Bowing to the inevitable over a postponement of a legally binding global package for the next stage of tackling climate change is all very well, but the price of failure – or another elastic deferral – can be severe. Nature does not hang about waiting for politicians. And postponement sends out its own baleful message – that this is off the agenda for the time being and urgency and priority take a back seat. This can ricochet unhelpfully across the world, not least to those points of greatest resistance such as the US Congress. It can also weaken the resolve of other big and important countries, including China, India, Japan and Brazil, who might be discouraged from taking gthe painful decisions so deperately needed within a comparatively short timescale. The ultimate danger is that the whole global drive for meaningful, decisive and sufficient action against climate change begins to unravel. Falling back into the comfort zone of untrammelled economic growth and an unyielding power structure based on the dominance of the Washington Consensus is all too easy, but medium and long-term risks calamitous consequences.

There are two factors in particular which make this issue both unique and unprecedented in the magnitude of the challenge. First, unlike any previous international treaty in history, it requires universality, or something very close to it, in the response of all countries. Any lack of inclusiveness in the form of any sizeable and populous region across the world sharply undermines the impact of the efforts made by all the rest. The world cannot afford free-riders. But that escalates the complexity of the negotiations drastically as so many countries demand recognition of their own special circumstances (as they will describe them).
That requires a fiendishly difficult negotiation to seek accommodations across the spectrum without sacrificing the core necessities of the outcome. The cross-cutting demands between North/South, East/West, rich industrialised/poor developing, island states/mainland continents, oil-rich and resource-rich/ arid and impoverished countries open up almost unbridgeable gulfs. Old-style socialism may have collapsed with the Berlin Wall in 1989, but new-style socialism in which all have to contribute and share equally if all are to gain and prosper may well be ushering in a new and very different era of world governance in which commonality of purpose may be a condition of survival.
The second factor which makes this so very different from any other challenge in history is that it threatens the underlying tenets of the economic model on which the world is based, which is precisely why the dominant country under that model, the US, has called a halt for the moment at least. Capitalism can only prosper as a system where the potential for growth is largely unconstrained. But unlimited mining of coal, uncontrolled deforestation, exponential increases in the number and use of cars and aeroplanes, and rapacious and ever-increasing industrial exploitation are stalled by two overriding constraints – an intensification of turbo climate change and the finitude of Earth’s resources. It is not surprising that the Copenhagen process has been temporarily checked when the stakes are so unprecedentedly momentous. Climate catastrophe will either destroy large parts of the world and large parts of the human population with them, or it will mark a decisive shift from growth-ridden, hyper-exploitative capitalism to a much more balanced, inter-dependent, and environmentally coherent economic model.

Bookmark to: