Copenhagen Summit

There is a lot at stake this year at Copenhagen. This is the right time to come up with a deal, as far as the climate change science is concerned. But as for the political climate it still isn't right. In recent years when the politicians come together I am always skeptical about the outcome. They like to make a joint statement at the end and tell the world all the things they've agreed. But often these are pledges with no substance. They know it and any seasoned observer will know it too. Even Obama won't get things moving. This is because the sticking point is linked with economic performance and economic security. A country with a troubled economy, loses its power to do everything and anything. And agreeing targets won't work, ever, because of this. Targets are linked negatively to economic performance, both in theory and in practice. It will cost a lot of money, even though the overall cost of doing nothing will be far greater. It is the short term costs which are the decider however, because that's the nature of money. I've said for a couple of years now, and others agree (most notably Bjorn Lomborg - http://www.lomborg.com) that agreeing to targets won't get us anywhere. Every politician in there could agree to cut emissions by 100% by next year - they don't have to do it. No-one can make them do it. And they often don't. Ed Miliband reckons the UK have already met their carbon targets. I don't know what planet he's on, but as far as I understood the only country to reach their Kyoto target was Poland or Romania, but only because their economy is in free fall and they weren't using much energy. I said it before and I'll say it again, that a massive fund should be set up to fund the technology that will allow a change from carbon to non-carbon economies. And subsidise that technology till the cows come home. That's what should be agreed at the talks. Have targets as well as you like. There's no harm in it. But ultimately targets are unenforceable and don't mean all that much.

Secondly on Channel Four news (http://www.channel4.com) the other day, they were talking about Rare Earth. Rare Earth is the stuff where very rare metals are mined for producing things like magnets for wind turbines and low energy light bulbs. It is at great environmental cost that these metals are recovered, mainly from China, which has all but monopolised the Rare Earth market. This indicates that even if we were to agree targets and push new technologies onto the market, we still haven't solved the raw materials problem, i.e. that eventually they will run out. Almost half of the worlds supply of copper for example, is recovered from recycling plants and landfill and old buildings. There are so many very serious problems with capitalism and although I was enthusiastic about books like Natural Capitalism (see http://www.rmi.org) there are very fundamental reasons why capitalism fails as an answer to environmental problems. In other words capitalism is almost entirely incompatible with environmental sustainability - in other the words the long term surival of the human race. It could provide the answers to climate change given the right conditions. But it will never provide the answers, to population growth, land use growth, biodiversity conservation and resource use, because it is about using resources "like a business in liquidation" (EF Schumaker - Small is Beautiful (1973) - http://www.smallisbeautiful.org).

Many people have argued that in order for the environment to be treated properly and sustainably by a capitalist society, raw materials, air quality, land use, etc, must have a proper value added to it, to reflect scarcity and the cost of removing it from its habitat, or changing the environment itself by polluting it for example. This means that the environmental cost added to the costs to extract or use something, would have a value, which a) inhibits its use and b) money will be paid to help correct the damage afterwards. These issues have not been dealt with at any political level and becomes what the politicians coming together talk about, targets will continue to mean very little, because just switching to a non-carbon economy is not enough. Nowhere near. There are larger issues looming.