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
Now we know for sure:
It´s politics and money that counts.
Science is not essential to reach the goal.
Edenhofer is a university professor of “Economics for Climate Change” at the Technical University Berlin, Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC – deputy director and chief economist of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (by the way he is no scientist in climate research or physics, may be he is not a scientist at all).
The more it is astonishing that he mixes reserves and resources of coal.
The resources of coal in total are 722 Gigatons carbon (not 11,000 Gtons). The reserves are what we might realize with today prices and technology. May be he means Ressources, but these are 14,856 Gtons).
All reserves of fossile fuels are around 1200 Gtons carbon equivalent.
If all reserves would be burnt this century, and most probably will, we end up with doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The temperature increase will significantly remain under 2°C.
According to an articel in “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” in Nov 2009, he was an admirer of the books and ideas of Karl Marx. He is a member of the Jesuit Order.
Well I for one think it is rather more complicated that this. There have been many attempts to re-distribute wealth from rich to poorer countries and all of them have either met with considerable resistance from the wealthier nations or failed in their attempts to improve the lives of the poorer due to corruption or fecundity in those poorer nations. I don’t see this new strategy fooling anyone, so we can safely assume that the reds coming out from under the beds and exposing their intentions will only make it easier for us to dismiss their child-like nonsense.
However, this still leaves me with a puzzle. Why does Germany insist on building so many windmills but at the same time happily produce so many cars with huge engines? The simple answer to the latter part of that question is money – big German cars make money. So if the German government is motivated more by money than environmental concerns, why the windmills? The answer must surely be money again. Then it clicked with me that the rise of the Euro-windmill has corresponded with the rise of globalisation. It is now clear to me that windmill building by Germany and other European countries is not about the environment – it is protectionism in the face of globalisation. The whole point is to reduce or prevent an open market in energy source trading that would surely mean greater imports of energy from developing countries. The environmental angle is just an excuse to prevent the UN crying “foul”. Germany is trying to protect its balance of trade and reduce the possibility of wealth re-distribution from Germany to developing countries like Russia. Look at the map – there has already been significant wealth re-distribution from the developed world to dubious under-developed countries like Saudia Arabia thanks to the West’s energy demand and this is something Europe is keen to stop. That is not something they would like to see spelt out in print anywhere, however.
The West is rich because it consumes 6 horsepower for every family for every minute of the day, and with that kind of power output you can do a lot of great stuff that one man cannot do by himself. Any country wishing to achieve the same level of wealth will be forced to consume the same amount of energy (but not necessarily by consumption of coal).
I cannot sufficiently express in words my utter hatred and contempt for these swine. Well actually I can, but it would likely result in a visit from Men In Black at my doorstep, which would be a very ugly scene.
So instead I wholeheartedly second the motion for asteroid strike, earthquake, flood, pestilence or drug running mayhem in Cancun. There isn’t law against praying for divine intervention, yet.
Frankly…I’m relieved. These elitists from George (Shwartz, is his REAL last name) Soros ~ to the weirdo Greenies walkin’ hand n’ hand with Gilliard’s government and wanting to destroy the Murray Basin by taking the water from farmers ~ to ~ GET THIS ~ The Communist Party of North America putting out their book this week on the supposed NEW CONSTITUTION of the U.S.A. (which they call North America right now.)
This is it. These Egos are coming out from under their rocks, guys. We’ve had so many weird things going on, like our TSA Agents feeling up American passengers and their children while they will only check around the berka of Muslim females… It’s
becoming more and more criminally insane….
I suggest that we break out the pop corn (and of course, I’D invite you to light up a smoke with a good stiff drink) as SOME of us watch what will be happening in Cancun ~ ’cause I HIGHLY suggest that others of us ~ watch THE OTHER HAND while Cancun is in process… History has often been about only two things:
1. EGO
2. Slight of hand trickery ~ ie: signing the FED into existence in the middle of the night with only 3-4 politicians present…
Whatever happens ~ we have a front seat for viewing the most interesting HISTORY this globe has EVER SEEN.
I’d also suggest viewing Glenn Beck’s show from two days ago with that Rabbi ~
the one who told us about the Tower of Babel and Nimrod ~ It was amazing. Essentially these Elitists equate all of us as ‘bricks’ rather than God-Made Stones ~ which are unique. I’m gonna go research Tower of Power and see what that Rabbi
was talking about….
This stuff repeats itself ~ but, not on this ‘grand scale’ considering Clinton’s ‘Global Village’ scenario ~ I’d say all our VILLAGE IDIOTS are coming out for us to view???
And, lastly ~ a quick question!!!
How can………(this IS simply ridiculous!)GEORGE (SHWARTZ) SOROS BE A TRUE ATHEIST WHEN HE HIMSELF BELIEVES HE’S ‘GOD’????????????????????????
Does thinking like that come from a REALLY poor self image???
They’re all megalomaniac kooks, my friends. Let’s just keep calm and see this unfold a bit ~ and do what we are able to help others while we’re at it.
Cynthia Lauren Thorpe
The point for the beurocrats is surely to justify their high salaries and ensure they are buried in a much larger cash flow, along with the power of being able to select who to distribute the vast amounts of money to. As long as nobody is in a position to question them, and they presumably do not want to question their own belief that they are doing something.
By setting themselves fuzzy goals they can never be held to account, and have no intention of checking whether what they did achieved anything useful. That will always be the problem of unbridled morality.
I did a search for the word “theft” on this thread and didn’t find it, so I shall add it.
“Redistributing The World’s Wealth” is simply equivalent to global theft.
Period.
And people that attempt to make global theft a policy of whatever government or organization they belong to are criminals of the highest magnitude. (There is nothing worse than a thief.)
Hah, a Jesuit Marxist! Yeah, I know. Let it be said, so shall it be done. Slap another water buffalo dung patty up against the wall, brother.
================
To Dave Wendt:
OOPS! You are right! I made mistakes in EVERY comment that I posted yesterday. I meant that Hong Kong and Singapore never followed the “advice” from Mainstream academia.
But Milton Friedman is a shallow economist. With “tight money” (ridiculously high short term interest rates) his theories created a DEEP recession in the first part of the Reagan years, and the pro growth effect of the Reagans tax cuts were not seen for a while because of Friedman’s bad theories. His theories have a childish side because he confounds increase in consumer price index with loss of value of currency and in such a way his theories are continuously bringing us”tight money”. I think “tight money” in the 2nd part of the 1990s brought us the housing bubble (of course mainstream academia says the exact opposite)
It is crystal clear that “tight money” triggered the 1929 Recession that horrifiying taxes and regulations transformed into the Great Depression, you can read Robert Mundell on that matter http://www.robertmundell.net/NobelLecture/nobel3.asp . But Hayek, another libertarian (I am libertarian too), said the exact opposite and such colossal errors by libertarians allowed the fascist / socialist utter nonsense theories of John Maynard Keynes to become mainstream
It is Robert Mundell that was behind the Reagan tax cuts that actually ended stagflation and Mundell too was behind the Kennedy tax cuts that stopped the multiple recessions that happened before Kennedy. Friedman actually never understood well how money works, that is why his theories are always bringing “tight money” (helping keynesianism in such way). The man that actually transformed economics is Robert Mundell, who in 1961 wrote a famous pro tax cuts paper wildly diverging with mainstream academia “advice” and Kennedy was smart enough to follow Mundell. It is Mundell and other supply siders that actually eliminated stagflation under Reagan, not Friedman as some allege.
But Mundell is a modest man that travels often to Brazil, China, Russia to stop the nonsense that is so abundant in modern economic theories. Friedman was a very hungry for media coverage person.
Your video suggests that Reagan brought the fall of communism. That is nonsense. It is Gorbachov and his people that brough the fall of communism, if Stalin was alive today we would still have communism, as there still is communism in Cuba.
Correction: IMHO “tight money” TRIGGERED the housing bubble in the second part of the 1990s. But democrats made it much worse with the Community Reinvesment Act that forced banks to make loans to people that were not qualified for them; moreover, by making the government -through Fannie and Freddie- bear the risk of billions in mortgages, they encouraged billions in careless lending to people that were not qualified for those loans.
As for how foreign aid HARMS countries, just search [William Easterly Foreign Aid] on the net. Horrifying high taxes and regulations in Africa and Latin America are enough to explain a big chunk of the poverty (an inequality) found in those regions, but according to Easterly foreign aid has an important role in explainning Africa’s problems.
The ‘progressive’ mentality of the people running the IPCC is outstandingly exemplified in this little snippet:
“developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community.:
Rrrrright!
Expropriating the atmosphere … that isn’t even economics, that is pure communist twaddle.
I wonder if he’ll now also blame China and India for, ahem, ‘expropriating’ the atmosphere of their neighbouring countries?
It is so satisfying to read/hear the CAGW proponents dropping their oh-so-scientific masks.
Cynthia Lauren Thorpe,
You might find the Soros article here interesting: click
[It’s in the “Friday morning links.”]
Soros is moving to China, where he’ll be safe to do his meddling.
OT…Lord Stern the so called climate change ‘economist’ is warning the US in todays UK Times that the US will have a real problem within 10 years because the other countries will refuse to buy US goods because they will have the unfair advantage of being produced without paying for the carbon ‘pollution’..as an indicator of his thinking he says the Chinese are much more serious about dealing with climate change because of all their ‘cities on the coast’!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“The next Climate Summit is an Economy Summit …”
This at least explains the otherwise senseless term “Climate Disruption”.
So those successful climate guys are going to rule the world economy now.
From who exactly came the mandate for it?
RockyRoad,
You are exactly right. Too many crooked people are coveting the property of others – and by ‘others’ I mean mainly the citizens of the U.S.A., who have honestly worked and saved, only to see their savings handed over to the totally corrupt UN.
The kleptocrat in the article has simply admitted what everyone here knows. This article should be linked far and wide. “Carbon” is just the latest code word for theft. The connection can be seen every time “carbon” is used in the context of AGW. And the primary instigator of international kleptocracy is the unelected UN/IPCC, which is still pushing its debunked CAGW fantasy, despite zero evidence supporting it.
More than $80 billion US taxpayer dollars have already been wasted in the search for real world evidence of AGW. They have found none. Still, the incessant demand to transfer the honest earnings of Americans into the pockets of international thieves based on the “carbon” scare continues unabated.
The UN adamantly refuses all requests for an outside audit. Their accounting is completely fabricated, and amounts to false advertising. As the Oil For Food scam showed, the great majority of funds sent to the UN ends up in the pockets of their pals.
Little of the $trillions that have gone through the UN has done any good for ordinary folks. Where are the UN-built bridges, airports, dams, roads and factories? There are none. The money has been stolen, using excuses like “Millennium Development Goals”, which develop nothing but the bank accounts of UN functionaries.
Making the UN a central issue in the 2012 election would raise the ire of hardworking Americans, when the spotlight is put on how much of their money is being taken – and where it ends up. Cancun, Copenhagen and Bali are just a few of thousands of examples of self-serving scoundrels living high on the hog at the expense of taxpayers. If it were put to a vote, the UN would likely be cut off. We can send our tax money directly to people in need if we wish, without having the UN thieves pocketing most of it. What do we need them for?
That those of us who live with 60 days of -40 Celsius winter are going to do without energy so some mythical tipping point can be reached 20 years later is absolute madness. Neither Canada nor Russia will EVER accept such as it also would equate to political suicide. Its the very reason the Liberals in Canada went down in flames. Global greenie goodness and wealth redistribution will never be a working sales pitch in any FREE country. Case closed.
“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.”
Gee, what an ignorant statement. But he knows that. Political ground gained by blaming oil,….etc. The truthful version should be: Obviously, the poor and middle class of the entire earth will not be enthusiastic about this.”</
SouthAmericanGirls ,
Surely it is cheap money that leads to bubbles occuring. That they are then triggered by ‘tight money’ ignores the fact that money was previously too cheap for too long.
Time to buy more rope.
Apparently this fellow missed the election results in Australia, Canada, USA, Britain, and Germany.
The most dangerous emissions are coming from the warmists, in the form of destructive policy recommendations.
During the last very nasty little war in what my generation always referred to as ‘the Balkans’, a much younger friend volunteered to drive heavy goods vehicles in convoys carrying much-needed food and medical supplies to war-riven communities there; he returned with absolute contempt for the UN staffers, who, he felt, were growing fat on the misery of others and who frequently hindered the efforts of various national peace-keeping forces to do good works. The UN may have had honest motives and good intentions once upon a time, but any of those qualities attributed to today’s UN seems like a fairy story from long ago and far away..
Mike Haseler says:
November 19, 2010 at 12:15 am
“so it would seem economic growth is impossible without energy growth and as thing like solar panels are unenerconomic (On average they use more energy in manufacture than they give out in their lifetime), such things will never grow the economy!”
Solar panels produce a net energy gain after about 10,000 hours of peak production. In Germany, we have about 780 hours of peak production per year; so it would take 13 years to pay back the energy. In sunnier climates, this would happen 2 to 4 times faster depending on your sun hours. Energy needed to create the electronics not included; energy expended for maintenance and replacement parts (electronics, not solar panels – the panels are pretty durable) not included.
So, a complete installation might well consume more energy for its creation than it produces in 20 years. It depends on many factors – personally, i see no reason to deploy this technology now; it’s still too little gain.
“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.”
I was so stunned to learn that there was no economic growth or rich people before the widespread use of mineral hydrocarbons that I was unable to keep reading.
Mr Vince Causey:
I am not denying that LOOSE money may trigger bubbles, but I am making a correction and I am stating that TIGHT money seems to trigger bubbles because I still want to see a bubble that was triggered by LOW interest rates.
Where was the cheap money before the 1929 Dow Jones bubble if there was very tight money for several years, since after 1925 big industrial countries were entering the gold standard greatly increasing the value of gold and bringing “tight” money?
Which bubble was triggered by LOW interest rates? I Just want to see examples. Why Latin America never had zillions bubbles when it had all those ridiculous loose money policies and crazy inflations?
The Standard & Poors 500 bubble started EXACTLY when they started “tightenning” in 1995, see any LOG chart and you will see it.
House prices started to increase around 1997, just see a LOG chart, already TIGHT money was there.
Hayek OBLITERATED libertarianism with his nonsense theories, because he was unable to understand the causes of the Great Depression and that made fascist Keynes theories become mainstream. It is crystal clear that there was “tight” money at least since 1925. I posted Robert Mundell Nobel Prize Lecture explaining that.
Cheers
Nevertheless, the environment is suffering from climate change – especially in the global south.
When you begin with false assumptions it is impossible to find the truth. Of course, there is also the fact that these people are not interested in the truth.