Article originally published on euobserver.com
The world’s climate negotiators have been clocking up a few air miles this week as they travelled to Bangkok to prepare for December’s United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen.
While the developing world is reluctant to move forward without the developed world having taken the first step, new polling data from the US and Europe suggests that the public on both sides of the Atlantic want the negotiations to succeed and for a deal to replace the 12-year-old Kyoto Protocol.
However, differences within Europe may now be as great as across the Atlantic. While US trends show increasing awareness of the climate change problem, the picture in the EU is more complicated, with policy makers across Europe holding quite different opinions on how to tackle climate change. These differences may only grow once real costs are involved. It remains to be seen what this might mean for the future of public support for action on climate change.
In the recently published public opinion survey by the German Marshall Fund, Transatlantic Trends 2009, 84 percent of Europeans surveyed state that they are concerned with climate change, with 65 percent of Americans saying the same. This is 18 percent more than last year when 47 percent of Americans considered climate change a serious problem.
However, when asked if they would be willing to sacrifice economic growth to combat climate change, 69 percent of Europeans agree while only 43 percent of Americans are willing to make this sacrifice.
Even in eastern Europe, where the economic crisis has been most pronounced, a majority would sacrifice economic development. Substantial majorities in Europe believe climate change can only be addressed effectively at the international level (81 percent), while only a slim majority in the US (54 percent) thinks that it takes a global effort. But 70 percent of Americans think that the US should do everything it can to combat climate change, even if others do less.
These views are in tune with government policies in the respective regions. In the United States, regional initiatives such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the northeast show the US has found ways to combat climate change that do not involve other countries.
The Waxman-Markey bill, which was recently approved by the US House of Representatives, focuses on domestic measures to decrease US emissions rather than envisioning an international deal. This helps to show why Americans are ready to take action independent of others and helps to explain the lower numbers of Americans that support international action.
This does not mean that a global deal is not necessary, but rather that other approaches are being pursued in the US right now. It is the administration’s job to keep reminding the public that finding an international agreement in Copenhagen is crucial.
Meanwhile, what is happening in Europe? At first glance, all looks well. Politicians publicly support combating climate change and have started concrete action on the European level. Last year’s climate and energy package entails the now famous 20-20-20 goals, which aim to reduce emissions on 1990 levels by 20 percent, increase energy efficiency by 20 percent and draw 20 percent of our energy use from renewable sources by 2020.
However, there are potential caveats. One open question is whether European citizens will stay as supportive of action on climate change as they are currently if some of the costs will be passed on to them through increases in electricity prices.
Thus far, these costs haven’t been felt by the public. The prices for allowances in the current round of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) are rather low and less than what companies originally expected. Energy from renewable resources has been heavily subsidised by governments, with Germany and other countries creating incentives for renewable energy by guaranteeing above-market prices (via a feed-in tariff) without substantially passing costs on to consumers.
However, with the second round of the ETS in place and debates on subsidies on-going, energy producing companies will start passing on the costs to consumers. As a recent very heated debate in Germany about rising prices for electricity shows, this is a potentially touchy subject.
Furthermore, there is an intra-European disagreement among governments on what to do about climate change. Although majorities in eastern Europe state that they are willing to sacrifice economic growth, their governments are more reluctant.
With eastern European countries and especially Poland relying heavily on coal, they received special”transitional free allowances” under the climate and energy package. There was also pressure from western European countries such as Italy to give industries such as steel and chemical producers free allowances in order to avoid job losses.
And while the European Commission publicly announced at the beginning of September that it would offer around ‚¬15 billion to support developing countries in combating climate change (and thus trying to pave the way for an agreement in Copenhagen), there is no agreement in Europe as to who will shoulder these additional costs. Poland has made it clear that there needs to be an internal debate and asks for richer countries to chip in more.
So both sides of the Atlantic have some way to go until Copenhagen. While the Europeans in the aggregate seem ready to sign a global deal even if sacrifices need to be made, differences between eastern and western Europe remain.
These will potentially only get stronger once real costs become clear and loss of competitiveness seems possible. It is also questionable whether European publics will remain as supportive as they are now once they feel these costs. Americans, at the same time, have moved away from their previous reluctance to supporting certain measures to combat climate change.
Climate change negotiators will need to cobble together a deal publics and politicians alike across the Atlantic can support. But the numbers show that bridging differences inside Europe may be as challenging as getting over any transatlantic hurdles.
Getting a deal in Copenhagen is not just important because the climate is deteriorating more rapidly than thought; it may also be the last time public sentiments are sufficiently aligned.
No related posts.
