The task of getting the majority of the world's governments to agree, in the midst of a global financial crisis, on measures to tackle food, water and energy security for the poor while simultaneously taking steps to curb the damage done by industry to the climate was perhaps a tall order. However the Rio summit's failure is just one in a long line of 'once in a generation' meetings that have spectacularly failed.
Why?
Over the last few years, as with Rio and the Copenhagen climate summit before it, the state of the global economy has been the key limiting factor. Policies that are going to cost people in the short term, higher taxes on fuel for example, have become political suicide. US Presidential candidate Mitt Romeny summed this up perfectly when he stated in September ' I'm not in this race to slow the rise of the oceans or to heal the planet…my promise is to help you and your family'. Faced with austerity public opinion, and by extension the opinion of policy makers, has swung out of favour with saving the whale…
But what about before the credit crunch?
In 1997 the world (with the exception of America and Australia) signed the Kyoto Protocol. In what is still one of the milestones of the environmental movement it was agreed to reduce emissions of Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and Sulfur Hexafluoride by at least 5.2% before 2012. As anyone with even a vague knowledge of climate science will tell you, this goal was catastrophically missed. Today emissions of Carbon Dioxide alone are at an average of 387ppm, with them predicted to rise to 400ppm by 2016. As the graph below shows when the Kyoto Protocol was signed in the late nineties it was around 360ppm.
The reasons for the failure of Kyoto are, in general, the same reasons for the failure of almost every other similar agreement. The inability to get the America to sign up in full to cuts in emissions that will effect both the US auto and petroleum industries has been cited as the driving force in the continual rise in greenhouse gas emissions. The truth is that while the US is one of the world’s greatest polluters and its lack of action is a significant factor, the lack of mechanisms to enforce supposedly binding agreements on emission reductions has left Kyoto and similar accords toothless. By the estimation of the UN China became the world's largest single polluter in 2008, when it emitted over 7 billion metric tonnes of Carbon Dioxide. It did this despite having signed up (and still being signed up) to the Kyoto Protocol.
Technology, or the lack of it, has certainly played a part as well. The growth of the renewable energy sector has, to date, not kept pace with demand. The burning of fossil fuels is still the most efficient and cost effective way of generating power. Apart from countries with natural reserves of geothermal energy such as Iceland it is still practically implausible for an economy to be built around renewables.
The expectations of people, especially in the developing world, is also relevant. We have grown to expect a quality of life that requires everything from cheap air travel to washing machines in our homes. As long as we continue to want this, and as long as people aspire to it, cutting our pollution of the Earth will be problematic at best. There seems to be no easy solution to this, for unless we give up our own privileges how can we expect others not to aspire to them?
The example presented above is climate-centric but the same factors could be applied to many others issues. The global community has so far been ineffectual in stopping the illegal logging that is tearing apart rainforest ecosystems or making sure that food and development aid is used where it is needed and not siphoned off into the purses of corrupt officials. However it is with climate change that the reasons for our inability to agree and act are most palpable. We’ve come a long way since the optimism of Rio 1992, and we haven’t been moving in the right direction.
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