Optimism in Bali

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon marked the beginning of the huge climate conference in Bali yesterday with an excellent and upbeat op-ed in the Washington Post. "Largely lost in the debate is the good news," he wrote: "We can do something -- more easily, and at far less cost, than most of us imagine." And he noted some encouraging datapoints, which didn't even include the wonderful ratification of Kyoto by Australia's new prime minister.

Much is made of the fact that China is poised to surpass the United States as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Less well known, however, are its more recent efforts to confront grave environmental problems. China is on track to invest $10 billion in renewable energy this year, second only to Germany. It has become a world leader in solar and wind power. At a recent summit of East Asian leaders, Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to reduce energy consumption (per unit of gross domestic product) by 20 percent over five years -- not far removed, in spirit, from Europe's commitment to a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020...
Growth need not suffer and, in fact, may accelerate. Research by the University of California at Berkeley indicates that the United States could create 300,000 jobs if 20 percent of electricity needs were met by renewables.

Of course, the big you-go-first-no-you-go-first between China and the US is ongoing, and unhelpful. But Peter Dorman makes the good point that the multilateral actions being negotiated in Bali neither can nor should preclude sensible unilateral actions. If one thing is achieved in Bali, he says, it should be a framework which allows countries to slap carbon tariffs on imported fossil fuels.

I'm hopeful that from Bali will emerge something better and stronger than Kyoto. But even if that doesn't happen, global popular opinion, which was largely apathetic during Kyoto in most countries outside western Europe, is now if anything one step ahead of where the negotiators stand in Bali. And that's got to be an encouraging thing.