The Fight Against Climate Change: Back From the Dead.

In 1824 French Physicist Joesph Fourier observed that Carbon Dioxide gas reflected heat radiation creating a warming effect.

Fourier's work was confirmed by many successive scientists such as John Tyndall. They went on to discover that other gases such as methane create a similar warming effect.

This work was being carried out whilst the Industrial Revolution was releasing these Green House Gases (ghg) into the earth's atmosphere in never before seen levels.

This obviously created great concern that this increase in ghg emissions was causing ever more heat to be trapped within the earth's atmosphere creating Global Warming and in turn Climate Change.

By 1992 these concerns had become so great that the Earth Summit was convened in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. The Rio Earth Summit resulted in the creation of two United Nations bodies;

The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) to increase our scientific understanding of the problem and the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) to find solutions to the problems identified by the IPCC.

The UNFCCC meets annually at its Conference of Parties (COP) Summit. At the 1997 COP3 in Kyoto, Japan the UNFCCC agreed a legally binding, international plan of action to reduce global warming and climate change by reducing ghg emissions. This was known as the Kyoto Protocol.

Although it was the best that could be achieved at the time the Kyoto Protocol was deeply flawed. It's main flaw was the concept of Binary Differentiation of Responsibility.

This concept holds that there are 35 nations on earth who have completed their economic development. There is a second group of around 160 nations who have not completed their economic development.

Therefore is falls to the 35 nations to reverse their economic development to allow the 160 nations to continue their economic development by continuing to emit ghg's.

The Kyoto Protocol was set to expire in 2010. However due to the flaw of Binary Differentiation  along with other flaws nobody was prepared to sign up to a renewal of the Kyoto Protocol. So at the 2009 COP15 Summit held in Copenhagen, Denmark the UNFCCC agreed to do two things;

The first of these was to extend the Kyoto Protocol until 2020 so efforts to combat climate change did not lapse. Secondly they established the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (ADP). This was tasked with drawing up an improved legally binding global agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Over the course of the next four years the ADP set about drawing up a vastly improved replacement to the Kyoto Protocol. The main improvement was that this new agreement did away with the concept of Binary Differentiation of Responsibility and replaced it with the concept of Common But Different Responsibility.

This concept holds that all nations have an equal responsibility to reduce their ghg emissions. However it acknowledges that different nations are at different stages of economic development. Therefore the type and levels of emission reductions nations have to take are determined by their individual circumstances with the ultimate goal of totally eliminating ghg emissions.

The idea at the centre of the UNFCCC's replacement to the Kyoto Protocol is that every 10 years nations submit an action plan of how they are going to reduce ghg emissions and respond to the challenges of climate change.

Those actions plans are then peer reviewed before going into effect (ex ante) and after they have been completed (ex post). This allows nations to learn from each others mistakes improving the global response to climate change.

This peer review process also facilitates cooperative action between nations.

The current problem is that it costs rich nations huge amounts to reduce ghg emissions by small amounts while in poorer nations far greater ghg reductions can be achieved at a fraction of the cost. However those poorer nations don't have the money to take those actions.

Cooperative action allows the richer nations to pay the poorer nations to take those actions. The atmosphere does not care where they reductions are made. This also brings about co-benefits meaning that beyond reducing ghg emissions also improve the economic and social development of the poorer nation.

A prime example is Nigeria. Despite being a large oil producer Nigeria has a very poor national power infrastructure instead relying on privately owned oil burning generators. Assisting Nigeria to build even oil fired power stations would not only reduce the nations ghg emissions but improve its economic development by providing a reliable electricity supply.

The UNFCCC's proposed replacement to the Kyoto Protocol also established a legally binding mechanism to impose financial penalties on nations that fail to follow through on their promised action plans.

This establishes the principle that cleaning up pollution is another cost of doing business such as buying raw materials or insuring employees and customers against accidents. This creates the basis for a market mechanism to fund action against climate change.

In short if you want to operate a factory emitting ghg's you have to pay the owner of a forest to scrub those ghg's out of the atmosphere for you.

The UNFCCC's replacement to the Kyoto Protocol was scheduled to be adopted at the December 2015 COP21 Summit held in Paris, France.

However in October 2015 a significant threat to this new agreement arrived in the form of former US President Barack Obama.

Obama's Presidency was defined entirely by his ego and his desire to establish a legacy to boast about to future generations. So Obama wanted to be the President that ended the Israel/Palestine conflict and Obama wanted to be the President who ended climate change.

The problem is that Obama is extremely lazy and feels he deserves these achievements without putting the work in.

So rather than fighting the battle to get the UNFCCC's proposed agreement passed into US law Obama simply tore it up and replaced it with a new agreement of his own that was so weak he could pass it by executive order.

The main flaw to Obama's replacement to the Kyoto Protocol is that it maintains the concept of Binary Differentiation of Responsibility in perpetuity. This means that large polluters such as China and India can continue growing their ghg emissions for ever.

Obama's replacement to the Kyoto Protocol also did away entirely with the peer review process. With nations already submitting action plans and reading each others action plans simply providing a forum for them to talk to each other about it is almost entirely cost free. Obama's opposition to this idea was nothing more than mindless vandalism.

Obama's plan also requires that these action plans are submitted every five years. This is far too short a timeframe and placing an unsustainable burden on particularly poorer nations.

For example it requires the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to count every tree in the World's second largest rainforest every five years. I don't think anyone believes they're going to choose to do that over feeding their people.

Finally Obama's plan removes any legally binding mechanism to impose financial penalties on nations that don't follow through on their action plans.

Not only does this mean that everyone will cheat and no-one will keep their promises it destroys the foundation of the market based mechanism which is needed to fund action against climate change.

With there being no end date to Obama's replacement for the Kyoto Protocol its adoption killed global efforts to combat climate change stone dead on December 12th 2015 (12/12/15).

Yesterday (1/6/17) US President Donald Trump finally scrapped Obama's replacement to the Kyoto Protocol. He has not withdrawn the US from the IPCC nor has he withdrawn the US from the UNFCCC.

In fact Trump has urged the UNFCCC to resume work on the agreement that should have been signed at COP21 in Paris prior to Obama's intervention.

So far nations have resisted these calls to revert to the UNFCCC's replacement to the Kyoto Protocol. They have been led by French President Emmanuel Macron who made just a stunning error in rejecting calls for a global agreement to combat climate change.

Macron said that all nations have a shared responsibility to combat climate change. This puts him in direct disagreement with the concept of Binary Differentiation of Responsibility which is at the core of Obama's Paris Agreement which Macron says does not need to be renegotiated.

I can only suggest that in future Macron learns to read things before opening his mouth.

15:20 on 2/6/17 (UK date).