The Foreign Service Journal, February 2008

climate negotiations. It will also be critical to the Senate’s future ratification of any new climate protocol. We must be flexible enough to recognize and accept the value of diverse approaches to the climate challenge. In the interest of developing flexible new approaches for international cooperation on climate change, last year the U.N. Foundation and the Club of Madrid — a group of 66 democratic former heads of state and government — convened a distinguished task force known as Global Leadership for Climate Action. The objective of this diverse group (facilitated by the highly effective former CEO of the Global Environment Facility, Mohamed El- Ashry) was to develop and propose the outlines of a broadly acceptable global climate agreement. The task force’s September 2007 report, Framework for a Post-2012 Agreement on Climate Change , breaks the complex subject of climate change down into four “path- ways” to agreement: mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance. It recommends that parallel negotiations proceed along each pathway during the next two years in order to move toward a new agreement and make further progress in implementing the 1992 climate treaty. This general framework helped to organize U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon’s high-level session on climate last September and the Bali discussions. The climate agreement to be negotiated in 2008 and 2009 must be comprehensive. It should include all coun- tries, all sectors, all sources and all sinks. However, “com- prehensive” does not mean “one size fits all.” Rather, tar- geted agreements — for example, on industrial energy use, energy efficiency, renewable energy and technology cooperation — should be encouraged and incorporated within a new comprehensive framework. These pacts could encompass a much broader array of countries than those who immediately commit to an emissions cap. Sectoral agreements — also developed within the global U.N. framework — should also be encouraged: the auto industry, cement, steel and utilities should be on every- one’s early lists. China may not accept an immediate cap on its emis- sions, but should be encouraged and credited with the important actions it has already taken: setting a target of improving its energy efficiency by 4 percent per year, imposing fuel economy standards that are stricter than those of the U.S., and moving to double its renewable energy capacity (to 15 percent) by the year 2020. Those steps will significantly reduce Chinese emissions, while putting the PRC on a path toward a lower-carbon econo- my. Like the U.S., China is learning how to cope with the looming climate crisis; but unlike America, it has made a relatively small contribution to the level of carbon in the atmosphere. The PRC is also emerging as a global leader and, in dealing with the climate crisis, should become our part- ner, not our adversary. While Washington can and should lead in such fields as technology, economic transformation and sectoral modernization, Beijing can serve as a model and challenge, especially to other nations in the rapidly developing world. Together, we can demonstrate that the climate crisis is also an opportunity, so addressing it advances everyone’s self-interest. The Need and Opportunity for Investment The transition to a low-carbon energy path, which will utterly transform the world’s energy systems, will require the investment of trillions of dollars in energy-efficiency and clean-energy technologies. Understandably, prospec- tive investors first want certainty that this massive change will, in fact, occur. The irony is that, while climate change brings huge, unprecedented and urgent risk to the globe overall, its very scale provides the basis for greater cer- tainty for innovative technologies and investment oppor- tunities. The greater the climate risk, and the greater humanity’s understanding of that risk, the more important these technologies are, and the more attractive these investments become. The world is already poised to act, and more and more governments and individuals recog- nize the urgency of a response. The first and most important step to convey certainty and generate the necessary investments is to put a price on carbon. This was one of the key observations made by economist Nicholas Stern to the British government in his October 2006 report, The Economics of Climate Change. Another, even more significant, conclusion was this: “The costs of stabilizing the climate are significant but manage- able; delay would be dangerous and much more costly.” The debate prior to that intellectual breakthrough asked: How much is action on climate going to cost? The debate now centers on the cost of inaction, which grows sharply the longer we delay. The Stern paradigm reminds us of the mutually rein- forcing nature of economic and environmental progress. Ecological systems are the very foundation of modern society — in science, in agriculture and in social and eco- F O C U S 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8