EuropaWorld 27/4/2001 Post Kyoto Europe Should Look to Establishing a Climate Community

With America having pulled out of the Kyoto Treaty, the world is anxiously watching for new initiatives to counteract the threat of global warning. It seems clear that Europe has a choice - either to wait for the United States to embrace a new proposal more suited to its own domestic interests - or to go ahead and try to lead the rest of the world towards acceptance and ratification of the Kyoto proposals.

Perhaps Europe has other options as well. In a recent essay published by the Federal Trust, Christopher Layton - a former Chef de Cabinet and Director in the European Commission - argues that Europe has the opportunity now to seek support for something that goes far further and far deeper than was ever proposed by the International Panel on Climate Change.

Christopher Layton argues the case in this essay for what he terms a 'Climate Community' modelled on the European Union itself but embracing both European nations and developing countries. The Climate Community would be, he suggests, a voluntary association of nations that had agreed to be bound by laws made collectively and which would raise taxes for the purpose of mitigating the effects and the causes of global warming.

The Community would have its own institutions to propose and to administer these laws and taxes, and to allocate grants for research or the enhancement of forests or other environmental projects designed to stabilise the climate. It would also be important, he says, for there to be democratic representation from national parliaments to make it easier for governments and peoples to accept the necessary changes in lifestyle and industrial priorities if we were to follow the course the scientists believe to be necessary to halt and then to reverse global warming.

Christopher Layton accepts at face value the four main global warming premises. These are first that global warming is already taking place and at an accelerating rate. Second, that the consequences of unchecked global warming with sea level rises and damage to agricultural production, are horrendous to contemplate; third that the prime cause of global warming is an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and fourth that this increase has come about as a result of burning of fossil fuel.

It is unfortunate that in so much of the climate change debate, including Christopher Layton's essay, that so much attention is focused on the least certain - that is to say the last - of these premises. Certainly it is the one most open to doubt. The flows of carbon into the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning are dwarfed by the natural flows into and out of the atmosphere and into and out of the sea as part of the normal carbon cycle. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere has certainly increased - Layton cites the figure of an increase of 28% since 1800 - but exactly where it has come from is an open issue.

It is tempting to assume that the factory chimney that we can see, or the vehicle fumes that choke our cities are to blame simply because these are visible. But vast amounts of carbon are also liberated from the soil by modern industrial farming which has the capability to turn soil once rich and dark and full of organic matter into little more than sand. More than four fifths of the world's primeval forests have also been destroyed; again this has released into the atmosphere, over time, vast quantities of carbon dioxide. Still more has come from seas and rivers whose wildlife has been decimated.

The danger in focusing on fossil fuel emissions uniquely is that we cannot be certain that even were we never again to burn a single lump of coal or drop of oil anywhere in the world we cannot guarantee that this will necessarily stop the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. That is not to say that - on the precautionary principle - we shouldn't take firm action now to limit emissions but let us not pretend that fossil fuels uniquely will provide both cause and solution to climate change.

It is clearly prudent to continue to study the carbon cycle in the air, on land and in the sea while also attempting a fuller understanding of how our planet's climate actually works. Present models are far from complete.

But whatever the role played by fossil fuel emissions it must surely be sensible to put in place measures first to limit their growth and then to reduce them in the context of an overall exercise of managing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. To date this has concentrated on the planting of trees - which may be useful in its own right but which has only a short term effect on the carbon cycle. Wood unfortunately rots only too easily and when it rots its carbon is released back to the atmosphere.

Instead of perishable wood, something much more permanent is required as a carbon sink. The answer could be encouraging the growth of shellfish whose carbon based shells have a life measured in millions of years as the White Cliffs of Dover bear witness. According to the United Nations Environment Programme the present size of the carbon flow from dead marine organisms to the sea bed is of an order comparable to that of fossil fuel emissions to the atmosphere. A change in the bio-density of such creatures - caused for example by marine pollution - could be responsible for a major shift in the carbon cycle.

In putting forward his argument for a Climate Community Christopher Layton prefers to put aside any such diversions and instead to concentrate on the known and quantifiable emission problem. He argues that it would be far easier within such an international and treaty based organisation to put in place, first an absolute target for emission reductions, and secondly an equitable distribution of emission quotas which would then be freely traded - the so-called Contraction and Convergence principle.

This is why a partnership between Europe and the developing world is required and a treaty based organisation to manage the quotas. Layton envisages a thirty year transition during which time overall community emissions would fall to an agreed level - perhaps as much as 60 per cent below 1990 levels. Every person in the community - which could include the majority of countries in the world - would be entitled to an identical share of this quota but quota shares would be marketable and the developed nations would be able to purchase rights to emit. The flows of funding this would generate in favour of the developing world would both help them to invest in clean technologies as well as acting as a stimulus to the richer countries to develop carbon free power sources.

Clearly such a Community could help to put the world back in charge of its climate. But what about the United States? Here Layton is optimistic. He expresses the view that the United States will want to join in due course to participate in the tremendous market for emissions that the Community will create. Personally I find this hard to follow.

Layton also takes the view that the stimulus to develop fuel efficient and carbon less technologies will give European firms and others a competitive edge in world markets over companies still using uncontrolled amounts of fossil fuels. Again, this is a view that not everybody might be expected to share. More likely, the United States and its climate change allies would perhaps feel the loss of influence and moral leadership opportunities that staying outside the Climate Community would imply.

Christopher Layton's 'A Climate Community - A European Initiative with the South' is available from the Federal Trust, Dean Bradley House, 52 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2AF Price £5. Website: www.fedtrust.co.uk