NYC Climate Change Summit in Success from Failure

“As one of America’s governors has said, ‘We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it.’” – President Obama at the United Nations Climate Change Summit on September 23, 2014

            Radoslav Dimitrov offers a dismal behind-the-scenes glance of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. He claims that “the conference was a failure whose magnitude exceeded our worst fears.” (Dimitrov 2010, 18) However, Dimitrov exposes a potential silver lining of the damaged UN climate process as a significant progress in aggregate climate policy; thereby poses the question, “Can political failures have positive policy impacts?” Based upon the recent United Nations Climate Change Summit in New York City on September 23, 2014, I argue that there is the possibility that political failures at one level can facilitate policies at other levels. However, these improvements also hint at the necessity for a philosophical shift in international environmentalism if the positive policy trajectory is to continue.

            The 2009 Copenhagen Accord has been criticized as futile for being too weak and nonbinding. Not only did seven countries oppose the Accord as “undemocratically created and too weak to save the world” (Dimitrov 2010, 20), but the US, Brazil, China and India successfully removed the “legally binding” reference from the negotiation outcome. With many seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the greatest hurdle has been the stalemate between developed, or the ‘North’, and developing nations, or the ‘South’. Developed nations - primarily the United States - insist that developing nations should be predominantly responsible for making the greatest efforts to combat climate change because they include the world’s largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters. Conversely, developing nations – primarily China – maintain that the industrialized nations of the West are historically liable for the brunt of greenhouses gases emitted since the Industrial Revolution. If one hope for the Copenhagen Conference was to resolve the North versus South dichotomy through cooperation towards sustainable development, Adil Najam would argue the Accord outcome presented “one more instance of hope triumphing over experience”. (Najam 2003, 373)

            Contradictorily to Najam’s despondent theory that reconciliation between developed and developing nations was impossible due to their governments’ “lack of willingness to embrace global environmental cooperation” (Najam 2003, 372), the events of the NYC UN Climate Change Summit point “to a changing dynamic between the two countries [United States and China] on the issue,” (Duggan 2014) and offer a potential collision of hope and experience.  President Obama asserted the United State’s most ambitious participation in global climate change policy with his unequivocal support behind a 2015 agreement demanding emissions cuts from all nations. "We can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation, developed and developing alike. Nobody gets a pass." (Friedman 2014) Rather than resisting the accusation of responsibility, Vice Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli said, “As a responsible major developing country, China will make an even greater effort to address climate change and take on international responsibilities that are commensurate with our national conditions.” (Landler and Davenport 2014) Although China’s choice of a climate plan will be based on the perceived stringency of the American plan for emissions cuts by 2050, China’s pledge includes “the peaking of total carbon dioxide emissions as early as possible”, which is the first time such a high-ranking Chinese government member mentioned a peak emissions target, according to Shou. (Duggan 2014)          

  China’s air quality catastrophe serves as one straightforward example of Dimitrov’s proposition that the failure at Copenhagen could expedite policy at other levels. China’s recent ‘airpocalypse’ of dangerously high levels of domestic air pollution resulted, in part, from its rising fossil fuel consumption, which now contributes to almost 30% of global CO₂ emissions. Without Copenhagen’s legally binding GHG emission limitations, China has been able to ‘freely’ develop, thereby advancing their air pollution crisis. This health and safety repercussion has ultimately led to an unfamiliar urgency from China to address universal climate change, as evident by 2014’s record as China’s lowest coal consumption growth in a decade. This decrease in fossil fuel consumption occurred without the intervention of an international environmental organization. The incentive was simply reaching a pain threshold, beyond which economic benefits could no longer justify the environmental costs. Additionally, global businesses have become markedly active in the climate negotiations for the first time at the Climate Change Summit, with hundreds of companies such as Apple, Ikea, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. committing to climate initiatives including a price on carbon, increasing renewable energy mechanisms, and even setting goals such as Wal-Mart’s to end forest losses by 2030. China’s initiative to foster more sustainable development, and the private sector’s lead on efficient policies, suggest that the power to invoke pro-environmental policy change depends upon a fundamental philosophical shift towards a more universally comprehensive perspective of world environmental issues; albeit by virtue of irrefutably dire environmental consequences, or perhaps adopting the responsibilities perceived to be deferred by other parties. Dimitrov alleges that, “Stakeholders who see they cannot expect much needed adaptation or mitigation action from the global level may increase their self-reliance and strengthen policy efforts at local, subnational and regional levels.” (Dimitrov 23)

The core challenge of the international climate change policy debate is global fragmentation. A simplified purpose of a World Environment Organization is to allow for a ‘unified’, global conscience to address environmental concerns in the interest of the extensive greater good. However, in order to truly prioritize defense against the globally unbiased, imminent threat of climate change, parties must recognize the entangled, dynamic, holistic nature of international environmental issues. Only an (realistically) altruistic international body can truly accomplish change on a global scale. This comprehension is possible through a variety of means including NGO information sharing, marketing from environmentally-conscience companies, and increased interaction between Northern and Southern states. However, without the efforts of the other levels of policy (for instance local governments and the private sector), and continued broadcast of the need for effective policy by virtue of the failing international body, this comprehensive ecocentric revelation will arise out of future environmental disasters with the risk of it being too late.

Sources: 

Dimitrov, Radoslav S. 2010. “Inside Copenhagen: The State of Climate Governance.” Global

Environmental Politics. 10(2): 18–24.

Duggan, Jennifer. "China pledges to cut emissions at UN climate summit," The Guardian, September 24, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/chinas-choice/2014/sep/24/china-pledges-to-cut-emissions-at-un-climate-summit

 

Friedman, Lisa. "Global business leaders back carbon price at N.Y. summit," E&E Reporter, September 23, 2014. http://www.eenews.net/special_reports/global_climate_debate/stories/1060006275

Landler, Mark and Coral Davenport, "Obama Presses Chinese on Global Warming", The New York Times, September 23, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/world/asia/obama-at-un-climate-summit-calls-for-vast-international-effort.html?_r=1

Najam, Adil.  “The Case Against a new Environmental Organization”, Global Governance, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2003.