How now to call for climate inaction?

It was interesting to observe the responses to the US-China joint announcement on carbon emission reductions from those opposed to the idea that climate change is a legitimate and serious problem.

In reading their words you could almost see them frothing at the mouth in anger and desperate to deny that this might finally resolve the problem they had used so successfully to stall action to control emissions: ‘Why should we act when they aren't', has been the long-lived and so-extraordinarily-successful call for inaction.

From Australia and Canada and other midsize powers it's: 'We're small they're big, why should we bother?'.

From the United States it's: “Sure we're a big emitter, but what's the point because the growth in their emissions will overwhelm our emission reductions?'.

From China it's: “We're poor you're rich, you need to move first and leave us to get a bit more of what you've got before we should be required to act'.

The fancy description the opponents of emission reductions used to dress it up with some degree of academic respectability was that this was an irreconcilable 'prisoner's dilemma' (as per the economics Nobel Prize-winning work of John Nash, Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi).

But really it has been akin to ridiculous bickering between a few children pointing the finger at each other. Anyone with half a brain could see co-operation where each party was prepared to offer something would provide a vastly better outcome than pure narrow self-interest. And completely unlike the highly abstract and theoretical prisoner's dilemma, there was no jail wall between each nation preventing us from communicating and signalling to each other a willingness to co-operate. In addition, it is impossible to hide free-rider behaviour from others.

President Obama and Xi – and importantly also the national leaders of the European Union (who agreed to cuts of at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2030) – have done the sensible thing. They each communicated their intentions to each other that they wanted to do something serious to control emissions and then backed that up with meaningful policy commitments.

You'd think this would be a moment for celebration from those who have said unfortunately we can't act because others aren't.

But strangely there wasn't celebration at the China-US announcement, more a response of condemnation and denial. 

At such a point, if you take the conclusions of every major nation's Academies of Science and meteorological agency seriously, it can be tempting to demonise such people as evil – label them as deniers, as people on the take from fossil fuel companies.

But President Obama described the situation with far better wisdom and empathy for those who stand in opposition to his efforts to contain carbon emissions, telling his audience at the University of Queensland:

It is in the nature of things, it is in the nature of the world that those of us who start getting gray hair are a little set in our ways, that interests are entrenched – not because people are bad people, it's just that's how we've been doing things. And we make investments, and companies start depending on certain energy sources, and change is uncomfortable and difficult. And that's why it's so important for the next generation to be able to step and say, no, it doesn't have to be this way. You have the power to imagine a new future in a way that some of the older folks don't always have.   

The bulk of the people who are desperate to downplay the emission reduction pledges of the US, Chinese and EU governments aren't evil, nor are they saying the things they do because they're on the take from fossil fuel companies (although money from these companies undoubtedly helps the cause).  My view is that they genuinely are trying to do the right thing as they see it for the wider community.

But they suffer from two things that cloud their judgement:

1. a paranoia of the Green-Left political movement; and
2. a lack of imagination.

Their objections to global warming stem not so much from an underlying appreciation of atmospheric science, but rather from fears about what the solution is likely to be. For example, Ian Plimer's book Not for Greens, illustrates that he sees global warming is part of a longer running battle with the environmental and political left movement over exploitation of natural resources and capitalism versus socialism.

Yet the green-left prescription of a return to a localised, community-owned, technology-lite, simple life is not the only way to address this problem, and indeed is a recipe for failure.

Those in fierce opposition to addressing climate change have failed to imagine an alternative way that we might address this problem, one likely to be more appealing to them and the wider population.

In the end the amount of energy available from the sun is mind-bogglingly vast. More energy strikes the earth's surface in just three hours than humans consume over the entire year from all sources of energy combined. Using solar panels already on the market you could meet the United States entire power demand using an area of land less than that covered by that country's roads (1.5 per cent of its land area). At the same time the efficiency with which we presently use energy to get what we want is incredibly well below what's technologically possible.

Addressing global warming will involve embracing technology, not abandoning it.

In addition it is essential we take advantage of economies of scale and specialisation to make low carbon, energy-efficient technology plentiful and cheap. A retreat to small, localised production is not going to cut it. 

This alternative future is now beginning to emerge in the flesh and it is becoming harder and harder for the grey-haired guys to pretend it does not exist.