Copin’ with Copenhagen
On the news, I found out that the United Nations Climate Change Conference held at Copenhagen, Denmark was a failure. Commentators blamed the failure on different players: the rich world, the poor world, President Obama, the Chinese. Here is a list I found of 5 “bird’s eye view” reasons for the failure:
Nation-states are far too self-serving
Democracies are too ill-equipped and irresolute to deal with pending crises
Isolationist and avaricious China
The powerful corporatist megastructure
Weak consensus on the reason for global warming
See http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/dvorsky20100110/
(I am not saying the author of this particular list is a commentator of special significance, just that his arguments seem to me to be typical. I chose this particular article because it was the second result on my Google search).
I disagree that these are the causes of the failure at Copenhagen. The real cause was a failure of logic. Copenhagen suffered from the “false dilemma” fallacy. In the false dilemma fallacy (which seems to be in vogue), two choices are presented when there are actually other alternatives. Usually, one of the choices is clearly superior to the other.
Returning to the article about the failure of Copenhagen, we can read the author’s expectation for the conference, which seems to me to be illustrative of the expectations of many of those who were invested in a particular outcome: “Like so many others, I was hoping for an internationally binding deal that would, at the very least, compel and motivate the nations of the world to address the climate crisis in a meaningful and precedent setting way.”
According to this commentator, what two choices were presented at Copenhagen? (1) do nothing about the “climate crisis” and suffer the consequences or (2) have dozens of countries agree to a “binding deal” that would “compel and motivate” them in a “meaningful and precedent setting way.”
Clearly, the author (as proxy for all those who had concrete expectations about Copenhagen) believes that only the second choice is Good.
But there is much to be said about the undesirability of the second choice. What he is proposing is a “power” that is greater than any national power. This proposition opposes at least 500 years of western tradition of pushing sovereignty toward individuals and away from states or empires. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15328544).
It is no wonder that the author’s first culpable cause of Copenhagen’s collapse is “Nation-states are too self-serving.” Why speak of hiding behind the “sovereignty shield” when the negotiators are merely articulating the best interest of their constituencies? The climate change protagonists have not even come close to justifying any nation giving up its sovereignty over this issue.
Can it possibly be true that “democracies are too ill-equipped and irresolute to deal with pending crises?” I hope I’m wrong, but this sounds like the fascist argument: to resolve the real problems we face, we must have a single authority whose power is protected so he can do the right thing. As Vladimir Putin recently put it: “proper and well organized leaders are always capable of solving any problems and that in the absence of such leaders, anarchy prevails.” (Feb 5, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6145UJ20100205).
So if this commentator is wrong because there are other choices, what are they?
When ascertaining climate change choices, the first question that needs to be answered is whether there is climate change at all. If there is not, there is no problem to be resolved. If there is climate change, the follow-up question is whether it is caused by people (the ten penny word for “caused by people” is “anthropomorphic”). Fallaciously, our proxy author put forward this fundamental question as a “reason” for “failure” at Copenhagen. This is a good example of the fallacy—there are only two choices and only one of them is valid, the introduction of a third choice is equivalent to choosing the invalid choice.
If we decide that climate change is occurring and it is caused by people, we must still ask whether the magnitude of the change is significant and what proportion of the change that is caused by people. Apparently, the magnitude of the change is something like 2 degrees Celsius over many decades. Is this a problem? Personally, I can’t tell the difference between 45 and 49 degrees. Can a polar bear? Can coral? Then we must decide whether there are remedial actions that will make any difference at all. Even if we did everything that was suggested, would it make a difference?
The only choice pursued at Copenhagen was to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels for energy. The problem with this choice is that it would drastically impinge on some people’s lifestyles and prevent others from getting out of poverty. The days of air travel would be over because no one person can be allowed to emit as much carbon as airplanes emit in a given year. Further, it appears that the carbon emission goals that were actually on the table in Copenhagen weren’t even enough to make a difference. Why bother?
Another choice is to accept the problem and deal with the consequences. Worried about raising sea levels? Maybe it’s better to build dikes than to restrict energy. Are the polar bears starving? Feed them—it’s cheaper than stopping the world economy. I have heard other proposals, such as burying charcoal, replanting rainforests (maybe the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is caused by clear cutting forests that soak it up, not from burning fossil fuels that emit it), or pumping carbon dioxide underground. Only when we identify all the choices can we use logic to help us find real solutions.
Copenhagen was only a failure when measured against the one choice that was on offer. It was a great success for those who used logic to reveal the fallacies presented.
Lonn Litchfield is an economist, attorney with degrees from Brigham Young University and The London School of Economics