Gerold Firl: International Relations in the Era of Global Warming

The recently concluded Durban Climate Change Conference hasn’t gotten much press in the U.S. If you heard anything at all, it was probably that it achieved a whole lot of not much. But regardless of what you heard, the results are important, both for climate change and what it reveals about future geopolitical alignments in the age of global warming.

Ever since the Kyoto Accords, negotiations for international agreements addressing climate change have fractured into two opposing camps. On the one side are India, China, Canada and the U.S., who want to kick the can down the road and keep polluting as long as possible. On the other, the European Union and many smaller countries, especially tropical and island nations, who take the position that we need to make some sacrifices today to avert much bigger problems in the future.   

The same alignment was seen in Durban, but as the conference drew to a close, some interesting shifts took place. The Durban Platform is an agreement to reach legally binding limits on carbon emissions by 2015; an agreement to keep talking. Not much all right.

There’s certainly plenty of cause for pessimism. The fossil fuel lobby has tremendous influence in D.C. – often amounting to veto power over both energy and foreign policy – and both of the emerging Asian superpowers are heavily committed to cheap and dirty coal.

But there is also cause for optimism. Consider the emergence of SustainUS and the China-US Youth Coalition for Sustainable Development. Even as the senior representatives for China and the U.S. were working to protect oil and coal interests, young people from both countries put together intelligent proposals for a sustainable future. People in their 20s find it much more difficult than the elderly to pretend that global warming is a hoax. Youngsters are going to have to live with the consequences of their elders’ greed and ignorance.

Up until now, the U.S. has been able to hide behind China and India to rationalize our enslavement to the pollution lobby. India and China claim they shouldn’t have to control their pollution levels, because they’re still trying to catch up with the West. The U.S. says there’s no point having the rest of the world agree to greenhouse gas limits if India and China are exempted. But here in 2011, that little charade has run out of steam. For the first time, China has signaled a willingness to play a constructive role in the climate change battle.

2012 will be a pivotal year, and not just for climate. The fracture in the “stonewall coalition” presages a potentially momentous realignment of the geopolitical constellation. In Durban, future directions for Chinese political evolution were revealed in some surprising ways.

Within five to 10 years, China is expected to be the world’s largest economy, and also the world’s largest polluter. China runs a large trade surplus with the U.S., and many of those excess dollars are re-invested into U.S. government securities. That has created a strange and uneasy mutual dependence between the two nations. Their economies are both hitched to the same grossly polluting wagon, burning mountains of coal, oceans of oil and belching huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. But at Durban, China has given indications they may opt for a different path.

The EU has always been the strongest advocate for action on climate change. The fossil-fuel lobby doesn’t have nearly the same control over the governments of Europe as they have here in the U.S. But China has never cared about pollution – until now. When the Chinese finally agreed to legally binding pollution controls, India and the U.S. couldn’t hide behind them anymore, and now the entire world is apparently on-board – even if some of us had to be dragged kicking and screaming.

Progressive elements of the Chinese leadership have recognized the necessity of transitioning from dirty energy and moving to renewables. In Durban, China and the EU found themselves on the same side, with the U.S. still playing the reactionary holdout. This opens the question of whether Chinese strategic interests in the coming decades will be more closely aligned with Europe or the U.S. Two vitally important issues will be answered in 2012, which will have a major bearing on this question: the European debt crisis, and American elections.

If the EU is unable to solve their debt crisis, the consequences will be devastating for the world economy, and the influence of the EU will be greatly diminished. That would make the Chinese economy more dependent on the U.S. However, if the Merkel-Sarkozy plan to reform the European budget process enables the EU to emerge with a healthier economy and a more coherent foreign policy, then China may opt to align with Europe instead. China is nervous about her dependence upon American bonds and also about American saber rattling. The EU is viewed as a potential counterweight to the U.S.

A Republican victory in the 2012 election would signal an abdication of American global leadership and a retreat into fearful isolation. American influence would be defined purely in military terms, and our new isolationism would be more isolating than ever. But if the American electorate has both the vision and the courage to vote for the future, then there is a real chance that the U.S., EU and China will be able to move constructively to solve the daunting challenges of the coming decades.

The world needs a United States with a bold vision for the future. The issues of the coming decade will be difficult, but if we can’t unseat the corrupt and heedless grip of the American right wing, they will be impossible. Get smart — the Age of the Dinosaurs is over.

Go to sustainus.org and youthclimate.org to see the future of international cooperation and sustainable development. It’s a little surreal to contrast the wisdom of these youngsters with the stupidity and cupidity of senior “leaders." The kids are all-right.