Examination of Witness (Questions 62-79)
MR AUBREY
MEYER
1 DECEMBER 2004
Q62 Chairman: Good Afternoon. Welcome
Mr Meyer; sorry about the slightly late start. Am I right in thinking
that you have a few introductory remarks you would like to make
to the Committee?
Mr Meyer: Yes, please.
Q63 Chairman: Please go ahead.
Mr Meyer: Thank you. Good afternoon.
I have three brief points to make. The first is to thank you for
existing. This is a really important Committee as I see it. The
second is, especially for your recent report on sustainable development,
which is excellent and finally, the opportunity of this hearing
and report itself. Climate change is so serious, that it subsumes
all areas of policy making. What this means is this: committees
with a focus on developing climate policy, my own principle, subsume
the agendas of committees that have not yet acquired this focus
of policy making. I am thinking of normally senior partners perhaps
such as Defence, Security, Treasury and so on. In other words,
what I am saying is, EAC, the Environmental Audit Committee, is
far more important than is popularly perceived. The final point
to say is that C&C, which is essentially why I feel I am here,
is a rational full-term framework—and I am stressing the
word full term and I am hoping that you are finding that in evidence
you have had from government institutions in Whitehall—and
to make this slightly pre-emptive point that it is not just feasible,
I say that it is inevitable the moment we realise the seriousness
of the predicament that we are actually in with climate change.
In respect of leadership on whatever occasion it may be, soon
or late, leadership is defined by C&C compliance. Thank you.
Q64 Chairman: Thank you. Just to make
it clear for the record, C&C is contraction and convergence,
which is an ideal which you yourself developed and, if I may say
in the light of your very nice words about our Committee, congratulations
to you for coming up with an interesting and original idea and
having the tenacity to continue to pursue it, so that it has now
gained credibility in many different parts of the world as one
option. Can we just explore this a little bit further? Whilst
I think most of us here would agree that contraction and convergence
is a logical proposition and a very interesting idea, it is, as
well as those things, a mechanism for achieving the sort of outcome
that we want. Or is it just an idea?
Mr Meyer: Well first let me say
thank you for your kind remarks. Second, let me say, yes, it is
both the means and in a sense the ends of the situation that we
are trying the deal with and it certainly is an idea. As I think
Michael Meacher, one of your former members, said, an incredibly
powerful idea towards which we are moving inexorably.
Q65 Chairman: What I think we are trying
to explore is how you actually see it developing in practice.
The idea is a sound and logical idea, there is no question about
that, but how does it get implemented?
Mr Meyer: Well, the answer that
I will give would apply no less to any other putative approach
to solving climate change. The problems of implementation of even
the Kyoto Protocol, let alone the climate convention are almost
apparently insuperable. We are in deep difficulty of not strictly
speaking being Kyoto compliant. If I remind you that many of the
features of the Kyoto Protocol, such as the reduced targets, the
inclusion of flexibility mechanisms, CDM and especially emissions
trading are there at the behest of the Americans who are no longer
part of the arrangement. They are continuing to rehearse their
objection as of the last 15 years that unless everybody is involved,
they are not. So in respect of the problems of C&C implementation,
obviously they are very considerable, but I would say they are
no more considerable than anything else and in some measure, not
so considerable as everything else for the simple reason that
actually being logical is in fact relevant to the basis of the
politics we now have to construct. The fault, if you like, amongst
the competition is that it is what I would generically classify
as guess-work in comparison with the contraction and convergence
framework.
Q66 Chairman: OK. I am sorry to harp
on about it, but I am still looking for ways in which this thing
can be delivered. There are various different options open to
governments. There is the emissions trading idea, which is gaining
currency, there is the possibility of taxing, international taxation
to ensure compliance with an agenda, there are all sorts of regulatory
opportunities. Does your idea depend on any one of those or on
mix and match or is an emissions trading scheme an essential part
of achieving contraction and convergence?
Mr Meyer: I see all of those things
that you have described, taxation, emissions trading and various
institutional and technological developments, as being integral
to C&C. I would go further than that and I would say that
by definition each and every one of those things has a fundamental
C&C dependency. What do I mean by that? The objective of the
convention has been clearly agreed since 1992 as stabilising greenhouse
gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level which is non-dangerous.
We are already internationally legally committed to achieving
that objective; I cannot believe that we are only committed to
hoping that we achieve it because not to achieve it in effect
is to go to a kind of extinction event. The secretariat to the
convention itself has said, a little loosely I grant you, that
achieving the objective of a convention depends, by definition,
I think the words were "inevitably requires contraction and
convergence". So the issue is not whether it is contraction
and convergence or not, the issue is much more about the question
of how we actually, as you were saying, get that in place. It
specifically requires therefore not being seen to be in opposition
to these apparently alternative contending positions. It is revealing
that they are in effect subsumed within the total full-term description
of what the solution actually is in respect of this crucial, crucial,
crucial issue of sharing the use of the global commons in the
form of the atmosphere. The trading, by definition, depends on
these arrangements. You cannot trade if you have not capped. You
cannot trade if you have not established ownership; so capping
and ownership are crucially inter-dependent here. Doing this rationally,
other than making it up on the hoof as you go along, is, I would
say, fundamentally a pre-requisite to success.
Q67 Chairman: Can you have a successful
C&C programme without trading? That is another way of asking
the question.
Mr Meyer: That is a more interesting
question. The way that I would answer that is as follows: I cannot
see a solution to climate change without C&C and I cannot
see a successful trade regime existing without C&C. I recognise
that in the various appetites for and against emissions trading,
some people are completely for it, some people are completely
against it and there is a vast and complex grey area in between
those two things. C&C in effect embraces both positions. It
is saying to the people who are opposed to trade, "You will
need these arrangements regardless of whether you support trading
or not" and to the trading people "You will need a full-term
framework focused on the successful outcome in order for the trade
to be meaningful". The only thing that we are really disposed
to negotiate about here is the rates at which contraction and
convergence actually unfold. So C&C is not pushing trade any
more than it is hindering trade: it is trying to service all the
positions as a sort of meta-position. Reconciliation lies here.
Q68 Chairman: You used the term "full-term
solution" a couple of times already this afternoon. Just
for the record, could you explain what you mean by that?
Mr Meyer: Yes, I am happy to do
that. The convention's objective is stable concentrations in the
atmosphere. What we have known with a reasonable degree of accuracy
since the IPCC's first assessment report was published in 1990,
is that different levels of stable concentrations in the future
are associated with different integrals of fossil fuel emissions
into the future and that whenever the IPCC science group, in the
time since then until now, have portrayed those carbon integrals,
they have done them in effect as budgets in a contraction curve.
They are by definition getting less over time, because that is
what is required to stabilise the atmosphere. In so far as we
can contemplate a situation in the future where concentrations
have become stable, the end of the emissions profile will be the
full-term completion of a carbon contraction process globally.
So "full term" specifically means that this is not just
open-ended hoping and guessing and praying for as long as we have
time to draw breath, it specifically means recognising an end
point now, stable at, for arguments sake, 450 parts per million
CO2 and working back from that end point now and counting out
crucially the carbon contraction process from then until now,
or from now until then if you like, and crucially applying international
convergence procedures proposing it as a constitutional basis
on which to reconcile all the parties to the convention, in other
words all the nations of the world, in what is a UN full-term
constitutional rights based agreement to share what is safe that
is left to consume.
Q69 Mr Challen: With C&C there is
a timescale over which incremental changes will be made to various
countries' carbon emissions and during the early stages of that
timescale, is it not possible that developing countries which
have at the moment very low emissions could be permitted to increase
their emissions? We are not talking about a system where everybody
starts off where they are and reduces: we are talking about a
convergent process. Does that not possibly legitimise developing
countries actually using whatever means they like to generate
energy to perhaps increase, albeit maybe slightly, carbon emissions?
Mr Meyer: I can you answer you
slightly indirectly here. I think what legitimates this process
is recognising that, in principle, the equal rights to the use
of the commons globally, the atmosphere, is the only conceivable
basis on which you could expect to construct political consent,
consistent with solving the problem. In respect of the specific
point you make about legitimising or allowing or appearing to
be permissive towards, I would say, future developing country
emissions, in so far as C&C expressly permits or admits emissions
trading, what C&C in principle is forecasting is a totality
of emissions distributed as permits to emit, which, should parties
decide to do this, are tradable. So it is crucially distributing
entitlements, equal entitlements to emit. That does not, by definition,
obligate anybody to emit consistent with the volume of their entitlements;
that is a crucial point. In respect of how the game actually plays
out, the trading will be a function of the capping, not the other
way around. C&C in effect pre-emptively establishes a stable
basis on which to unfold this programme into the future. In respect
of the very, very real problem of impending developing country
emissions, the US, and frankly others, have quite rightly pointed
out repeatedly that even if the US, which is 25% of annual emissions
in any one year, even if they were unilaterally to take their
emissions to zero, this would not protect us against dangerous
rates of climate change. So they have, for 15 years, repeatedly
said that all countries need to be involved, specifically, obviously,
with an eye on India and China. India and China, when they were
confronted with the proposition of emissions trading at the Kyoto
negotiations in 1997, did not reject emissions trading. What they
and the Africa group formally said was "If you want emissions
trading, we want a contraction and convergence based allocation
of this asset which is being created. That is the only basis on
which we can see this actually being supported by everybody".
I do not believe they substantially have changed that position.
I have evidence with me today of the fact that at least two of
those are specifically coming back with exactly that same agenda
point now.
Q70 Mr Challen: Just to put this in a
different way, in the sense that politicians tend to look at things,
we had before us some time ago, a former secretary of state for
international development who had publicly expressed on a number
of occasions that we were in no position to tell developing countries
how to go about pursuing the wider use of energy in their countries
and if that meant that they would have a fossil fuel burning power
station, we should not be thrusting down their throats our green
solutions to try to keep their emissions down to what we would
like them to be in an ideal world. Could people perhaps use C&C
as an argument? Perhaps they will not have fully comprehended
C&C but perhaps they could still point to it and say that
actually this legitimises that approach as expressed by that much
lamented former secretary of state for international development.
Mr Meyer: I believe you are talking
about Clare Short.
Q71 Mr Challen: I was not going to mention
any names.
Mr Meyer: When, before the Labour
Party came to power in 1997, we went to see her on the eve of
her appointment to the position that she held nobly for a very
long time, we made the C&C argument to her and her staff.
I remember her response to this. She lit up with an expression
of absolute delight and started explaining it to her staff. I
was delighted she was doing this. She said "Ah, you see this
is the green synthesis". She in no sense was discouraging
C&C. Can I ask you please, if you have copies of the evidence
that we submitted with you at the moment, to look there at an
image which I specially put it in with this kind of questioning
in mind. It is on page 17. This is in annex 3 and this is an extract
from an inter-governmental document preparing for IPCC's fourth
assessment report, which is due to be published possibly in 2007.
This is an event which took place in Colombo in the middle of
last year, it was attended by the Indian Prime Minister who spoke
at it and he was immediately followed by a man whose name is listed
here as Kirit Parikh. In the formal output from that meeting,
and bear in mind this is a full inter-governmental meeting, this
is not just an Indian-only event, he expressly drew attention
to contraction and convergence in the graphs. Those are his graphs
on the right-hand side of page 17 at the top. He called it unfair
convergence and contraction and "equitable" contraction
and convergence. You will see from the words on the left and the
point that he is making visually, if contraction and convergence
were just a sort of slow process on the never-never where countries
theoretically gradually came together over time as a result of
God knows what, he would regard that as unfair. On the other side
of the argument, he is saying that it is fair if developing countries,
in principle, have the rights to emit at the same levels as developed
countries. He drew those pictures by hand. If in fact you actually
model it out, if you do all the full arithmetic, which is what
the C&C model has intended always to do, you will see explicitly
what that means. In my judgment this draws attention to the most
important feature of C&C in the negotiating context, which
is that you can contemplate the notion of convergence being accelerated
relative to the rate of contraction, precisely because these are
entitlements which are tradable rather than emissions per se.
So we can accommodate developing country complaints about historic
responsibilities, but still within an envelope of future consumption
which makes it possible, to some extent, as it were to buy ourselves
out of that particular bit of the difficulty.
Q72 Mr Challen: I want to move on swiftly,
so a couple of questions on the clean development mechanism. Do
you have a view on whether that mechanism, providing for development
assistance, should have been kept out of Kyoto?
Mr Meyer: Yes, I do.
Q73 Mr Challen: Why do you take that
view?
Mr Meyer: It was originally proposed
once again I think by the Brazilians in this case, who called
it the clean development fund, people have forgotten this. At
the last moment, once again courtesy of the Americans, they adroitly
converted it into a mechanism as opposed to a fund. This may or
may not have been a good thing, but it was seen at the time as
part of Kyoto; they have since withdrawn and everybody else has
bought this possibly malformed baby. The difficulty here is that
in addition to being, as it were, inadequate, its inadequacy has
been imported into the bounded conditions of Kyoto compliance.
So you can in effect import almost limitless, I am not saying
that it is going to be done like this, but theoretically it can
be done, you can import almost an infinite amount of credit into
Kyoto to relax once again these already inadequate targets that
people are working to. I am not saying that it should not be done:
clean development is next to Godliness, I am sure that it is.
However, to make this into international law and a basis on which
we are going to solve climate change, I think is reaching beyond
reality.
Q74 Mr Challen: Do you think that developing
countries would have the capacity to get actual benefit from the
CDM? Is that going to be a big issue? It usually is in other global
contexts.
Mr Meyer: They are being pretty
heavily pressured to accept all sorts of conditionalities that
go with these programmes and that is probably par for the course
no matter what is actually going to happen. The key point here
is, in relation to the prior point that you raised in these graphs,
whether in principle developing countries have the capacity to
deal with C&C. I think it is somewhat inappropriate to suggest
that they do not have the desire, let alone the capacity, to see
the obvious benefits which C&C confers on everybody, but obviously
starting with them.
Q75 Mr Challen: Does it create any problems
in the path of introducing C&C on a global scale? We still
have a lot of convincing to do, obviously, but does it create
any problems for C&C if we have lots of other things developing?
Kyoto is an obvious example, but also possibly bilateral agreements
which often happen. It happened with the WTO free trade agreements
when America forged ahead with its agenda by using the bilateral
route rather than always being terribly helpful at a global level
and therefore you do not end up with a global fair trade system.
Could that also be the fate of C&C if we go down a bilateral
path?
Mr Meyer: Well, I am going to
be bullish and say no. They are not commensurable. The previous
agendas of trade and debt and all the rest of it did not, by definition,
have to be solved. It was not a threat to human destiny if world
trade remained unfair or developing countries remained permanently
indebted or even bankrupt. I do not think there is a bunch of
bleeding hearts in the IMF going to have a sort of religious conversion
if those things happen. They did not even get worried when Argentina
went bust. The point about climate change is that it is potentially
an extinction event if we fail to avoid it. The problem that the
people you are holding up with alternative ideas actually have,
is that you are somehow, by virtue of some kind of accident, going
to aggregate a path integral which is consistent with C&C
without it. Take the example of Kyoto, talking now about the so-called
second budget period. I believe some people gave evidence to you
only the other day during the course of which they said they were
going into these negotiations, or everybody was going into these
negotiations, with no pre-conceptions whatsoever about where this
process was actually going to go. I mean, I have been attentive
to your advice in printed form to avoid intemperate language,
but I would suggest that this is inviting a suicide pact. To walk
blindfold into this future is completely irresponsible; let us
put it in temperate language like that.
Q76 Mr McWilliam: That puts me in mind
of a verse from Dylan Thomas. We tend to accept equal per capita
distribution of emission rights within a society and we accept
economic inequality in other respects: income, wages, things like
that. Why should things be any different internationally?
Mr Meyer: It is the same answer
again, is it not? If the imperative is to deliver justice, I am
all for it, but I do not see it happening. If the imperative is
to deliver survival and this is the means to it, then I think
it gains traction. I will tell you this for the record. I have
had a long and friendly relationship with many of the American
negotiators over the last 15 years and prior to Kyoto they asked
me to do two things. One was to go and persuade the Chinese to
accept contraction and convergence, which in effect we did, but
that is a long story. The second point was to ask whether I honestly
think we can ever reduce these negotiations to the two fundamentals,
in other words the rate at which we contract and the rate at which
we converge. I said yes. He said "But Aubrey, think of the
precedent that would create for other situations." I said
to him that it applies to carbon emissions; how far this actually
goes is dependent on all sorts of things and I will not give you
the exact example that I quoted to him at the extreme end of not
wanting to share things equally per capita. He took the point:
it is inclusive. The point I am trying to make eventually here
is that it is the logic of our situation. We have to come up with
something more robust than this, than just trying to guess our
way through with a lot of flag waving and direction. I think the
phrase of the Indian minister was "dither and drift",
D&D. C&C is a cure for that.
Q77 Mr McWilliam: What you are suggesting
requires a major change in the kind of political outlook that
we have not experienced before. As politicians, our time lines
tend to be election to election. In my case, I am exempt from
that; I am not even going to stand as a dog catcher. Do you not
think that this is asking an awful lot of my colleagues who are
not used to thinking in that way? How can we persuade them?
Mr Meyer: I do not want to make
any assumptions here about how you and your colleagues think.
Q78 Mr McWilliam: I do not mean these
colleagues.
Mr Meyer: It is climate change
which is imposing the challenge on us. Climate change is the problem:
C&C is the solution. It is generically in the area called
solution. The issue depends on how much we want to do what we
have been very good at for the last several, probably tens of
thousands of years and that is surviving. Historically, the pattern
has been the sort of genetic programming characterised by things
like the Selfish Gene. But Richard Dawkins wrote a chapter
at the end of that book, which nobody seems to have read, or few
people, which is the possibility to learn by means, by "mimetic"
behaviour. And he explicitly made the point all those years ago,
that if learning to cooperate is what it takes to survive, we
will learn to do it. This is what people learn. C&C is about
that, co-operation. It supersedes the competitive effort to which
I suspect you and your colleagues may be still captive. Climate
change is rearranging all of that: absolutely not C&C. I would
also say this: if C&C does admit emissions trading, and I
think in principle, subject to these rules, it should, it in no
sense precludes the continuation of what we will call competitive
behaviour. On the contrary, I would it would sharpen it intensely.
Q79 Chairman: The problem is that we
have been aiming at the same question now for about 20 minutes
and the answer is always the same, which is that if we do not
do it, we are all doomed basically and because we are all doomed
if we do not do it, we will do it. That is the logic of your position.
Mr Meyer: Do you disagree with
it?
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