Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14 November 2010
Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated. – Ottmar Edenhofer
For those who may not know, Ottmar Edenhofer is the co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III.
Interview by: Bernard Potter
NZZ am Sonntag: Mr. Eden, everybody concerned with climate protection demands emissions reductions. You now speak of “dangerous emissions reduction.” What do you mean?
Ottmar Edenhofer: So far economic growth has gone hand in hand with the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. One percent growth means one percent more emissions. The historic memory of mankind remembers: In order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas. And therefore, the emerging economies fear CO2 emission limits.
But everybody should take part in climate protection, otherwise it does not work.
That is so easy to say. But particularly the industrialized countries have a system that relies almost exclusively on fossil fuels. There is no historical precedent and no region in the world that has decoupled its economic growth from emissions. Thus, you cannot expect that India or China will regard CO2 emissions reduction as a great idea. And it gets worse: We are in the midst of a renaissance of coal, because oil and gas (sic) have become more expensive, but coal has not. The emerging markets are building their cities and power plants for the next 70 years, as if there would be permanently no high CO 2 price.
The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.
That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.
That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.
Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 – there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.
De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.
First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
Nevertheless, the environment is suffering from climate change – especially in the global south.
It will be a lot to do with adaptation. But that just goes far beyond traditional development policy: We will see in Africa with climate change a decline in agricultural yields. But this can be avoided if the efficiency of production is increased – and especially if the African agricultural trade is embedded in the global economy. But for that we need to see that successful climate policy requires other global trade and financial policies.
Full Interview h/t to Dr. Benny Peiser at the GWPF
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Well doesn’t that just put the “D” in “Duh”. I have been saying that it was just a scam to scare people into buying into a “wealth redistribution” scheme for years.
How many years have people been saying this? 4, 5? At least. So it’s now coming out in the open as if it were a good thing. That’s the spin. The progressive agenda is a GOOD THING . It’s a good thing that we will all be “equal” ( equally miserable in reality). My answer to that: BITE ME.
Well timed earthquake, or meteorite blast. Accept no substitutes.
He’s from the IPCC and says this publicly? Did they drug him? Is the IPCC collectively suicidal now?
Nice to see he’s not even shy about admitting it.
Okay, this guy goes in the ‘evil’ bucket…
The Green Revoloution does a collective Facepalm.
“You’re supposed to keep that a secret!”.
Could this guy be drumming up IPCC ‘agenda’ support from the less developed countries in advance of Cancun?
I mean – if you said to 150+ or so countries that they are doomed to poverty if the current economic status quo remains – or we can set about giving you some ‘free cash’ via climate change ‘aversion therapy’ – which way are those countries likely to vote?
Ah, at last! Now all sceptics who saw the scam, and were castigated by lukewarmer’s and CAGW believers alike, have been vindicated by this admission from a spokesman for the IPCC. The cards are on the table at long last, but the people trying to redistribute the wealth of the world have weak hands and the outcome of Cancun will go the same way as Copenhagen – when will these idiots learn!
So now we officially know what we have been fighting whereas before we only surmised.
I wonder how many times the ‘wealth redistribution’ meme will go around? Some people are better at creating wealth than others. Some people are better at hitting a nine-iron or a tennis racquet than others. Some people are better than baking cakes than others.
Why do we labour under the pretension that wealth creation is a skill any different from all the other human skills? Why don’t we return to celebrating those who are adept at creating wealth, for creation of wealth for one person in a free society means generating wealth for us all.
The frustrating thing is that people think that the reason some countries are poor is because another country has all the resources. They think that giving them a boatload of money will somehow fix this. It’s governments and, by extension, education systems that create poor people, not lack of resources. Look at Taiwan – very wealthy, very industrious, zero natural resources. There’s no reason any number of other countries couldn’t emulate this success.
Besides, even if African agricultural yields somehow did get lower as a result of climate change (a very large stretch), what good would giving them a couple of billion do? Feed them for a year? Then what? How about giving those African farmers free and equal access to the world’s markets, so that they can build their export businesses and be better placed to adapt to any changes that might occur. If you want to help, go and build a railway, some roads and a deep sea port for them. As a private enterprise. Keep their sticky-fingered local despots well away from the money pot.
Whaaa?
Before, it was political science masquerading as “climate science”. Now it’s climate policy as a tool for economic policy, for wealth redistristribution policy. Pres. Vaclac Klaus’ terminology of “global ecological central planning” is 100 percent correct.
Suppose they threw a World Conference and only five people came?
That would mean either:
1) The big meteorite hit OR
2) It was a UN-sponsored climate circle-jerk with Mann, Hansen, Gore, Jones, and Pachauri in attendance.
Always nice to have a first hand confirmation from the other side.
Especially when the good news comes so short before the Cancun meeting.
I am sure they will now get al the back up they need to sign a Global Treaty.
Thoughts like “the enemy from within” comes to mind in a way nor Kafka or George Orwell could have imagined or is this the script of a bad Bond movie script?
My first thought is when we are going to sweep our Governments and Administrations clear of these radical elements before they manage to enforce their rule upon us and we wake up in the Dark Ages.
I’ve done a post today about how at least four people named to work on the IPCC’s AR5 report are employees of something called the United Nations University.
So one UN body – the IPCC – appoints employees of another UN entity, whose “research” is assisted by still other UN bodies. That research is then brazenly presented to the press under the guise of a Media Training Workshop sponsored by the UNFCCC – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Talk about inbreeding and nepotism.
Should UN Employees be IPCC Lead Authors?
From each according to his mental acuity, to each according to his procreative energy.
As Dr. Edwin X. Berry has said about environmental groups (and you can throw in the IPCC and socialist UN): “They are constructed like watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside.”
What else they are not telling us?
When I first read this, I thought it was satire. Please tell me that is right.
I don’t mind selling oil, gas and coal to Africa if it’s to help them industrialize.
As a result Cancun will be a bigger failure than Coenhagen. How many rich countries would agree to this? What if just China said no way?
Almost twenty years ago, Maurice “Mr Carbon” Strong spilled all the beans about the true agenda of the environmentalist movement to the also Canadian prize-winner journalist Elaine Dewar. It’s all in her book “Cloak of Green” (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1995), that is mandatory reading for the understanding of this stuff. Last January, Potsdam Institute’s Herr Hans Joachim Schellnhuber also admitted to Der Spiegel that he was – literally – the inventor of the 2 degree “magic limit” mentioned by his countryman Edenhofer. So, there’s nothing new in such “confessions,” they come out from the self-sufficiency and arrogance of those who regard themseleves as the self-appointed movers and shakers of the world.
Anyone still under the misconception that the U.N. is about world peace? It is well past time for the nations of the world to withdraw from such an enterprise. What is interesting, though, is that this economist is correct in many assertions he made.
That is so easy to say. But particularly the industrialized countries have a system that relies almost exclusively on fossil fuels. There is no historical precedent and no region in the world that has decoupled its economic growth from emissions. Thus, you cannot expect that India or China will regard CO2 emissions reduction as a great idea. And it gets worse: We are in the midst of a renaissance of coal, because oil and gas (sic) have become more expensive, but coal has not.
But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.
But the most important quote, Ottmar Edenhofer: So far economic growth has gone hand in hand with the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. One percent growth means one percent more emissions. The historic memory of mankind remembers: In order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas. This remains true today and will tomorrow.
Maybe this is why the Canadian Senate (under the guidance of Harper) voted the green bill down. Canada does not want to be pillaged by those Eco-facists with a social agenda.
And yet we have been called conspiracy nuts for claiming that this was their real agenda..
Shows who the real “nuts” are…