Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MR CHARLIE
KRONICK, MR
CÉDRIC PHILIBERT
AND DR
SALEEMUL HUQ
19 FEBRUARY 2008
Q1 Chairman: Good morning and welcome.
I have suggested that when our third witness arrives he just joins
as soon as he can. We are quite strictly time limited ourselves.
Would you just like to introduce yourselves to the Committee and
just explain who you are and where you are from?
Mr Kronick: My name is Charlie
Kronick. I am the Senior Climate Advisor for Greenpeace UK.
Dr Huq: My name is Saleemul Huq.
I head the climate change programme at the International Institute
for Environment and Development.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you. The latest
IPCC report gives the strongest indication so far about what is
needed if we are going to avoid dangerous climate change. Do you
think that the international negotiations have enough urgency
about them to reflect the conclusions that the scientists are
now producing?
Mr Kronick: I was not at the last
round, but I have been to a number. I think there is a sense of
urgency around the process just by the sheer weight of numbers
of interest that have come to bear on it. As for within the actual
negotiating process itself, no, I do not. You only have to look
at the exclusion of even guiding targets from the main tests about
declaration for 2020 to see that not only could they not agree
on targets to negotiate towards, they could not even agree to
get them in for a very, very short period of time. I would say
that urgency is lacking from the core of the process. In terms
of the general circus itself, I think it is building a lot of
speed. It might be more heat than light.
Dr Huq: I was in Bali and I would
agree with Charlie's analysis. However, I would put a slightly
better spin on it in that Bali was never going to be a decision-making
process. It was to set us a timeline and we did, we have Copenhagen
as a timeline. Countries are not going to reveal all their cards
until the end of that timeline. To expect them to put all their
proposals on the table this early in the process I think was unrealistic.
They are keeping their cards close to their chest. They are going
to be in very intense negotiations. We now have a two-year timeline
up to Copenhagen in December 2009, which was a major outcome of
Bali. I agree with Charlie, not getting certain words into the
agreement from the IPCC was not a good sign but, nevertheless,
it was not fatal to the process.
Mr Kronick: I would agree with
that.
Q3 Chairman: And you are happy that
the IPCC dates and targets that are in the latest assessment are
the right starting point for the negotiations?
Dr Huq: Absolutely. The advantage
of them is that they are consensus driven; no country can disagree
with them. Some of us might disagree with them being not enough,
but at least at the level they are at countries cannot disagree
with them.
Mr Kronick: One of the important
things to remember about the IPCC is the rear view mirror. It
looks at the peer reviewed literature from the period before which
it was published, which means inevitably it is not the most current.
Climate science moves so fast that the most current data is not
included and that sense of urgency even came out from the IPCC
meetings, that certain things could just not make it into the
papers.
Q4 Chairman: Without wanting to be
too gloomy about it, it seems to me that the science is getting
stronger and stronger and the threat is more and more urgent and
more serious, but even the most forward looking countries are
struggling to get anywhere near the current targets, which has
almost universally meant not one will be prepared to touch it.
That is quite a gloomy background if we say that no one, even
the best countries, is going to reach what we thought was needed
five years ago. We now know much more is included. You would have
to be a pretty optimistic person to think that is the starting
point from which a satisfactory conclusion is going to be reached,
would you not?
Mr Kronick: You would not do this
work if you were not quite an optimistic sort of person! That
is a reasonable analysis. I guess what I would add to that or
try to unpack a little bit is the way the process has been led
since 1997 in the Kyoto Protocol that has been around what seemed
at the time almost peripheral mechanisms, which were the flexible
mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, the CDM and the provisions for
emissions trading. They were included for a very particular purpose
and that was to get the United States and other big market economies
to participate. Unfortunately, for the people who took that gamble—and
that includes the NGOs who supported it post-1997—it has
not worked in that way and yet the kind of incredible momentum
of the market and the idea of carbon markets being able to deliver
all the results that we need mean that it is not surprising that
we are not anywhere close to achieving a sense of urgency or the
level of engagement that is needed. Greenpeace is very happy that
carbon markets are a part of this process, but the idea that a
market mechanism and a price on carbon was ever going to be enough
to completely shift away infrastructure investment across the
developing and developed world was very optimistic and I think
totally unrealistic.
Dr Huq: I think during Kyoto and
just post-Kyoto there was still a prevailing view that we needed
to make an incremental change and tinker with the system and we
would be able to deliver. That view is now shattered. It just
is not going to work that way. We will need quite a severe paradigm
shift in terms of legislation, policies, technologies and business
involvement. More and more of the public in general, even the
business community, are becoming aware that that is what is going
to be needed. What we therefore need to do is to get the political
will amongst the leadership to come to an agreement that does
deliver that. It will not happen on its own; it will require a
top-down political agreement at the global level with all countries
on board.
Q5 Mark Lazarowicz: The UN process
is obviously crucial, but it certainly has been suggested that
it is equally important to have progress in negotiations and other
fora. Do you agree it is important to take that forward? If you
do, what do you think is the objective that we should be taking
forward in the Japanese presidency of the G8?
Mr Kronick: I think the G8 has
obviously taken climate change as a bit of core business for them.
In terms of the Japanese presidency, until the US presidency changes
and there is someone different in the White House in 2009 there
is going to be very little likelihood of a big resolution on these
issues by the end of the Japanese presidency. I guess it depends
on which other processes you mean. I think the G8 is powerful
because of the power of the economies. Some of the parallel processes
that have been put forward by the US administration, for example,
or Australia pre their election, like the Asia-Pacific partnerships,
are a genuine distraction from the Kyoto and post-Kyoto process.
We would encourage any national governments that are positively
engaging with the Kyoto process not to be distracted by the things
that the Bush administration has put forward. Having said that,
there are other processes that are pretty important, eg the Convention
on Biological Diversity, which has big impacts on global deforestation,
which in turn has a very important role to play in avoiding dangerous
climate change, and could be very, very powerful, but it is being
marginalized at the moment. There are some processes that are
getting no attention that could be much more important and there
are some that are getting lots of attention that are, frankly,
nothing but a distraction.
Dr Huq: The climate change issue
or problem is such an over-arching and all-encompassing one that
it is not going to be solved by one particular process alone.
It does require engagement by different actors, including the
summit meetings of the G8 leaders and the G8 plus five leaders
as well as processes led by the Secretary General at the UN General
Assembly, for example, or even meetings like Davos where the business
community come together. They all have a role to play in bringing
together, but fundamentally they must support the UNFCC process
because without a global deal—and that is the only binding
treaty we have—voluntary agreements amongst the big emitters
are not going to deliver. The UNFCC is the only place where 100
of the poorest most vulnerable countries, the countries in the
Sub-Saharan Africa, the least developed countries, the small island
states, who are not big emitters but who will suffer the consequences
of climate change and the lack of action by the big emitters,
can hold the big emitters to account. They are not invited to
the G8 plus five.
Q6 Mark Lazarowicz: Equally, if the
G8 plus five were pressing hard in this area then it would obviously,
one would assume, lead to a greater possibility of progress, but
as you suggest, if we cannot expect much from the Japanese presidency
that is not very encouraging, is it?
Dr Huq: We should try and get
as much as we can. As Charlie says, I think the general consensus
of most people following this is that the Bush White House is
not going to change its tune. The post-Bush White House will almost
certainly change its tune. The major contenders right now are
all on board with climate change and the US is coming back on
board. Negotiating with them perhaps around the Bush White House
might be the way forward with the US. The others can take action
or at least agree on certain things that they need to do. They
should all reinforce an agreement under the UNFCC process.
Q7 Mark Lazarowicz: Do you see any
possibility of a Japanese government during the G8 process adopting
the 25-40% reduction target?
Dr Huq: Not by consensus. The
US will not agree to that. The Japanese may do it voluntarily.
The Japanese Prime Minister has proposed something similar along
those lines himself.
Q8 Dr Turner: It is not only the
science that has moved on at a great pace since the start of the
Kyoto process, but some of the developing countries have been
growing economically very fast and becoming very major CO2
emitters in their own right. How do you feel about the attitude
of developing countries in accepting that climate change is an
issue that they have to contribute towards the mitigation of?
Dr Huq: I sense a change in attitude.
It used to be the case that the G77 in general and particularly
countries like India, China and Brazil said, "It's an Annex
1 country problem. You solve it. Don't ask us to do anything about
it." I sense that they have changed their attitude for two
reasons. Firstly, there is a lot more analysis being done within
countries like India, China and Brazil about the potential impacts
of climate change on them and it is not good news for them. Their
own scientists are telling them that this is a severe problem
for their own populations, particularly the more vulnerable populations
within those countries and therefore they need to become part
of the solution and not just leave it to others. That has not
necessarily moved them to changing their negotiating positions,
although it has softened it a bit. The Chinese, for example, in
Bali are no longer saying they will not do anything; they are
saying, "We are willing to do our bit, but we need technology
and we need funding and so on." The debate goes into technology
transfer and funding for technology transfer and not unwillingness
on their part to take action but willingness provided they are
given support. In India it is a bit more confused. The Indian
government tends to be a bit more intransigent. Even so, within
India there is a growing debate amongst civil society, amongst
the scientific community and amongst the private sector in India
that has been very much involved in the CDM, for example. It is
a very small but strong and growing cohort of business people
in India that like the carbon market and CDM want more of it and
want India to be part of that post-2012 regime where there are
more CDM opportunities available. There is a growing sense within
these countries that they need to become part of the solution
and the governments ought to take on some form of commitments.
What those form of commitments will be remains to be seen. There
are a lot of hard negotiations needed to do that.
Q9 Colin Challen: Could I just take
on this issue of India's alleged reluctance because at the UK-India
summit last month the two prime ministers agreed that a future
framework might well be the convergence model on a per capita
basis. Does that not show that India is engaged but wants to be
so on a basis which is fair and equitable?
Dr Huq: Absolutely. The Indians
have always pushed for the notion of equity to be fundamental,
which it had not been in Kyoto. Kyoto was grandfathering rights
to pollution, whereas the Indians have always championed the cause
or at least incorporating an element of equity in terms of per
capita emissions to be recognised. India's per capita emissions
are very, very low. China, on the other hand, will reach the global
average fairly soon, but India has a long way to go.
Mr Kronick: You have to drill
down a little bit into that. India is around 1.2 billion and growing.
750 million of those people live on less than a dollar a day and
then there are about 300 million people, roughly the size of the
EU 15, who live roughly at a European level of consumption and
sometimes higher level of consumption. Greenpeace India, did a
very interesting report, which I would happily submit to the Committee,
which is called "Hiding behind the poor", which says
that at least the `global consumer' class that is resident in
India—and that includes the government—does need to
get a grip on infrastructure investments, which is what is really
driving emissions in India, not poverty eradication, sadly. It
is more complicated than saying India has low per capita emissions
just as in China the averages are growing up. It is where there
can be a genuine attempt to develop a solution to that problem
which has got to be about infrastructure and not about accounting
that will begin to address the problem. Greenpeace feels very
strongly that that is where the real opportunity for commitments
from those big emerging economies in the developing world will
come from, which is focusing on particular sectors where not only
technology and money can be shared but you can set up a genuine
political objective, which is not just about the science, it is
an awful lot about the politics.
Chairman: Can I just welcome Mr Philibert
to the Committee. It is a very informal session with people just
throwing questions out. If there is one that you want to answer,
do not wait to be called, just jump in.
Q10 Dr Turner: Phil Woolas MP, our
own Climate Change Minister, recently criticised India for not
seeming to wish to address climate change because he thought that
India saw the question as a trade-off and a choice between either
economic growth or mitigating climate change. Do you think that
is a fair analysis of Indian attitudes and, if so, how do you
think we can address that one?
Dr Huq: I think it is a fair description
of the attitude of some people and perhaps also fair of the attitude
of the Indian government in the past. In India now there is a
growing sense of debate and different attitudes arising amongst
civil society and the scientific community, the business community
and even within different parts of the government where they are
looking at a much more nuanced view of this issue. The view that
it does not necessarily require compromising development and improving
quality of life, particularly of the poor, by taking a cleaner
pathway to the future energy and infrastructure requirements of
the country is something that is becoming a part of that argument
as well. I do not think it is a monolithic view any more, if it
was at any time. The Indian government and people will take a
much more sophisticated view of this in future, particularly in
the negotiations.
Q11 Dr Turner: Do you think that
developing countries now recognise that in the likes of their
different circumstances they need to adopt different responsibilities
and to take account of those circumstances in their approach to
climate change mitigation?
Dr Huq: Absolutely. That is already
happening. If you look at some of the debates that occurred in
Bali, they were not all between north and south, there was also
quite a lot of internal debate within the G77 with country groups,
eg the small island states and the Least Developed Countries Group,
challenging India, China and Brazil and saying, "You cannot
continue to say you will not do anything. You are big emitters.
You have to become part of the solution. You have to offer something
on the table." To some extent I think the change in the nuance
and tone of these large countries came from pressure from other
countries in the south for them to become more amenable to taking
action or at least being more open to the possibilities.
Q12 Dr Turner: Presumably this is
being driven to a large extent by the realization amongst developing
countries that they are going to be first in line for suffering
adverse consequences.
Mr Kronick: I think they have
known that for quite a while! The realization may be growing.
If you look at the initiatives of the small island states, from
very early on in this process they have been the ones who have
taken the most progressive positions.
Q13 Dr Turner: Do you think we need
to evolve different country groupings to take account of these
circumstances? What sort of mitigation actions do you think would
be appropriate to these new groupings?
Dr Huq: The G77, which is the
negotiating group of the developing countries, is a very broad
church, it has over 140 countries and with a huge differentiation
amongst them and a lot of subgroups within them as well. They
are already differentiated internally. Within those subgroups
there are several that are of particular significance: the Alliance
of Small Island States, about 40 island countries, the least developed
countries, about 50 of the poorest countries and the Africa group
as a whole, another 50 countries. There are overlaps between them,
but these are significant subgroups within the G77. For these
countries the problem of climate change is how it is going to
impact them and how they are going to deal with the impacts, it
is not about their emissions. Their emissions do not amount to
much at all. Therefore, the question for them is, "What are
the big emitters, including the big developing countries, going
to do about this?" They are raising these issues. To the
extent that countries like the UK and the EU can recognise these
subgroups and deal with them, which they have not done very well
in the past—Prime Minister Blair invited the five big emitters
to the meeting in Gleneagles. He could have invited the Chairman
of the LDC Group but he did not do that. They say, "When
you want to talk to developing countries all you want to talk
about is reducing their emissions and you invite the big emitters.
What about us 100 countries who are going to suffer? Are we not
part of the problem? Are we not eligible to be invited to the
table to talk about this issue? It is going to affect us more
than it is going to affect you or them."
Mr Kronick: These groups are not
mandates, they are self-selecting and it is a fluid process. For
example, there is no question that some of the newly industrialised,
high income countries, ie South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia,
should be some of the people with obligations to mitigate and
reduce emissions, but they are still in there with Malawi and
Saudi Arabia and still arguing for compensation for loss of petrol
sales down the road. We need to be a bit more robust amongst ourselves
in differentiating between the interests of these groups.
Dr Turner: Especially given that some
of these developing countries have per capita incomes as high
as any of the G8.
Q14 Mr Hurd: Can I just bring you
back to this dream of a global deal and probe you a little harder
on this because this is the roadmap we are on and we have been
on for a very long time. You are painting a vision of some optimism,
that now a timeline is established and people are keeping their
cards close to their chest there is going to be a mother of all
negotiations and everything is going to click into place in Copenhagen.
Can I put it to you that the process is tremendously flawed because
it is allowed to proceed at the pace of the least ambitious. Let
us just pick Saudi Arabia, for example. Saudi Arabia is not going
to get us to where we need to get. Is it not time to get a little
less visionary and much more pragmatic and recognise the fact
that 80% of emissions come from 20 countries? Something like five
industrial sectors are responsible for three-quarters of emissions.
Is it not time to get very pragmatic and concentrate the conversation
around those main players to get a deal done, around the smaller
set of people that are actually going to make a difference?
Dr Huq: Let me answer in two ways.
Firstly, that small set of countries are the ones that will have
to make the major concessions or changes to reduce or solve the
emissions problem. If we just leave it to them to make the decision
then in my view it is akin to the slave owners getting together
and agreeing, "We don't like slavery, we're going to abolish
it, but we will do it in a manner that does the least harm to
us. We will phase it out, we will take it easy and it does not
matter about the slaves, they're not invited to that decision-making
process." For a billion people living in the poorest countries
it is not about their emissions, it is about the big countries
doing what is right to prevent the kind of dangerous climate change
that the others will face. The consequences are not going to be
borne by these few countries for their inaction. So being pragmatic
may be one way to go but it is not going to solve the problems,
it is not going to deliver. The only delivery will come under
an agreed treaty, which is the only thing we have under the Framework
Convention and that has to be done in Copenhagen. It is a window
of opportunity. One has to be optimistic that we can get it there,
perhaps unrealistically optimistic, but nevertheless I think that
is the only place it will happen. Voluntary action by the big
emitters is not going to deliver that.
Q15 Chairman: I think the purpose
of the question was that the present process is not going to achieve
what is necessary. Some of us have just been in Australia and
we talked to the head negotiator for the Australians. I came away
from the meeting profoundly depressed. It was mired in process
discussions and there was absolutely no focus at all on the urgency
or the scale of the problem. I think this is a paralysis which
allows the more backsliding big countries to hide. They are saying
that it is not their fault, that it is all mired in this ridiculous
paraphernalia. The only chance of making a substantial action
is to narrow it down to a much smaller group.
Dr Huq: I would put it slightly
differently, if I may. I would say that what you are describing
is the mindset of the negotiator. What we need is not the negotiator
making these decisions but the Prime Minister making those decisions
and he has to be visionary.
Mr Kronick: I would agree that
if you put all your eggs in the Kyoto basket you would be bound
to be disappointed. It is excruciating, it is glacial—actually,
it is not as fast as some glaciers. It is not an either/or proposition.
There has to be an overarching framework. I think there is a real
opportunity for some of those big countries, including the UK,
to claim some of the first mover advantage. I do not want to tread
off into domestic politics, but as long as the countries that
are supposed to be at the forefront of solving the problems of
climate change are still contemplating building new tens of gigawatts
of unmitigated coal fired power stations and expanding airport
capacity in already the busiest airport in the world it is very
hard to see how that process is going to move forward in a way
that has anything like goodwill or good faith or even due diligence.
The process has lots of flaws, but until there is some real leadership
shown not just by the UK but by the significant, highly leveraged
economies the process is bound to be tied up in this painful negotiating
because it will be a race to the bottom, it will be the slowest.
Q16 Jo Swinson: I want to pick up
on the point you raised about the tension in that you have got
these much better developed countries now like Singapore and South
Korea that are not being treated in that sort of category. In
Australia we heard that there seemed to be very little prospect
from this negotiating mindset that there could even be a change
and that countries that have developed their economies can be
moved into different categories for the purposes of this. What
scope is there to take account of what development is taking place
and re-evaluate what the responsibilities of different countries
should be, and how might that impact on us achieving the goal
of halving emissions by 2050?
Dr Huq: One of the windows of
opportunity that we have now in the post-2012 negotiations which
we did not have in Kyoto was that Kyoto was a one-size-fits-all
solution, it was a target minus from 1990 and that was it. I think
we can be more nuanced now. Countries, developing countries in
particular, can take on programmatic targets, other kinds of commitments
which are not a minus target from a 1990 level. I think that is
a good thing. There are opportunities to do that. There are sectoral
opportunities, there are many kinds of technology-led opportunities,
renewable commitment opportunities and so on which can lead to
a much more nuanced regime of commitments that will deliver what
we want in terms of a cleaner pathway and less emissions associated
with them than just taking a minus X%, which is what they have
had to do in Kyoto.
Mr Kronick: There are some really
specific examples one could point to. Clearly the electricity
sector in rapidly developing economies is one which always gets
pointed to, China and India, what about China and India? Let us
develop mechanisms that allow us to support—when I say "us"
I mean the developed economies—to support that transformation.
It is clearly in our interest to do so. Stern onwards will say
that those costs and those investments will be of huge benefit
to developed as well as developing countries. Something that Greenpeace
also feels is very important is the potential to develop a mechanism
for avoided deforestation that allows countries which at the moment
are not rapidly emerging economies but if we can avoid their emissions
from deforestation it could make a really significant difference
and add to the development pathway of those countries. There are
mechanisms that I think need to be much more creative than we
have been heretofore which genuinely has benefits for those developed
countries and an incentive for them to get in as well as the nuanced
approach to how you measure the progress.
Q17 Jo Swinson: When we were in China
they were powering ahead with energy efficiency, they were very
keen to cut their emissions per unit of GDP, but they are obviously
a rapidly developing economy. They have still got great strides
forward they want to make for the quality of life of their population.
They said that they were expecting their per capita emissions
to rise and not stabilise until 2030. Do you think that kind of
scenario can fit with the IPCC goals?
Dr Huq: The Chinese and the developing
countries by and large will have to be allowed a certain period
of rising emissions. There is just no way they can turn around
their ship that quickly, which means that developed countries
may have to take on a bigger responsibility in the overall arena.
If there is this major shift towards a cleaner development path
globally then I think their ability to turn around will also become
quicker because the technology drives for cleaner technologies
to replace the old fossil fueling burning and dirtier technologies
will be much, much more rapid and the deployment of that will
become much more easy for those countries in particular. That
is my feeling on that. It may be over-optimistic, I am not sure.
Q18 Jo Swinson: So you think they
might be able to revise that down from 2030 with more technology?
Dr Huq: I think so, yes. What
we have to get the developing countries, particularly the rapidly
industrialising ones, to think about is to rethink their development
paths, whether they can de-link quality of life improvements and
poverty alleviation for the poor people in their countries without
taking a very dirty fossil fuel dependent pathway. There are a
variety of technologies that can be deployed to do that and if
they can be scaled up they can deliver that within a few decades,
yes.
Q19 Jo Swinson: Let us say they are
right and they will keep rising to 2030. What does that mean for
overall global emissions? Does that throw it off course?
Mr Philibert: It all depends on
what is meant by rising. You can start controlling the growth
rate. What you will do before stopping and reducing emissions
is to have a slower growth rate and this is compatible with the
objective of halving global CO2 emissions by 2050.
There is still a little room for an increase in these emissions
in the developing countries in the next ten to 15 years, but then
we ought to enter into an era where global emissions decrease.
I have just received the results of our last modeling exercise
which will be published in the next few months on what is needed
to achieve a halving of global energy related CO2 emissions
by 2050 below 2000 levels and basically half of it will be energy
efficiency improvements. So it is very important, it needs to
start now and there is a lot to do in this arena. The other half
is decarbonising the fuel mix. Basically we found that we could
achieve that with about half of electricity production being renewables
and the other half being shared in almost equal shares between
nuclear and carbon dioxide capture and storage. Of course, if
you can think up and implement big changes in the way people live
and consume energy you will find different results, but we at
the IEA are looking more at the technological aspects of it, not
at the ways to reduce energy services, but with energy services
kept constant at the baseline we have found that we can achieve
this half with energy efficiency and the other half with a mix
of renewable, nuclear and CCS.
Mr Kronick: Greenpeace has also
done lots of energy modelling and scenarios which enables you,
not surprisingly, to achieve those goals without nuclear and without
carbon capture and storage but with a different model for including
decentralised energy distributed generation as well as ambitious
targets for energy efficiency. I do not think it is all about
technology and Greenpeace does not either. An over-emphasis on
technology will lead us into a situation where the power politics
of the market will determine. Whether it is a global commodity
in carbon or a global commodity in coal, gas or even palm oil
or biomass, the powerful players will drive it. There is inevitably
a tension between ongoing global economic growth --- Nobody is
willing at the moment, in the context of the discussion we are
currently having, to challenge their right to economic growth
and that includes the rich countries as well as the poor ones.
So I think it comes back to what Saleemul referred to, how do
you describe a quality of life this is not based solely on GDP?
That makes it very difficult to square the circle that you have
raised here. Why would the Chinese not want to have a quality
of life that they would consider broadly comparable with ours?
It would be insane and also unjust to insist that they were not
allowed to do so. At the moment there is no equity or global justice
mechanism within the current set of negotiations on Kyoto Plus
and one will have to emerge. I know certain members of the Committee
are enthusiastic about some frameworks. Greenpeace is not endorsing
a particular framework, but there is no question that a framework
will have to come into place. You only have to look at the most
recent modelling to realise the fact that there is not very much
room for growth in emissions in developing countries. A smooth—and
I use this word advisedly—convergence of emissions pathways
is not going to happen in the time available so we have to find
another mechanism, whether it is the Greenhouse Development Rights
that some people have put forward, there is a climate action Network
International has put forward, a combined sort of framework, whether
it is contraction and convergence or a combination of all of these
things with elements, but until that becomes absolutely central
to the way we talk about responding to climate change we are not
going to solve the problem and China will not limit their emissions
because why would they?
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