Modeling Adv.
No Solvency – CT Specific
International Cooperation on Climate Change Will Never happen because countries care too much about their rich citizens
Aravosis ’14-[John. joint law degree and master's degree in foreign service from Georgetown. “IPCC accidentally proves that “international cooperation” on climate change is dead.” America Blog. 4/24/14
As you’ve been reading here lately, there’s a new IPCC climate report out, the second of three. This report is from Working Group 2, responsible for studying “impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities.” In other words, what effect is climate change (“global warming”) having now, what impact will it have if we make certain choices, and where are we vulnerable? The 48-page “executive summary” (called the Summary for Policymakers or “SPM”) is available here (scribd) or here (pdf), and a number of us are studying it carefully, along with the full report. The full AR5 report from Working Group 2 is 2500 pages and available online here. But there’s a story behind the story of this document’s release, and it illustrates perfectly why we will never (never, ever) solve the climate crisis by working toward “international cooperation.” The story behind the story — the U.S. threw poor nations under the climate bus A great deal of the impact of global warming will be felt by the poorest nations on earth, for example, low-lying Bangladesh. Keep in mind that the poorest nations on earth never caused the crisis. The perps are rich Western nations, like the U.S. and Europe, with our high-consumption, high-waste lifestyles, and the emerging nations, like India and China, who are burning carbon as fast as they can, to catch up to us. The poor nations are just along for the ride in most cases. With that in mind, here’s all you need to know: 1. Poor nations are innocent victims of climate change now, and will be even more victimized in the future. 2. To fix their vulnerabilities, it will require a transfer of money from rich nations in the neighborhood of $100 billion per year, according to the World Bank. 3. According to the large IPCC report (the 2500-page report), the first two statements above are included as part of the data for consideration. 4. Those statements (1 and 2) also appeared in the SPM, the executive summary, up until the very last draft, which was discussed for final approval in Yokohama. 5. At that meeting, the need for $100 billion in crisis funds to aid poor nations was removed from the 48-page Summary, the only document that will be read outside the scientific community. 6. The U.S. led the push to remove the statement. Why? I can guess. Can you? Here’s that story, according to the New York Times. This Times piece is a general report of the document’s release, so it covers a lot of ground. The information on U.S. action is buried at the bottom. That part reads (my emphasis): “When supply falls below demand, somebody doesn’t have enough food,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University climate scientist who helped write the new report. “When some people don’t have food, you get starvation. Yes, I’m worried.” The poorest people in the world, who have had virtually nothing to do with causing global warming, will be high on the list of victims as climatic disruptions intensify, the report said. It cited a World Bank estimate that poor countries need as much as $100 billion a year to try to offset the effects of climate change; they are now getting, at best, a few billion dollars a year in such aid from rich countries. The $100 billion figure, though included in the 2,500-page main report, was removed from a 48-page executive summary to be read by the world’s top political leaders. It was among the most significant changes made as the summary underwent final review during a dayslong editing session in Yokohama. The edit came after several rich countries, including the United States, raised questions about the language, according to several people who were in the room at the time but did not wish to be identified because the negotiations are private. The language is contentious because poor countries are expected to renew their demand for aid this September in New York at a summit meeting of world leaders, who will attempt to make headway on a new treaty to limit greenhouse gases. Many rich countries argue that $100 billion a year is an unrealistic demand; it would essentially require them to double their budgets for foreign aid, at a time of economic distress at home. That argument has fed a rising sense of outrage among the leaders of poor countries, who feel their people are paying the price for decades of profligate Western consumption. If you think it through, the reason for burying the information is simple. The rich nations, led by the U.S. (don’t kid yourself; we lead, others follow), are captured by their own rich. The key sentence is this, and it contains a “tell”: Many rich countries argue that $100 billion a year is an unrealistic demand; it would essentially require them to double their budgets for foreign aid, at a time of economic distress at home. The tell is “at a time of economic distress at home.” We can’t have taxes on the wealthy because of “economic stress at home.” We can’t have infrastructure spending because of “economic stress at home.” We can’t have better schools because of “economic stress at home.” We have to cut Social Security because of “economic stress at home.” We need to reduce Medicare payments because of “economic stress at home.” We can’t reimburse stolen public union pension funds because of “economic stress at home.” We can’t do anything because of “economic stress at home.” The rich want to keep their money, and we’re not going to get one thin dime of it. Ever. If we need David Koch’s permission to solve the climate crisis, we’ll never solve the climate crisis. International cooperation will never exist; the rich will never pay even U.S. costs Your three take-aways from this material should be: 1. There will never be international cooperation, because the rich will never pay a dime to offset anyone’s cost to deal with this crisis. Believe it. Anyone who goes down that path — bless their heart — is chasing a dream that human souls live inside the monsters who are keeping this crisis going. If the rich wanted to fix this, it would be fixed years ago. They will never want to fix this. 2. Any nation can embark on a Zero Carbon energy economy the minute it wants to. It doesn’t need permission (or help) from any other uncooperating nation. Denmark can do it alone. France can do it alone. The U.S. can do it — yes, alone. Abandoning the hunt for the unicorn of international cooperation is freedom from the veto of other nation’s rich people. In fact, any nation that does embark on a radical Zero Carbon economy — carbon-free in five years or less, with energy rationing and wealth confiscation — will be hailed as a hero among nations and people that care, and held as a light and a beacon. That’s true leadership in (and by) action. 3. The rich will have to be moved aside to solve the climate crisis. And by that I mean forcefully. They will never surrender, never meet us halfway. They will only delay us while they cash their next checks and sell more carbon. As I wrote elsewhere regarding the current fetish for “carbon neutral” solutions — Carbon-neutral is the same as “Keep Koch in walking change” and will lead to the worst outcome. It hands us the nightmare, since the hard and constant pushback against any restriction always comes from Money — people who own trillions in unmonetized carbon assets, plus all of their enablers. These people don’t do “incremental” or surrender. They do victory dances on the graves of their enemies. Barring some kind of general panic, the only “incremental solution” we’re going to get will have the paper-thin illusory force of a politician’s (or carbon industry’s) PR campaign. We’re seeing that now, in the “carbon-neutral” admin dithering around Keystone, and in the industry’s current messaging from the woman I’ve been calling “lying pantsuit lady.”
A Carbon tax would never hold up in the international community
Warwick J. McKibbin and Peter J. Wilcoxen ’06-[ Warwick J. McKibbin is a professor of international economics at the Australian National University as well as a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Peter J. Wilcoxen is an associate professor of economics and public administration at Syracuse University as well as a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “A CREDIBLE FOUNDATION FOR LONG TERM INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ON CLIMATE CHANGE” Brookings Institute. May 2006]
However, a carbon tax creates precisely the wrong constituency. No group in the private sector would have a large financial stake in seeing the policy continue, and all future users of fossil fuels would be motivated to lobby against it. Apart from satisfying the terms of an international agreement, the only incentive a government would have to keep the tax in place is the revenue it generates. However, that incentive may not be very strong: recent history has shown that governments may be willing to run large deficits for long periods of time in order to reduce taxes. The broader lesson is that an international agreement cannot succeed in the long run if it relies on pitting national governments against broad, highly motivated groups of their own citizens. Ultimately, international agreements are voluntary and a climate change treaty will be no exception. Faced with a choice between angering constituents by adhering to an unpopular treaty, or repudiating the treaty and angering the international community, few democratic governments would be able to take the former course year after year. To be successful, an international agreement must be designed from the start to enhance and coordinate the efforts of national governments, not to use them as instruments of enforcement that are subsidiary in authority to an international regime. In terms of the analogy at the beginning of the chapter, national governments may not be the ideal tools for controlling climate change, but they are by far the best tools available today.
No Solvency - Generic
Multiple alt causes to effective international cooperation
Grant, 12 – Charles, director of the Center for European Reform (“Multilateralism à la Carte,” NYT, 4/16/12, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/opinion/multilateralism-a-la-carte.html?_r=0)Red
Many problems cannot be solved without international cooperation, yet “multilateralism” — the system of international institutions and rules intended to promote the common good — appears to be weakening. The G-20 has become a talk shop; the Doha round of trade liberalization is moribund; the U.N. climate change talks have achieved very little. We seem to be moving toward a world of balance-of-power politics, competing alliances and unilateral actions. One reason for these trends is that Europe, always the biggest supporter of international institutions, is economically, diplomatically and militarily weak; another is that the United States has over the past 20 years become relatively weaker and more prone to unilateralism. A third reason is that the emerging and re-emerging powers — Russia and China in particular — tend to be cynical about international institutions: They see them as Western creations that promote Western interests, though they use them when it suits their purposes. Both implacably opposed to American hegemony, Russia and China are willing to deploy their vetoes on the Security Council to thwart U.S. objectives. Their strong attachment to state sovereignty makes them allergic to humanitarian intervention, as they made clear when vetoing Security Council resolutions that would have criticized the Syrian regime for killing protesters. Russia and China both think that power matters more than rules in international relations. They like “concert diplomacy” — informal gatherings that give great powers status, such as the six-party talks dealing with both the Iranian and North Korean nuclear problems. They are more wary of rules-based institutions, which may allow small countries to block the wishes of big ones. But the two countries do not always think alike on global governance. Russia takes security institutions and proliferation regimes seriously. Unlike China, it has ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and joined both the Missile Technology Control Regime and the Proliferation Security Initiative (a club that tries to stop illicit transfers of weapons of mass destruction). China has never signed any arms control treaty that limits conventional or nuclear weapons. China is also slacker than Russia at enforcing proliferation regimes: Its companies sell dual-use equipment to Iran, North Korea and Pakistan, as well as nuclear reactors to Pakistan. But the picture is very different on economic governance. Here, Russia has been slow to sign up to rules: It is now joining the World Trade Organization after 18 years of negotiations. It stands on the sidelines of U.N. climate change talks despite being the world’s fourth-biggest emitter of carbon. It is passive in forums on financial regulation. China, by contrast, is actively engaged in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It accepts rulings against it by W.T.O. dispute-settlement panels. And though China has been reluctant to accept binding limits on carbon emissions, its views are evolving: Last December, in Durban, it agreed that by 2020 there should be a carbon emissions regime “with legal force.” Economics and history explain these differences. As the world’s biggest exporter of manufactured goods, China needs global rules on trade. Knowing that its renminbi will eventually become a world currency, China takes a keen interest in international financial rules. Russia exports mainly oil and gas, for which there is no global regime. In the field of security, China is a rising power, increasingly confident of its newfound strength, so it is unwilling to be shackled by international rules on armaments. Russia, though in some respects a declining power, retains a huge nuclear arsenal. It sees arms control treaties as a means of protecting its status. In the long term, will Russia and China do more to strengthen or to undermine the multilateral system? That will depend, in part, on how successfully the two countries rebalance their economies. Russia must build up manufacturing and service industries, depend less on oil and gas exports, and create a business environment that encourages foreign investment. China needs to boost consumption and curb investment. It should create a credit system that benefits individuals, small enterprises and the private sector, rather than just state-owned enterprises. Powerful vested interests in both oppose reform: in Russia, some of the leadership clans and natural resource companies; in China, some sections of the Communist Party and the state-owned enterprises. Rebalancing would curb the power and incomes of elites in both countries. If the rulers in Moscow and Beijing succeed in transforming their economies, laying the basis for sustained growth, they will become more confident in engaging with international institutions and other powers. But if these countries fail to make a smooth adjustment and suffer from slower growth and the consequent social unrest, their regimes will be prone to insecurity, nationalist sentiment and paranoia toward the West. Global governance would certainly suffer. So Russia’s and China’s attempts to reform matter hugely for the international system.