Source: BBC TV News
URL: N/A
Date: 12/12/2015
Event: "...it sets up an enormous bureaucracy to manage this whole thing..."
Credit: BBC TV News
People:
Nicholas Owen: Well, let's talk now to Mike Rosenberg, a business and sustainability expert from the International Business School in Barcelona. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. Now, what do you think of the deal reached so far?
Mike Rosenberg: Good afternoon, I think it's a great deal. It's a great deal because it's a deal. The real value of it is that there is a deal. We've been talking about this for 23 years, there's been 21 of these events, and the world has not yet been able to make any deal, so far. So the fact that the deal is a deal - and it seems like they're going to sign it - is tremendous.
Nicholas Owen: So you are a great optimist that it will, first of all, be signed and then of course we're talking many years down the road. One of the thoughts I had, you know, looking at all the politicians there, and so on - they'll all be long gone, as will the rest of us, before this really bites, won't they?
Mike Rosenberg: Absolutely, and one of the things that you see, when you read the draft texts - and the texts have been coming out every couple of days, over the last few - week or so - is a lot of the really difficult things they've put forward in time, so the whole thing is based upon: how much carbon can we put into the atmosphere, over time? And every country has made voluntary plans - this is what we'd expect to do. When you add up all those plans, it's not enough to hit this target of, you know, well below 2 degrees Centigrade. So there will have to be more cuts in the future. What the agreement does is it sets up a system of monitoring and making things transparent, it sets up an enormous bureaucracy to manage this whole thing, with scientific committees and a secretariat and a finance committee and a tribunal, a court, et cetera - it kind of establishes the mechanism to try and get the world to where it needs to go, but the hard decisions will all come later.
Nicholas Owen: You're a business expert, and business people are notably sceptical about what politicians can achieve. From what you've just said, it sounds like it's going to be the most tremendous task to deliver on this promise, for the latter half of this century.
Mike Rosenberg: Absolutely, and even for the next ten years. And one of the issues in the agreement is a fund of on the order of $100 billion, which would be coming from the rich countries to the poor countries, to pay for renewable energy, to pay to build a better and more carbon-neutral energy infrastructure there, and to pay enough not to cut down forests, under the R-E-D-D, the REDD Protocol. Where that money is going to come from is not specified. The money has to be voted by taxpayers in a number of countries, and then all that money has to be managed - yeah, there's a lot of work to do.
Nicholas Owen: There's so much talk, isn't there, about China - and we know what's been going on there, enormous industrial growth - India advancing at an enormous speed and therefore adding to pollution, in general terms, but of course the United States too - can we really think that these big countries are willing to, sort of, I don't know, mortgage the future, almost, in the hope that they can achieve these sorts of targets, for the benefit of everybody else?
Mike Rosenberg: Well, that's really been the heart of this agreement - if you can look at the world from an Indian point of view, 40% of the country doesn't have access to electric power, and the only thing the country has is tremendous coal assets and maybe a bit of hydro and lots of sunshine - you know, it's going to be cheaper for them to industrialise using their coal assets than it will be, using solar or hydroelectric power. So what they're saying is "Hey, we want to make our people wealthy, like you guys are. We want to develop our energy, we want to develop our economy. So, if you give me money to pay for all the transformation, fine. If not, I'm going to build whatever is cheapest." So this full agreement hinges upon this massive transfer of wealth from the North to the South. In the case of China, it's a little bit different. China's agreed to plateau it's carbon in 2030 - this'll happen as the country gets richer anyway. But right now, China's by far the largest emitter, and it's not agreed to cut, over the next few years, but to bring to plateau. The United States has agreed to cut. Now, as long as Mrs Clinton wins the elections, they will probably continue on that path, but if Mr Trump or one of his colleagues wins, it will be very difficult even to get this deal ratified in the American Senate.
Nicholas Owen: Indeed. So, as you point out, there are more stages still to come, if we're to get near a proper deal. Mike Rosenberg, there in Barcelona, very grateful to you, thank you very much.