Climate change rejectionists are now very out of date
They have had a good few years, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, but – now that the ink is drying on the worldchanging Paris agreement – it’s worth asking what the climate rejectionists have actually managed to achieve. And its hard to escape this conclusion: not much at all.
For years the rejectionists - I won’t call them deniers, but ‘sceptics’ is a polite misnomer – seemed to sweep all before them. They came to control both houses of the US Congress. They set government policy in both Canada and Australia. And they came to dominate the comment columns in the centre-Right British press. Yet now they are looking increasingly dated, even irrelevant.
For there is little room for doubt that the agreement will change history, ushering in the greatest change since the Industrial Revolution as the world moves to a low (and eventually, no) carbon economy. It is designed for the long term, ratcheting up every five years until net human emissions of greenhouse gases are eliminated.
Whether it will succeed in doing this in time to avoid dangerous climate change is another question -though it should be said that any targets are likely to be outstripped by the effects of investors and companies rushing to make money out of the clean technologies that will dominate in the changed world. But my point is that the rejectionists - for all their power and influence – failed to prevent the agreement, or even to weaken it. Indeed what emerged from Paris was much stronger than anyone expected.
Of course the rejectionists suffered two big blows in the run-up to the conference, the switching of the Canadian and Australian Governments to the other side – in the antipodes merely by a change in Prime Minister, in Canada after an election. Worse for them, the two countries - after years of obstructionism – were in the forefront of calling for radical action in Paris; new premier Justin Trudeau’s barnstorming speech announcing that “Canada is back!” was one of the highlights of the two-week session.
But the rejectionists’ greatest failure has been in the country where they are strongest, the United States, where President Obama successfully ignored, or bypassed, Congress to do more than any head of government to ensure a strong agreement. Making tackling climate change one of the principal themes of his second term, he has travelled the world persuading other leaders to join him in making Paris a success – most notably forming a partnership of the world’s top two polluters with China. Meanwhile, at home, he evaded Congressional obstruction by taking action to clean up by executive order.
Conversely they have probably had (and continue to have) most impact in a country where they have enjoyed little formal power, England. Not that they had any influence on Britain’s stance in Paris, which was both radical and effective.
They do however seem to have persuaded the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, to emasculate renewable energy and (even more crazily) energy efficiency programmes and to boost the expansion of fossil fuels, mainly in England.
But even this will have no real effect on the battle against climate change. The whole of the UK produces less than two per cent of the world’s carbon emissions: slowing reductions in this small proportion will make little global difference. All George Osborne’s dash to the past will achieve is making it much less likely that Britain will benefit from the new, clean, industrial revolution – with incalculable effects on its own economy. That will be the UK’s tragedy, but the rest of the world will be more than able to live with it.
Of course all this could change if the Republicans won the US Presidency next year, while retaining control of Congress. At present that looks unlikely, but you never know. Yet it is hard to see anyone other than a political lunatic (and I admit one or two of the GOP candidates might meet that description) would try to stand in the way of the irresistible economic forces likely to be unleashed by Paris agreement.
It really does look as if climate change rejectionism has now had its day.
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