that India or China will regard CO2 emissions reduction as a great idea. And it gets worse: We are in the midst of a renaissance of coal, because oil and gas (sic) have become more expensive, but coal has not. The emerging markets are building their cities and power plants for the next 70 years, as if there would be permanently no high CO 2 price.

The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 – there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

Nevertheless, the environment is suffering from climate change – especially in the global south.

It will be a lot to do with adaptation. But that just goes far beyond traditional development policy: We will see in Africa with climate change a decline in agricultural yields. But this can be avoided if the efficiency of production is increased – and especially if the African agricultural trade is embedded in the global economy. But for that we need to see that successful climate policy requires other global trade and financial policies.

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galileonardo says:

November 18, 2010 at 9:08 pm

Betsy says: “I think you all are missing something here. The AGW folks want to keep Africa as poor as possible, other than various oligarchies, so that Africa won’t emit any ‘evil CO2′.”

Bingo, despite some of the protests I see. I was reading through the comments waiting for someone to point out what is the real goal of the global governance/redistribution agenda. The agenda isn’t about helping the poor. It is about the effort to “make sure there is not another United States.” I wrote about this at length a while back on The Air Vent (thanks Jeff):

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/uns-ideal-global-government/#more-10157

A few comments here have touched upon the real agenda, but I am surprised at how many of the posters here are surprised. I’m sorry to echo crosspatch’s comment right out of the gate, but DUH! None of this was conspiracy theory or far-fetched in any way and the UN’s Emissions Scenarios was written a decade ago. As I point out in my article, this information is all out there in their own words! This might have been a hint:

“Massive income redistribution and presumably high taxation levels may adversely affect the economic efficiency and functioning of world markets.”

Whodathunkit. Using their own figures, the dent in global GDP by 2100 following their Sustainable Development B1 Scenario will be $200 trillion annually! The annual per capita income among the poor will be $35,000 instead of $70,000. Those are their numbers folks.

So, as Betsy points out, this is about controlling the world’s resources, stifling development in Annex 2 countries, and “de-developing,” as John Holdren calls it, the U.S. and other Annex 1 countries. As I note in the article, the only things sustained under SD B1 are misery and poverty, and that prolonging of poverty will be a death sentence for millions. As others have pointed out, the climate agreements transparently reflect this agenda. The only conspiracy involved was the conspiracy of not admitting to the real global governance agenda despite the readily-available evidence to the contrary.

I cannot tell you how many times I was called a conspiracy theorist, involved in black helicopter talk, wearing a tin-foil hat, etc. when bringing this up. Always the response was the same old nothing to see here with a “crackpot” thrown in for good measure. Well I’ll be sure to share Edenhofer’s admissions with the next AGW zealot who tries to claim that the IPCC is all about the science. The claim is right but they have the wrong scientific field in mind. These puppets are activist scientists engaged in wholly political science. Thanks for yet another exoneration AGW cultists, not that any skeptic needed it.

And the thing that angers me to no end is Edenhofer’s admission that this is not about the real environmental issues facing the planet. As an environmentalist myself, this diversion of resources, attention, and, last but not least, scientific credibility, has been one of my primary bones with these AGW control freaks all along. This “movement” has set back real climate science and true environmentalism for who knows how long.

While Hansen, Mann et al were pre-occupied with their misguided AGW advocacy, the last white rhino in Krugersdorp was killed, ridiculously huge areas of habitat was destroyed to make way for ends-justify-the-means biofuels and solar arrays, and many other environmental/humanitarian issues that could have been directly affected with proven results were put on the back burner to focus on the CO2 phantom menace. By-and-large the real environmental degradation taking place worldwide remains largely unaddressed. It is a travesty. Thanks for nothing. Since many of you are surprised and most might miss this in the article I reference above, here are some of the terms/phrases from the Copenhagen negotiating text I gathered that you should familiarize yourself with:

Historical climate debt; transparent system of governance; compensate for lost opportunities, resources, lives, land and dignity; environmental justice; green fund; levies on CO2 emissions; taxes on carbon-intensive products and services; levies on international and maritime transport; levies on international transactions; penalties or fines for non-compliance; ODA additional to ODA targets; adaptation debt; 2 per cent of gross national product; and uniform global levy.

Open up your wallets folks. Oh, I almost forgot. As Doug says, this won’t go down without a fight. I’d say it’s high time to put up your dukes if you haven’t already. I hate to keep quoting myself, but the fastest way to true environmental stewardship is wealth. Get out of the world’s way or, quite simply, you’ll be pushed out of the way. I sure intend on fighting this fight until this people-punishing agenda in dead and buried. Ding. Ding. Cheers!

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Apportioning Global Wealth.