Edited by Anthony Giddens, Simon Latham and Roger Liddle Ian Bailey Terry Barker Neil Carter Hugh Compston Samuel Fankhauser Stephen Hockman David Kennedy Peter Mandelson Felix Christian Matthes Mutsuyoshi Nishimura Jim Skea Jim Watson Edited by Anthony Giddens, Simon Latham and Roger Liddle Published in 2009 by Policy Network Copyright © 2009 Policy Network Policy Network 11 Tufton Street, London, SW1P 3QB Tel: +44 20 7 340 2200 Email: [email protected] All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Production editor: Michael McTernan Design and layout by Alan Hunt, [email protected] Printed by Kingsdown www.policy-network.net 2 Building a low-carbon future The politics of climate change Contents About the contributors 5-6 About Policy Network 7-8 Acknowledgements 9 1. The politics of climate change: our role in the debate Policy Network 11 Section I The dilemmas of domestic policy in advanced economies 19 2. Will the reconstruction of the global economy be positive for mitigating climate change? Terry Barker 21 3. Is the move toward energy security at odds with a low-carbon society? Jim Watson 33 4. Do we need the return of state planning to overcome the climate change challenge? Felix Christian Matthes 43 5. How can we build political support for action on climate change in western democracies? Hugh Compston and Ian Bailey 53 6. How can the response to climate change be socially just? Roger Liddle and Simon Latham 63 Contents 3 Section II Building an international framework for action 71 7. How can commitments on greenhouse gas emission reductions be entrenched in the international legal system? Stephen Hockman QC 73 8. What should an international agreement on climate change at Copenhagen look like? Mutsuyoshi Nishimura 81 Section III The United Kingdom: the politics of low-carbon transition 87 9. Climate change: the political and business challenge Peter Mandelson 89 10. The UK’s carbon targets for 2020 and the role of the Committee on Climate Change Sam Fankhauser, David Kennedy and Jim Skea 99 11. Can the UK reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050? Neil Carter 111 Abbreviations 121 References 122-126 4 Building a low-carbon future The politics of climate change About the contributors Ian Bailey is senior lecturer in human geography at the University of Plymouth. He is the author of Turning Down the Heat: The Politics of Climate Policy in Affluent Democracies (2008, edited with Hugh Compston). Terry Barker is director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, University of Cambridge. He is also the leader of the research programme “Integrated Modelling” at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and chairman of Cambridge Econometrics. Neil Carter is professor of politics and a founding member of the Centre for Ecology, Law and Policy at the University of York. He is the author of The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy (2007). Hugh Compston is a reader in politics at the University of Cardiff. His publications include Policy Networks and Policy Change (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2009) and Turning Down the Heat: The Politics of Climate Policy in Affluent Democracies (2008, edited with Ian Bailey). Samuel Fankhauser is a principal research fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. He is also a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change. Anthony Giddens is a former director of the London School of Economics and Political Science and a member of the House of Lords. His most recent publication is The Politics of Climate Change (2009). Stephen Hockman QC is a trustee of ClientEarth and an environmental law specialist. He is a former chairman of the Bar Council. David Kennedy is the chief executive of the UK Committee on Climate Change. Previously he worked on energy strategy at the World Bank and the design of infrastructure investment projects at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. About the contributors 5 Simon Latham is a policy researcher at Policy Network, where he is coordinating research programmes on “The politics of climate change” and “An EU “fit for purpose in the global age”. Roger Liddle is vice-chair of Policy Network and a visiting fellow at the LSE’s European Institute. He is former economic adviser to the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and former European adviser to Tony Blair. His most recent publication is Beyond New Labour (2009, with Patrick Diamond). Peter Mandelson is the UK Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Felix Christian Matthes is research coordinator of Energy and Climate policy at the Öko-Institut/Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin. Mutsuyoshi Nishimura is special adviser on climate change to the prime minister and cabinet of Japan, and a former Japanese ambassador for the Kyoto Protocol. Jim Skea is research director at UK Energy Research Centre and a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change. Previously, he has been the director of the Policy Studies Institute and a director of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Global Environmental Change Programme. Jim Watson is director of the Sussex Energy Group and deputy leader of the Tyndall Centre Climate and Energy Programme at the University of Sussex. 6 Building a low-carbon future The politics of climate change About Policy Network Policy Network is an international thinktank dedicated to promoting progressive policies and the renewal of social democracy. Launched in 2000 with the support of the then heads of government, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, Guilano Amato and Göran Persson, it facilitates the sharing of ideas and experiences among politicians, policymakers and experts on the centre-left. Policy Network’s president is Peter Mandelson, UK secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform. Chair and vice chair are Giles Radice and Roger Liddle, respectively. The director is Olaf Cramme. Through its international programme of research, publications and events, Policy Network seeks to promote international best practice and provide innovative answers to shared problems, equipping social democrat modernisers with the intellectual tools necessary to meet the policy and political challenges of the 21st century. Currently our research programme and core activities encompass the following themes: Progressive Governance Since its launch in 1999, the Progressive Governance Network of international policymakers and academics has been at the heart of Policy Network’s activity, with major conferences and summits held in Washington, Berlin, Stockholm, London, Budapest and Johannesburg over the past decade. This year’s event, dedicated to the theme of “responses to the global crisis: charting a progressive path” took place in Chile in March 2009 and brought together over 200 senior policy-makers, including Gordon Brown, Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, Joseph Biden, Michelle Bachelet, and José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Foresight: forging common futures in a multi-polar world Foresight is an international programme of investigation and debate structured around the challenge of forging common futures in a multi-polar world, organised by the Alfred Herrhausen Society, the international forum of Deutsche Bank, in partnership with Policy Network. The initiative aims to foster better multilateral understanding of the key challenges facing today’s major players in order to promote a fairer and more functional international order. It was launched in June 2008 with a major symposium in Russia. The About Policy Network 7 next international symposium of the project, Foresight USA, will take place in June 2009 and is being held in Washington in partnership with the Brookings Institution. Further events are planned in Europe, Brazil, India and China. An EU “fit for purpose” in the global age This is an interdisciplinary, cross-party investigation of policy options for the EU post-2009 that aims to establish what kind of Europe is fit for purpose in the global age. It involves analysis and discussion of how the EU can reform itself both internally and externally to respond to the challenges of globalisation. A forthcoming publication, which builds on the project’s substantial synthesis report “Options for the EU post-2009”, will include three volumes of work: EU solidarity, legitimacy and governance; A new socio-economic settlement after the financial crisis; Leadership and security in the global age. Globalisation and social justice This research programme looks at the changing facets of progressive policy with reference to the pursuit and enhancement of social justice in light of rapid global change. The recent publication of the book Social Justice in the Global Age (Olaf Cramme & Patrick Diamond, Polity Press, 2009), builds on the programmes findings to date, developing a robust theoretical and public policy framework which can help sustain new forms of equity and solidarity. Managing migration in times of economic crisis This new research programme examines the interaction between the politics and economics of migration, recession and recovery in Europe. It explores changes in the rates of inward and outward migration during an economic downturn to develop insights into the impact of migration on labour markets and public spending at different stages of the economic cycle. A key question explored in this programme is the role that migration plays in voter behaviour during a recession, and what implications this has for centre-left parties in different European countries. 8 Building a low-carbon future The politics of climate change Acknowledgements The idea for this pamphlet was conceived over the course of a series of seminars organised by Policy Network, in association with the LSE’s Centre for the Study of Global Governance, in the latter half of 2008 for our “Politics of Climate Change“ project. Our first debt of gratitude, therefore, is to the participants of those seminars, in which we discussed the political challenges of climate change from a comparative perspective, for the intellectual stimulation they provided as we sought to sculpt the foundations of this initiative. In particular, we would like to thank Hugh Compston, Michael Jacobs, Andrzej Kassenberg, Måns Lönnroth, Felix Christian Matthes, Cristina Narbona, Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, Peter Riddell, Miranda Schreurs, Lena Sommestad and Peter Zapfel for the excellent presentations they made to these seminars. Our next debt is to the authors who have contributed to this pamphlet for engaging so positively with this initiative, which we hope will prove to be a suitably worthy and thought-provoking intervention in the climate change debate to match the high quality of the pieces they submitted. Our third debt is to the other members of the team at Policy Network. In particular, we would like to thank Annie Bruzzone, Alfredo Cabral, Isra Jawad, Elena Jurado, Priya Shankar, Elvira Thissen and Suzanne Verberne-Brennan for the support they gave us in recent weeks. Extra special thanks go to Jade Groves for her excellent work over the course of the project and to Michael McTernan and Kathryn Skidmore for their diligent and thoughtful approach to the design and editing of the pamphlet. Olaf Cramme, our director, has been an incomparable source of intellectual guidance and practical advice. Our final and most important debt of gratitude is to Victor Phillip Dahdaleh, without whose generosity and clarity of thought this project and pamphlet would simply not have been possible. Anthony Giddens, Simon Latham and Roger Liddle London, May 2009 Acknowledgements 9