The Foreign Service Journal, February 2009

based on certain food crops have ag- gravated the price pressure on food and caused other undesirable shifts in cropland use. But rejecting this approach would be a mistake, for cellulose-based biofuels could add substantially to a diversified energy mix, with manageable implications for the environment and alternative land use. Aggravating the impediments to bringing on more exotic forms of energy in a timely way is the fact that government-funded research, development and demonstration programs to promote lower-carbon energy sources have been in free fall internationally since 1983. Then, such programs accounted for 11 percent of total government spending on research, development and demonstration. Now, the figure is just 3 percent — and overall govern- ment spending on RD&D has collapsed. Leapfrogging Technologies in the Developing World Some of the technology eggs in our basket will never hatch without greater government support. And tech- nology transfer is at the core of motivating developing countries to make a greater formal commitment to ad- dressing the climate change challenge. As things stand, developing countries know that they have not created today’s problem of CO 2 accumulations. Two of the largest emerging economies, India and China, have together contributed less than 10 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions since 1900. So they have no intention of taking on responsibility for cleaning up that mess. On the other hand, both governments are acutely aware that they will be losers in any climate change sce- nario, from desertification, disease migration, agricultural stress and accelerated urbanization. As these countries become more affluent and electrify, transportation and power-generation solutions become more important. In the first instance, every decision India and China make on a new power-generation unit has ramifications that will last 60 to 70 years. And because most of the time the decision will be to build a new, coal-fired power plant, our first priority has to be promoting their choice of ad- vanced coal-combustion technol- ogy. This final point is all the more important when one realizes that, according to the IEA’s 2008 World Energy Outlook reference scenario, the world outside the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development will account for 87 percent of incre- mental energy demand between now and 2030. In that same timeframe, two-thirds of the $26 trillion investment in the world’s supply of energy and power re- quired to meet that demand must be spent in non- OECD countries — where 97 percent of incremental CO 2 emissions originate. (China, India and the Middle East alone account for 75 percent of that total.) The story these numbers tell is that the entire world needs to be engaged in meeting the twin challenges of energy security and sustainability. Accordingly, the global community already expects a great deal of help from the Obama administration and is waiting to see whether the industrialized world is prepared to lead by setting the ex- ample. The December 2009 meeting in Copenhagen of the Climate Change Conference represents an important op- portunity to chart a course forward in this regard. The re- cently concluded Poznan negotiations reaffirmed the strong commitments of participating governments to ne- gotiate a follow-on mechanism to the Kyoto Protocol that terminates in 2012. While the newly elected Obama team was represented in Poznan, we will not know until after Jan. 20 how the new administration will translate campaign rhetoric into reality. With $147.27/barrel oil still a recent nightmare, and the existence of a real threat that it might return sooner rather than later, now is the time for the Obama ad- ministration to strike while the iron is hot. The world is waiting for American leadership on climate change. The convergence of the need for economic stimulus with the need for aggressive funding for lower-carbon energy and energy infrastructure renewal provides a unique window of opportunity for the new administra- tion. Lower oil prices will soon cool the iron and close that window. 20 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 9 F O C U S Beijing and New Delhi are acutely aware that they will be losers in any climate change scenario, from desertification, disease migration, agricultural stress and accelerated urbanization.