The fact that health costs will consume the entire State Government budget in less than 25 years is a wicked problem* that precipitated the South Australian (SA) Government to explore a new approach to improving the health and wellbeing of the population.

Climate change might be an even bigger wicked problem, but the unsustainable growth in health care costs is a more urgent threat.

It is likely to be even more immediate than indicated in the graph below as forecasts of health costs tend to follow previous trends in costs of treating diseases only. For example, the trend in decline in cardiovascular disease rates would reduce costs but the (yet another) wicked problem of obesity is yet to make its large presence fully felt with the weight of chronic diseases that it induces. Thus progress in one area is likely to be overwhelmed by costly health problems elsewhere.

Total state budget compared to health sector expenditure Source: Department of the Premier and Cabinet, South Australia

Moreover, energy costs, the negative influence of economic turmoil, and the injuries and deaths from extreme weather events are rarely considered in forward estimates of health care costs as they are hard to predict.

Nevertheless the SA Government considered that there was enough troubling evidence to explore a new approach to improving the health and wellbeing of the population. Informing this approach was the realisation that this wicked problem can only be tackled with the collaboration of other agencies that influence the determinants of health.#

This approach, coined ‘Health in All Policies” (HiAP) was incorporated into the latest European Health Strategy and is progressively being implemented by all member countries of the European Union.

In a nutshell the HiAP approach actively encourages all government agencies to incorporate health, well-being and equity impacts in their policies and plans. In South Australia it is not just a nice idea, but is a commitment by all heads of department spelt out in the State’s Strategic Plan. Having the Premiers’ endorsement and support was critical in SA becoming recognised as a leader in adopting the HiAP approach.

SA invited internationally renowned public health, health promotion and global health expert, Professor Kickbusch to be the 2007 Adelaide Thinker in Residence. Professor Kickbusch recommended that SA adopt Health in All Policies as it, “… provides an opportunity for government agencies to work together to try to improve the health of the population through addressing the Social Determinants of Health (SDH) and helps to create a cost effective, sustainable health system.” 

This ultimately led to the establishment of a HiAP Unit within the SA Health Department.

HiAP Summer School in Adelaide

In 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Government of South Australia co-convened an international meeting on HiAP, where the need for new skills and competencies in public health were discussed and documented in the . As a result of this need, the first HiAP international Summer School was held over five days between 28^th Nov – 2^nd Dec this year.

About 40 people attended from India, Latvia, Afghanistan, England, Holland, PNG, USA, Egypt, Malaysia, Canada, Mongolia, Northern Ireland, Armenia, and Australian States and Territories apart from Victoria and the ACT.

The evidence has yet to emerge that the HiAP approach will fulfil the objective of creating a cost effective, sustainable health system. The often-cited study of the North Karelia Project in Finland is held up as an exempla of HiAP^1,2 but there has been a tendency to attempt replication of elements of the North Karelia project, without due consideration of the unique population and setting being targeted leading to an undermining of the success of community based health promotion.³

Meanwhile there is clear evidence that investment in the early years is cost effective⁴ and yet the expenditure on health, education, income support and social services increases with age in inverse proportion to the potential for long term benefit as shown in the diagram below.

Update 5/4/12: diagram inserted

With most of the developed world likely to be following the example of the US in expending about a third of all health care resources in the last year of life,⁵ the HiAP approach will need to do more than invite other agencies to tackle the SDH.  

Even if the HiAP approach drives an agenda that enables the population to reach its maximum health potential, this good work will be undone if the planet becomes uninhabitable. Also the prospect of death and injury from extreme weather events associated with dangerous climate change necessitates HiAP to enhance not only the SDH but also the determinants of ecological health. It would make no sense to establish a separate ecological HiAP as the determinants of ecological health, like the SDH, all lie outside health care services (apart from the fact that health care services contribute to resource depletion and pollution). Also the SDH agenda should incorporate a key message (number 6) from Prof Sir Michael Marmot’s UK review, ‘Fair Society Health Lives’⁶ as follows;

“Economic growth is not the most important measure of our country’s success. The fair distribution of health, well-being and sustainability are important social goals. Tackling social inequalities in health and tackling climate change must go together.”

This call meshes well with recent developments on sustainable economics, as for example explained by Dr Phil Lawn on this site.

In this vein, the SA publication edited by Kickbusch and Bucket entitled ‘Implementing Health in All Policies Adelaide 2010’⁷ points out that, “…few nations have adopted measures that integrate economic, social and health indicators and acknowledge their fundamental connections. Indeed, an unquestioning dedication to economic growth per se by governments and mass media has been critiqued as part of the problem, contributing to widening equity gaps, dangerous climate change, and mental and social health problems. In response to these challenges, a number of broader measures of national progress have been developed. These are characterised by combining a range of indicators that span various sectors and are well suited to monitoring the progress of a HiAP approach. Already, in South Australia, the SA Strategic Plan provides an example of the sort of development agenda that could dovetail effectively with such alternative indicators.”

South Australia’s endeavours would be facilitated if healthy public policy was implemented at a national level by adopting the HiAP approach but with a refinement to prioritise interventions that have evidence for long term health gain rather than short term politically expedient returns on investment.* Also the HiAP approach would be more effective if the community demanded it as their right.

References

 1.        Puska P. Health in all policies. The European Journal of Public Health. 2007;17(4):328.

2.         Puska P, Tuomilehto J, Nissinen A, Salonen J. Ten Years of the North Karelia project. Acta Medica Scandinavica. 1985 Jan 12;218(S701):66–71.

3.         McLaren L, Ghali LM, Lorenzetti D, Rock M. Out of context? Translating evidence from the North Karelia project over place and time. Health Education Research. 2007 Jun 1;22(3):414–24.

4.         Heckman J, Carneiro P. Human Capital Policy. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series [Internet]. 2003;No. 9495. Available from: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9495

5.         Hogan C, Lunney J, Gabel J, Lynn J. Medicare Beneficiaries: Costs Of Care In The Last Year Of Life. Health Affairs. 2001 Jul 1;20(4):188–95.

6.         Marmot MG, Allen J, Goldblatt P, Boyce T, McNeish D, Grady M, et al. Fair society, healthy lives: Strategic review of health inequalities in England post-2010. 2010 Feb 7 [cited 2011 Dec 13];Available from: http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/111743/

7.         SAPO — South Australian Policy Online [Internet]. [cited 2011 Dec 13];Available from: http://www.sapo.org.au/pub/pub16563.html

Much current thinking about climate change and renewable energy has been based on rational economic theory and standard modelling. A core assumption of this approach is that individuals always seek to maximise their utility; however, in many fields where human behaviour plays a substantial intervening role—such as finance, health, or taxation—this assumption has been shown to be flawed. It must therefore be of concern that the same flawed assumption is prominent in the response to climate change.

So far, the debate about changing individuals’ behaviour in relation to climate change has focused on market mechanisms. Better pricing of energy and costing of scarce resources can indeed steer individuals away from carbon-intensive consumption.

But the drivers of consumption behaviour by individuals and groups go far beyond prices. Many energy efficient technologies have been available for years, yet little action to really utilise these technologies on a mass scale has taken place. The trick is to grasp why—and this is where conventional economic theory fails to provide answers.

Awareness of climate change has increased without translating into individuals’ actions. We are more aware of climate change than ever, yet drive more large 4WDs, live in ever larger houses and we consume copious amounts of energy. What explains this disconnect between perceptions and actions?

This “green gap” in public attitudes partly stems from how climate science is communicated (with particular prevalence of deliberate disinformation by vested interests) and how our minds (mis-)understand climate dynamics. Standard “information-deficit” models of communication assume that if we “know” something, we also change our behaviour. Thus, on this model, knowing more about climate change should bring about behavioural change. But improved knowledge or even prior experience may not lead to corrective action; just look at the centuries of financial folly that have led to speculative bubbles and their inevitable meltdowns from the Dutch Tulip Mania to the sub-prime crisis or, arguably, the current Australian housing market.

Information can also lead to feelings of disempowerment (“you can’t change the course of nature”); which then may turns into ambivalent powerlessness. Similarly, playing up the multi-stakeholder nature of climate adaptation is a reminder that the solution rests with no single actor, resulting in a generalised feeling of limited agency, helplessness, and disempowerment.

An added challenge has to do with how we perceive the problem. The dynamics of climate change stretch our mental capacities in several ways. The fact that even the most drastic and sudden emissions reductions will not immediately stop further warming is something we struggle with. The delayed, intangible nature of climate change risks simply does not “move us.”

Understanding barriers to behaviour change also requires that we go beyond explanations based on the individual as a unit of analysis and embrace the way social factors influence perceptions, decisions, and actions. We tend to resist and deny information that contradicts our cultural values or ideological beliefs, such as information challenging notions of belonging and identity, but also of rights to freedom and consumption.

We also construct and reconstruct information to make it less uncomfortable, leading to socially organised denial that shape the way we interpret and respond to the challenges of climate change. The evolution of standard narratives about climate change provides an example.

In Australia the media focus on our relatively low gross national carbon emissions (1.7% of world total). Focusing on country emissions rather than per capita emissions, or even the fact that this 1.7% total places us at number 14 of national emitters among 190+ countries, can lead us to frame our perceptions against “perceived” big country emitters. Frequent calls for the need for an international response play down the fact that domestic action is required in any case.

As Bill Gates aptly pointed out on the 7.30 report this week, Australia’s effort to price carbon is admirable but also simply a responsible domestic action. He compared Australia with the US which despite not having a national carbon price, sports regional systems that encompass close to 45% of the country’s economy. Moreover, per head of population, the US is spending far more on clean energy research than any other country. Far from defending the US, Bill Gates was simply pointing out that each nation has to make domestic decisions to contribute to the greater whole, and different nations may choose different actions.

Policy makers need to be aware of these individual and social barriers to action, and treat policy options accordingly.

Two policy areas are especially relevant: communications and institutional measures.

 From information to communication

Information, education, and awareness-raising are insufficient at best and may be counterproductive at worst. There are at least two potential avenues for a better approach in coverage of climate change.

First, creating the right communication opportunities and avenues to communicate requires more interaction between journalists and scientists. Second, communicating climate change needs to shift away from an information-driven approach to a group-centric one. Both scientists and the media need to work together on enhancing the group salience of the messages they relay. Well-designed climate communication campaigns that address individuals as members of a local community and not powerless members of an unmanageably large group can empower them to act. Third, “greenwash” from business and government needs to be both limited and “named and shamed” to avoid public confusion and public backlash.

A valid question is whether detailed public understanding of complex issues such as climate change is feasible, and even necessary, for effective policymaking. The answer may be no, or at least not always. Much policy making is based on technicalities fully ignored by the public. Few people understand the intricacies of trade policies affecting the price of the food they buy and eat.

Yet discounting the importance of information altogether would probably be a mistake.  Some excellent recent and ongoing research that can be found on the US Behaviour Energy and Climate Change conference portal vindicates the assertion that information is key for the public to back costly measures. The benefits of providing more accurate information about people’s consumption decisions—say, through carbon labelling and smart power meters have been observed. Similarly, opposition to environmental taxes seems to decrease once the public fully understands that they are a way not simply to raise money, but to change behaviour and reduce a negative externality.

Institutional measures

Beyond communication, a key question for climate policy is to design interventions that take into account psychological and social constraints to positive action.

The design of effective adaptation interventions should include measures that reduce the transaction costs for individuals in making decisions while enhancing the ownership of the information available. One way to achieve this might be for adaption strategies to be informed by communities’ own perceptions of risk, and be framed as an opportunity to act, highlighting the perceived benefits of action.

There are already many such success stories in Australia at the local government level. For example, Newcastle’s highly-regarded “Climate Cam” programme has reportedly achieved a 28% reduction of GHG emissions since 2008.

In South Australia, Victor Harbour, a town of 15,000, has developed a comprehensive climate change programme with extensive community consultation that has installed 2100 rooftop solar panels, has generated 24 installation jobs for electricians, established a micro wind turbine manufacturing facility, saved local ratepayers over $350,000 in utility charges and replaced all existing street lighting with solar powered lighting.

Climate policy should heed people’s tendency to favour local and visible outcomes.

To most, the benefits of mitigation and adaptation are distant, abstract, and uncertain, while its actual and associated costs are immediate, concrete, and certain. Interventions can be devised to better highlight upfront the “ancillary” benefits. For instance, cost benefit analysis (CBA) of energy-efficiency projects often do not include non-energy co-benefits. These include public health benefits from cleaner air and water, improved comfort of building occupants, increased labour productivity, and increased jobs through the multiplier effects of switching energy expenditure.

Paradoxically there are instances where opponents to mitigation actions use CBA to “enhance” intangible costs to support their case. I experienced this first-hand in recent months while working on a container deposit programme for WA, whereby consumers could return their beverage containers to depots and receive a 10c refund. This program will cut visible litter while also cutting costs and increasing efficiency of kerbside recycling.

I was confronted with a plethora of industry-sponsored CBA studies that inputted “guestimates” of “inconvenience” to consumers that such a programme might entail, for example by calculating that an average consumer would need to make 30% more trips to the local supermarket to return their containers.

These unsubstantiated “inconvenience” inputs added as much as 45% to the cost estimates provided by industry, and naturally supported their claims that such programmes were not viable. Coca Cola Amatil, one of the chief purveyors of many of these CBAs and a principal opponent of such schemes, has today been taken to task by the grass-roots organization GetUp, whose video reveals more about Coke’s actions in response to a proposed program that has been working flawlessly for decades in most European countries and in neighbouring South Australia.

Community Based Solutions

These measures are obviously not sufficient to ensure the success of climate policy. But they might well prove to be necessary. Encouraging behaviour change for mitigation and adaptation goes well beyond providing additional information, finance, or technology. Traditional measures can be complemented by alternative types of interventions, often at low cost. Rather than simply treat these social and psychological drivers of behaviour as barriers to adaptation and mitigation, policymakers have the option to use them to build more effective and sustainable policies and interventions.

Psychologist, social psychologists and behavioural economists are making great progress in helping understand where rational economic approaches to addressing climate change continue to fail, while simultaneously indentifying new effective methods to tackle this complex challenge.

The Australian sustainable business market will grow to $2.9bn in 2014 from $1.6bn in 2010, according to a new report from independent analyst firm Verdantix. Their report, issued on 19 April 2011, goes on to quote author Susan Clarke that “… carbon regulations, rising energy prices and natural resource scarcity also create new market opportunities. Innovative firms … already benefit from the market for energy efficiency and carbon management.”

The report was built from “… publically disclosed revenue data from 139 firms with Australian revenues of more than US$1 billion in 2009/10.” Between 2009 and 2014, Australian sustainable business expenditure are projected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 13%.

Now, this sounds like good news.

Doesn’t it?

At the very least, it sounds like interesting news and worthy of discussion and further examination.

So let’s examine this further. Let us examine the vibrant discussion in the Australian media of a report that points to future market opportunities.

Err…. curiously, the discussion of this in Australia has been a little short of vibrant to date.

Google Web returns 151 hits since 19 April (until 15/12/2011) in response to “Verdantix.” And Google News returns 31 Australian hits for the same date range. For some unknown reason, most of those hits are in Spanish, Chinese, or German. 

In fact, there are only 11 Australian news hits in English in response to “Verdantix.”

That’s the good news; the bad news is that this goes down to 1 hit (that number again: one) when you add “carbon tax” to the search query.

That’s right, one news hit in Australia according to Google for a report that forecast an annual growth rate of 13% for sustainable business spend in response to introduction of the carbon tax.

One.

And the winner is here.

Where are the losers? Well, all of us are the losers if the media hide future opportunities from us.

So here is my challenge to you: In the comments, leave a link to an Australian media story that discusses the opportunities that arise from the price on carbon and the shift to clean energies. Like rare stamps, those links may become a trophy item for future analysts of the curious avoidance of  future opportunities that seems to have beset segments of the Australian media.

The climate talks in Durban have drawn to a close at around 5AM local time after a marathon all-night session.

It is too early to tell what exactly was achieved during these negotiations, although it is clear that the talks were not a complete failure.

Based on preliminary reports, my understanding is that the Kyoto agreement will continue in place, though minus Japan, Russia, New Zealand, and Canada, and that the parties are committed negotiating a new treaty by 2015. This new treaty is to be put in place by 2020 and it will, for the first time, also include developing countries in legally binding commitments. (There is, however, some ambiguity in the wording of how “legally binding” all this is.)

In addition, it appears that future decisions will no longer be based on the scientific advice of the IPCC but instead the process is only to be informed by the science. It remains to be seen whether being “informed” by the science is a meaningful concept.

The bottom-line, then, appears to be that some countries, the EU foremost among them but now fortunately also Australia, will continue to seek cuts to their emissions, whereas the largest emitters (China and the U.S.) will continue to pollute at a growing rate. On balance, it thus appears that no major global emission cuts are on the horizon until a decade from now, although this view may be slightly too pessimistic given that the U.N. process appears to have survived Durban.

What does this mean?

Assuming that no major emission cuts will take place for another decade or so, what are the consequences of this decision?

To answer the question, let us set aside politics entirely.

Let us assume (or pretend) that the leaders who congregated in Durban all had our best interests in mind, and let us just examine the cognitive issues underlying climate change.

In other words, politics aside, what kind of thinking drives climate negotiators, and how does this thinking relate to physical reality?

Cognition of Climate: Accumulation vs. Simplistic Thinking

Revealingly, at the beginning of the Durban climate talks, U.S. climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing stated that there are “essentially an infinite number of pathways” that allow stronger cuts starting in 2020 to “stay below 2 degrees.” In other words, delay doesn’t matter, we can deal with the problem later. 

Technically, but only technically, Pershing’s statement is true. However, it is only true in a meaningless abstract sense, because the moment we consider technological reality his statement reflects a deep cognitive failure.

Pershing’s statement betrays the well known cognitive failure to understand accumulation processes. This failure, widely shared among most people who are not intimately familiar with dynamical systems, ignores the fact that to stabilize total CO2 in the atmosphere—which is what is required to arrest further warming—we need to eventually reduce emissions to zero (or nearly so).

This is because CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere in the same way as the water level in a bathtub rises while the tap is on. Absent any leakage, the only way to stabilize the water level is to shut off the tap completely.

And the longer we delay before starting to turn the tap, the more rapidly we have to close it—if we delay emission cuts to 2020, then the required cuts are around 9% a year (which means every single year from 2020 on). Those cuts may not be technologically achievable. If we started in 2011, we could achieve the same outcome with cuts of only 3.7%, probably well within technological reach.

The figure below illustrates this problem by comparing the global emissions paths required to have any chance to limit warming to 2C, depending on when emissions peak. The longer we wait, the harsher the cuts.

The apparent failure of climate negotiators to understand the underlying physics is costing all of us dearly. (Remember, for the sake of this argument I am ignoring politics.)

Collectively, the climate negotiators have been acting like corporate fleet managers who run their cars without oil changes or maintenance, just to improve the bottom line for a year or two. Some twenty years ago, we could have dealt with climate change for the price of an oil change. Ten years ago, the price had gone up and it would have cost us a new engine. Right now, we are in for the cost of a new car. And if we do nothing for another 10 years, our planet may remodel itself with us no longer in the driver’s seat because 9% annual emissions cuts may be unachievable.

Cognition of Climate: Here and Now vs. the Relevant Past

There is another cognitive trap into which climate negotiators appear to have fallen which arises from the same fundamental failure to understand the physics and mathematics of accumulation.

This cognitive trap involves the inability to recognize historical responsibilities.

Let us continue with the bathtub analogy.

Because Western countries have been filling the bathtub for far longer than developing countries, more of the water in the tub is “ours,” rather than China’s or India’s. Not surprisingly, therefore, those countries expect us to start closing the tap before they shut theirs.

However, Western commentators and politicians often seemingly fail to understand our historical responsibilities, pointing instead to the fact that China is now emitting more than the U.S., or that India is growing too fast or whatever.

Yes, China now emits more than the U.S., but its total accumulation is less than a third of the American responsibility. And because accumulation is what matters, Australia has a greater historical responsibility than 94% of all other countries in the world.

This is shown in the figure below which plots the (logarithm of) historical emissions of all countries against the rank position of each country (in other words, we order the countries from most-emitting on the left to least-emitting on the right). Australia is the big red dot towards the top:

The figure clarifies that despite us being a relatively small country, we have contributed mor to the CO2 in the atmosphere–or water in the bathtub in our analogy–than most other countries in the world. (Further details of this analysis are here.)

So before we even consider politics, the cognitive challenges of climate change present a bleak picture. People do not readily understand the nature of accumulation, and that means they do not understand the relationship between emissions and atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. It also means they do not understand the distinction between present emissions and historical responsibilities.

It is important to add that those cognitive failures are not willful: They simply reveal the limitations of a cognitive apparatus that evolved at a time when it was simply inconceivable that our species would one day affect the overall geophysics of our planet.

Fortunately, those cognitive limitations do not prevent us from understanding them: It may sound paradoxical, but the tools of cognitive science allow us to understand our own thinking even if it is sometimes flawed.

This realization, in turn, empowers us to correct our thinking.

But of course, so far we have just considered human cognition, ignoring all the political factors that contribute to decision making in the climate context.

Add politics and vested interests and you likely get the de facto decision to let our children do the cleaning up and suffering at a far greater price than we were willing to pay.

It remains to be seen how exactly Durban fits into this picture. The fact that an agreement was achieved can only be positive. The fact that serious action has been delayed for another decade or so may come to haunt us.

An abridged version of this post was published on The Conversation 

In the final week in Durban a sense of frustration is permeating the COP, where aspirations for a global deal remain high, but expectations swing between mildly hopeful and almost absent.

The tone of the Australian delegation is one of determined but checked progress, maintaining there will be positive outcomes on some issues while keeping expectations low.

Australia continues its dream run in terms of public sentiment here, where many international delegates are under the impression that Australia’s carbon price legislation has real significance in terms of emissions reductions, seemingly unaware of the tiny step it actually represents. Still, the misconception is creating goodwill and perhaps even pressure on other countries to commit to binding targets at the international level, so what it lacks in policy efficacy is being made up in PR kudos, at least for now.

In terms of progress in the discussions, China is signalling a openness to legally binding obligations but stonewalling by New Zealand, Canada, Russia, the US and Japan means there is little hope of any final decisions on legal form. Many negotiating efforts by the big polluting nations appear to be about delaying decisions for as long as possible, with the staggeringly irresponsible date of 2020 for mandatory emissions cuts being advocated by the US.

The options currently being pursued range from: retaining some aspects of the Kyoto Protocol, but with limits to offsets, greatly enhanced measurement, verification and reporting, and the development of a new legally binding instrument to be agreed at COP18; to securing some agreement on mitigation measures but with the decision on legal form delayed until 2020. A review of global targets is being proposed to raise the level of commitments, but India, the US and China all want that delayed until after a scientific review slated for 2015.   

Filling the coffers of the Green Climate Fund for adaptation and mitigation in developing nations agreed to at Cancun is also proving difficult; promised funds are failing to materialise and many nations are reluctant to name the figure they will commit in order to realise the agreed goal of $US100 billion per year by 2020.

Hopes of a fast start that would see substantial funds committed between 2010 and 2012 are now looking a bit shaky. Ensuring there funds are a.) delivered and b.) new and additional (i.e. not rebadged aid funding) is the main game. Too little discussion has been had about additional ways of raising funds however – redirecting fossil fuel subsidies is an obvious choice, with the Robin Hood tax (a minuscule tax on financial transactions that could potentially raise US$400 billion a year) another obvious contender.

Bad behaviour by countries here at the COP is rewarded with the title of “fossil of the day“. Winners to date include: Turkey (for its 98% growth in emissions post 1990 plus seeking Kyoto $ to spend on coal and roads); the US (for turning up but only wanting to discuss climate action in nine years time); Canada (for refusing to cooperate with just about everything); and New Zealand and Russia (joint first place for wanting to benefit from Kyoto but not be bound by it).

In the meantime, global emissions increased 6% last year and millions of hectares of forests disappeared. The rate of global deforestation is 14.5 million hectares each year as forests are converted to agricultural land to feed the inexorably rising global human population.

The gap between reality and commitment makes these a rather surreal set of discussions, the nature of which is well captured in this quote from Climate Action Network Australia Director Georgina Woods: “…we are all struggling to find a way to describe the kind of banal failure that is at risk of emerging here. I arrived steeled for major drama, hysterics and intensity, what’s happening instead is potentially worse – a slide into oblivion masked by the veneer of progress. Because there certainly is progress. The LCA text [long term cooperative action] represents a huge amount of work by negotiators in the last twelve months, and encompasses many things that the people of the world need and want to deal with climate change… and yet… putting off the major decisions leaves open the possibility that they will find the important decisions all too hard, and find shelter together in their cowardice, and guiltily cobble together agreements that have the semblance of cooperation, but do not change the trajectory we are already on: towards a four degrees warmer world.”

Current existing pledges fall well short of what the science indicates is needed to give is only a modest chance (66%) of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (itself a target that is not considered desirable or safe), so it’s no wonder a lot of talk here is focusing on the ‘gigatonne’ gap or emissions gap that exists between pledges and the actual emissions cuts needed. Global emissions leapt in 2010, but a recent UNEP report says this puts us on track to be 12 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2e over what we can afford to emit if the world is to have any hope of staying below 2ºC, a goal described by NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen as a recipe for disaster.

What do we really want from Durban? Ideally, Ministers would go home having agreed to a multilateral approach to addressing climate change, with a combination of legally binding instruments, decisions, rules and guidelines. These should be, in the words of the COP President, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s International Relations Minister, “pragmatic, effective, timely and appropriate”. This would require documented commitments for which there are consequences if countries fail to keep them; mechanisms for ensuring emissions trajectories are consistent with the timeframe that science indicates; sufficient climate financing for developing nations to adapt as well as begin their own low carbon transitions; with action from all countries but led by the industrialised nations.

It’s not the case that there has been no genuine efforts to reach agreement; indeed it seems there has been many constructive discussions – some of which may well have been influenced by the COP President’s invocation of ‘Indabas’ – a traditional form of South African participatory democracy in which people come together in the spirit of ‘Ubuntu’, being motivated by the common good, to discuss a matter of great importance and to solve intractable or difficult collective problems in ways that benefit the community as a whole. (Sound familiar?)

So, what have we got without a global deal?

It seems increasingly likely that we will see emerging cooperation between nation states, as bilateral and regional deals are made. Some pressure may come from developing nations who refuse to provide offsets for wealthier countries who fail to act. Aside from those, we are left largely with relying on domestic policy commitments to deliver emissions reductions and the hope that commercial competitiveness and the actions of individual nation states will deliver a sufficiently broad rollout of clean renewable energy to see emissions peak in the timeframe left to avert runaway climate change.

The German Advisory Council (WGBU) remain cautiously optimistic this can be achieved and are working to facilitate that offering a roadmap for a transformation to sustainability to any country or group of countries willing to take the lead. Their Social Contract for Sustainability offers willing leaders the opportunity to showcase how ambitious and committed actions can create a new ‘social contract’ for sustainability and demonstrate how breaking away from existing destructive pathways can deliver greater equity, social wellbeing, and economic security. 

WGBU estimates the global cost of transformation would require $US 200-$1000 billion a year by 2030. This may seem a massive investment but one they consider manageable through innovative business and financing models. They warn if it is not made, the costs associated with the economic, environmental and social disruption that a wildly unstable climate would be much, much more.

To create a bit of perspective, we already spend $500 billion globally each year on fossil fuel subsidies – a source of finance that would be more usefully deployed in a renewable energy transformation than driving dangerous climate change and causing millions of deaths from harmful air pollution.

In light of a less than optimum outcome from our governments, it’s encouraging other actors are not only envisioning but developing the roadmaps we need as a global community to reverse our current destructive path and shape a new future for our planet and our species.

But we should also prepare to be surprised, in the hope that those negotiators in Durban will reveal their hands as stronger than we thought. After all, they won’t be revealing all their cards till the very last, and before they do, may we hope they recall the words of that esteemed South African, Nelson Mandela, when he said: “It always seems impossible, until it is done.”

This post was also published on Climate Spectator.

There is a climate conference on in Durban, South Africa. This event has been difficult to miss because it has been accompanied by the usual distractions: First, we had another release of stolen personal correspondence among climate scientists (the two-year old rejects from the “climategate” non-scandal), presumably in the hope that this would torpedo the climate negotiations. No one has shown much interest in this very transparent attempt to malign scientists.

Then parts of the media went into overdrive to misrepresent climate science and attack real journalists whose reporting is based on the scientific literature rather than ideology. Those frenetic attempts at distraction are likely to continue for as long as the negotiations in Durban, only to disappear from the public arena shortly thereafter. (Until the next UN climate meeting, that is, although by then the stolen emails will be very stale indeed although the media will surely find new things to invent or distort.)

But for now, because it may be difficult to find any reliable information about Durban and the relevant data in segments of the Australian media, it is useful to draw attention to our collection of links to data, which may help overcome this deficit. For example, those data tell us about our historical responsibility and the data tell us how badly polluting Australia is compared to all but a handful of other countries in the world.

The list of links below is a rich resource for anyone interested in economic and environmental data (though not climate data—they can be found here or here). Those links are always just a click away under the “Links to data” button at the top of this site:

World Economic Data

• Trading Economics. A privately owned resource dedicated to providing economic and trade data.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

• UN Greenhouse data. Downloadable spreadsheets for worldwide emissions.
• IEA Greenhouse data. Another lengthy source (in PDF) about worldwide emissions.
• U.S. Greenhouse inventory. Detailed source about U.S. emissions by the EPA.
• U.S. Energy Information Administration. Very nicely laid out source of emissions data.
• Global carbon flow. Trade separates consumption from production: Where are the goods consumed that were produced with emissions elsewhere?
• CDIAC. The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) is the primary climate-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
• Data on CO2 “export” via the supply chain from Stanford University.

World Bank, Human Development and Climate Change

• Worldbank open data. A compendium of global data on everything ranging from human development to health and economic activity.
• Human development reports. Accessible via Google Public Data Explorer and also as e-book
• World Bank on Climate Change. This portal is a central hub of information, data and reports about climate change around the world.

OECD

• The OECD provides statistics on pretty much everything. An amazing resource.

Green Facts

• Greenfacts.org. Provides a compendium of literature and data relevant to environmental and energy issues.

Disasters

• Annual disaster data base. Published by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. which is located within the School of Public Health of the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Brussels.

Renewable Energy Investment

• The Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative, which is supported by the UNEP and co-published with Bloomberg, provides data on global investment trends in renewable energy.

Energy Data

• European Energy Commission. Statistics and energy plans.

General Data Archive

• Gapminder provides access to a host of interesting data.

The beachside city of Durban is packed, with 10,000 people from 194 countries in town for the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to negotiate the next step in the process of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It’s also the 7th meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP7), the mechanism through which the Protocol is implemented, and the central subject of this meeting, as nations wrestle with what arrangements can be put in place to replace or extend the agreements under the Protocol which expires in 2012.

The focus to date has been on drafting, negotiating and agreeing proposals for each country’s Ministers to use when they begin to negotiate the shape of the new commitments next week. There are concurrent discussions on the mitigation efforts agreed in Cancun last year, outstanding commitments from the Bali Action Plan of 2007, and intense discussions on both the volume and rate at which contributions to the Green Climate Fund are delivered to assist developing nations cut emissions and adapt to climate change.

Several countries, including Australia have put forward proposals for a new treaty that would provide for implementation of the Convention post 2012. Ideally, this would also cover the commitments being negotiated under the Long term Cooperative Action (LCA) plans begun at Cancun, which includes mitigation strategies by countries such as the US currently outside the Kyoto Protocol.

In a demonstration of negative peer influence, US recalcitrance is now being echoed by its northern neighbours, Canada, who earned themselves “fossil of the day” award on day one of the negotiations by indicating their intention to withdraw from the Protocol when it expires next year. This surprised no-one, as Canada has been falling short of their commitments for some time, but their hostility to the process was somewhat unprecedented, given the comments by the Canadian Environment Minister that signing Kyoto has been “one of the biggest blunders” ever made by their national government.

The glaring chasm in the discussions is the gap between stated commitments of countries to cut emissions and those recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report (and confirmed by more recent evaluations, such as the Australian Climate Commission’s Critical Decade report in May). (This ‘discrepancy’ was acknowledged in the Cancun Agreements, but subsequent indications of willingness to act and the negotiations here suggest there is a widespread delusional disorder among many nations that postponement will not carry profound risk and that delay due to poor political appetite is somehow justified).

Other issues being negotiated here include the establishment of common accounting methods for measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of emissions reduction efforts, including international offsets. This is key to transparency and accountability, and a vital underpinning of any international agreement. There is much that is unknown about many of these commitments to date however (eg how emissions will be achieved, what gases will be covered, what accounting systems, and what sectors will be covered).

In the meantime, many nongovernment organisations (NGOs) are focussing on the kinds of climate change issues that affect the welfare of people – trade, markets, gender, global justice, finance, and health.

Health is receiving more attention than at previous COPs, with the largest ever health delegation to attend the international climate talks in Durban. There are scores of health organisations from more than 30 countries and dozens of health-related side events. Over 200 delegates will attend the Global Climate and Health Summit on Sunday where the establishment of a global climate and health coalition is proposed.

Mentions of health in the negotiating texts are few and far between however, but health NGOs are working hard here to encourage countries to embed health messages into the discussions and stated ambitions, by highlighting the serious and increasing risks to health from climate change, as well as the substantial and immediate benefits to health from strategies to reduce emissions.

Australia’s role appears more cooperative rather than at earlier meetings, and the delegation coasting on a bit of goodwill for getting some form of climate policy legislation passed. Questions are still being raised however about its role in holding out for a loophole in the rules for land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) which allows Australia log and burn native forests without having to account for the emissions this causes.

And there is no room for complacency in assuming the Clean Energy Future legislation is anywhere near enough for Australia to meet its obligations: a study out this week shows Australia needs to do much more to meet even its own 5% by 2020 target, much less the ambitious reductions required to keep warming stays below 2°C agreed to in Cancun, or the 1.5°C maximum sought by Pacific and some African nations.

Along with most other nations, Australia needs to substantially raise its ambition. This requires much stronger targets: its contribution to the global task of emissions reductions must be consistent with its emissions profile as well as a fair share of the global task – cognisant of the commitments already in place from other countries.

Its important to be aware that many other countries are meeting their (admittedly inadequate) Kyoto commitments and many are implementing climate policy: eleven other nations with whom Australia trades now have a price on carbon; fourteen have renewable energy targets; many more have policies such as emissions performance standards, feed-tariffs, and subsidies or incentives for energy efficiency or renewable energy technology. Despite having been hit by the eurozone crunch much harder than Australia, the UK, for example, is still committed to reductions of 50% by 2020. Global investment in renewable energy hit US$211 billion in 2010 and this despite the global economic downturn.

The key messages from NGOs here in Durban are that: Australia’s current target is inadequate;

• other countries are taking action;
• strong domestic national policy is key to other countries taking action: and
• there are important national benefits for emissions reductions that are available immediately.

But Australian officials need to do a better job both here in Durban and at home to create a compelling narrative for strong climate action. There are many ‘frames’ through which climate action can be positively viewed i.e. benefits to health, risk management, and low carbon market opportunities – all of which are real, and available right now.

The community must be made aware of the opportunities; and the consequences of further delay. And distortions of the science by those with vested interests must be exposed, as one presentation here today suggested for the “assault on humanity” that it is.

While many of the negotiations here are taking place behind closed doors, there is a vital role for observers in tracking progress and spreading the word on how the talks progress.

As these talks continue, I hope people back at home are following, and letting their representatives know that they expect a positive outcome. Time is short: very short, according to the recent International Energy Agency report.

Please don’t switch off, Australia – we’ll all COP it if you do.

This happens to be our 100th post.

Professor Wendy Bacon and a team of researchers have published a report on the coverage of climate change in the Australian media.

The research is based on a comprehensive review of 3971 media articles which were published in ten Australian newspapers on the topic of climate change policy, during the period February 2011 and July 2011. 

Key Findings of the research are at the front of the report. They include:

• Overall coverage: Negative coverage of the government’s carbon pricing proposal outweighed positive coverage by 73% to 27%. Negative coverage across News Ltd newspapers far outweighed positive coverage by 82% to 18%.

• Headlines were less balanced than the actual content of articles, with neutral articles more likely to be headlined negative (41%) than positive (19%).

• Language: 51% of articles used only the term “carbon tax” to describe the policy, whilst 11% used only the term “carbon price”. This pattern was more obvious in several News Ltd publications (e.g. The Courier Mail was 70% to 8% on this measure). “Carbon tax” was generally the preferred term for opponents of the policy, whereas proponents preferred the term “carbon price”.

• Sources: Business sources received more coverage than all civil society sources together, including unions, NGOs, think tanks, activists, members of the public, religious spokespeople, scientists and academics. Fossil fuel lobby and other businesses opposed to the policy received very strong representation, whereas clean energy and other businesses in support of the policy received low coverage.

• Editorial: 46% of editorials were negative, compared to 23% positive. 31% were neutral.

For more details, there is an article on The Conversation, which includes a notable reply from News Ltd. For scholars of self-awareness (or lack thereof), the reply is particularly worth reading.

Calling all creatives: Unleash the film maker in you….

Green Screen: Climate Fix Flicks is an exciting new short film competition that is now calling for entries. We’re looking for creative films that explore ways to alleviate the coming climate crisis such as the positive benefits of moves towards a clean energy future.

We are seeking film submissions of between 30 seconds and 5 minutes that effectively communicate positive messages about a zero or low carbon, clean energy future. You may choose any genre or style that you like and we encourage participants to push creative boundaries and think outside the square. Green Screen: Climate Fix Flicks is open to everyone and the winning entry receives $5000. Submission DEADLINE is Friday 10 February 2012. Download the flyer and spread the word!

The competition is an initiative of climate scientists from Macquarie University, The University of Melbourne and Monash University. Our goal is to raise awareness of the opportunities and positive effects of moving the world towards a low carbon future. This film festival will promote positive change and bring disenfranchised voters back to the table as we discuss the best options for fixing Australia’s and indeed the world’s climate future.

Failure at the Copenhagen and Cancun climate change conferences in 2009 and 2010 can be put down, broadly, to two reasons: concerns by developing countries about what binding emission reduction targets might mean for their economic development, and the deadlock over post-2012 targets for developed countries.

And it seems unlikely that, for the present, major emitters – developed or developing – will enter binding agreements to reduce emissions. 

The core issue, raised by Todd Stern, the US climate change negotiator, is a struggle between those developed states who want to continue the UNFCCC/Kyoto separation between developed countries with targets and developing countries without them, and ‘those who believe we can only address climate change with all major economies accepting responsibilities.’

As Stern notes, the need for all major emitters to shoulder climate commitments is clear –‘just do the math,’ he says. ‘Developing countries account for around 52% of emissions, now, and are projected to account for approximately 66% by 2030. They will produce some 97% in the growth of emissions between now and 2030.’

This is brought home through the latest IEA statistics on global CO2 emissions. In 2009 China and the US (both without Kyoto targets) counted together for 41% of the world’s emissions.  Two-thirds of global emissions came from just 10 countries – with, of course, China and the US surpassing those of all the others.

Yet Japan, Russia and Canada have said they will not extend cuts beyond December 31, 2012 unless all major emitters – led by China and the United States – sign up for a binding deal.  And that won’t happen at either Durban in the weeks ahead or anytime soon.

Perhaps an alternative approach to moving forward would be to break the climate change problem up into different pieces. If the UNFCCC deadlock continues – and all signs suggest that it will – perhaps contemplating a regime in which groups of like-minded countries address particular issues, and in which countries and regional groupings take action on their own, might be possible.

As one commentator said recently, ‘since an agreement among the major emitters is unlikely anytime soon, we should seek progress where we can, through whatever means and in any forums that are available.’

Two US academics propose a climate change ‘regime complex’ – a loosely coupled set of specific regimes. They say that efforts to ‘build an effective, legitimate, and adaptable comprehensive regime are unlikely to succeed,’ and argue that a climate change regime complex has advantages in terms of adaptability and flexibility. And others refer to a ‘building blocks’ approach.

And there is state-based action, both actual and proposed, on which to build. US states and Canadian provinces collaborate on action to address climate change. California will have an ETS from 2013. South Korea plans an ETS in 2015. China has reduced the amount of carbon dioxide produced per unit of GDP faster than any other major economy.

Perhaps momentum favours a ‘bottom-up’ outcome.  Perhaps, post-Durban, we will see a shift away from a top-down, ‘Kyoto-style’ architecture for international climate action, to a more bottom-up approach. As Posner and Weisbach (from the University of Chicago) argue, ‘Copenhagen showed the futility of addressing poverty, past injustices and climate change in a single negotiation … no principle of justice requires that these problems be addressed simultaneously or multilaterally.’