Her article was in response to the revelation that some scientists wanted to “scale back their research” to reduce carbon emissions. To justify energy consumption for research, Prof Palmroth offers examples of persons trained as engineers specialising in renewable energy (RE) technologies who went on to improve the efficiency of RE technologies. If her argument is accepted and research activities are given priority in the carbon emission hierarchy, some inconvenient issues may arise.
To justify energy consumption for research, Prof Palmroth offers examples of persons trained as engineers specialising in renewable energy (RE) technologies who went on to improve the efficiency of RE technologies.
Status
At the third Conference of Parties (COP3) in 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, historic responsibility for carbon emissions and the obligation to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were assigned to the Global North, labelled annex I countries (primarily North America and Western Europe) that benefitted from early use of fossil fuels. The rest of the world was labelled annex II countries with no historic responsibility for causing climate change and limited obligation to reduce GHG and other emissions. This was in line with the ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ (CBDR-RC) principle enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to incorporate equity and fairness in distributing responsibility for reducing GHG emissions. The Global North systematically diluted the CBDR-RC principle in the subsequent COP events to eliminate the division of labour between countries that were responsible for climate change and countries that were not. To lend credibility to their position, the Global North used the argument that the Global South (primarily China and India) was responsible for current and future GHG emissions even if they did not carry historic responsibility. In response, India, along with other countries in the global south, requested the inclusion of three agenda items, which included ‘equitable access to sustainable development’ (the other two related to access to technologies and trade issues) before the COP17 meeting at Durban in 2011. This brought equity and fair distribution of responsibility back to the negotiation table. However, the ad-hoc working group in the Durban platform for enhanced action, which had the mandate of developing a new global compact that would come into force by 2015 to replace the Kyoto Protocol, included the legally ambiguous phrase ‘agreed outcome with legal force’ in its final declaration. This effectively compromised the red line of equity that the Global South could not cross and the red line of the EU which required a ‘legally enforceable mandate applicable to all.’ The Paris Agreement effectively nullified the CBDR-RC principle by introducing the supposedly “bottom-up” concept of nationally determined commitments (NDC) to address climate change. The bottom-up nature of the NDC is consistently diluted by the global north with calls for top-ups of greater ambition to the NDC. Several climate activist organisations based in the Global North routinely publish name-and-shame reports to force the Global South to contribute more towards addressing climate change. All this together effectively imposes a mandate of climate action on the Global South by stealth destroying the bottom-up nationally determined character of climate action.
The Paris Agreement effectively nullified the CBDR-RC principle by introducing the supposedly “bottom-up” concept of nationally determined commitments (NDC) to address climate change.
With the elimination of developmental differences between countries, individuals are characterised as the generalised homogeneous units of consumption. This facilitates the assignment of responsibility for carbon emissions, not so much on those who produced and continue to produce most of the emissions, but on those producing the differential transforming it into a critical mass and therefore concealing the fact that the Global North is the world’s most ‘over-populated’ region. The equalisation of populations ‘democratises’ guilt as everyone now feels equally guilty for causing ‘climate change’. The democratisation of guilt makes it possible to criminalise populations in the global south who use extremely small quantities of energy merely to cook a meal or keep warm just to stay alive.
