A little thing from Science

Science 12 February 2010: Vol. 327. no. 5967, p. 780 DOI: 10.1126/science.327.5967.780-a

Stop Listening to Scientists?

As a climate scientist and a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, my heart always warms when I hear policy-makers refer to doing what "the science dictates," as President Obama did in his remarks toward the end of the U.N. Climate Change Treaty negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark. However, after the first-hand experience of the rapid crash of the Copenhagen meeting, I have changed my thinking: World leaders, please stop listening to us! I don't say this because I have lost faith in the verity of scientific results or the projected warming and subsequent global damages. I say this because international policy-makers are adhering too rigidly and too literally to recommended concentration thresholds and emissions targets, and it is crippling the international policy process.

By demanding nothing less than rigid recipes, we have lost valuable momentum. To combat this trend, I offer the following recommendations.

Leave aside the near-obsessive need to benchmark everything against the 2°C target. Science has done a commendable job outlining the boundaries of the climate change problem, and those boundaries are well-considered, rigorous guideposts, but don't use science recommendations as a litmus test for policy success or failure.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Accept any binding commitment as long as it demonstrates effort beyond Kyoto or "business as usual" (whichever requires the greater effort). This can be tightened in the future—you can't amend something you don't have.

Lower the rhetoric. Climate politics has evolved to a point where if one side thinks the other side isn't listening, they shout louder and invoke phrases like "genocide" and "murder." Overblown rhetoric inevitably leads to the well-known "donor fatigue."

Other than commitments to slow deforestation and forest degradation, leave forestry complications out of a current agreement. It has generated confusion, raced ahead of science, opened mitigation loopholes, and consumed far too much negotiating oxygen.

To the developing world: Approach funding offers as a starting point to get a funding system flowing. You can't attract new revenue, or extend or add funds, to financing that doesn't exist.

Agree to even loose commitments on monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV), a key sticking point in the Copenhagen talks. Science can solve this problem, but can't get started without a clear signal and research commitment from all large emitting countries.

Prioritize country commitments to mobilize domestic and international energy research support. In addition to technology transfer opportunities, effort can be directed toward MRV.

In short, we need agreement, even an imperfect agreement, to show a consistent and committed forward momentum. What were general scientific guideposts have become ossified deal-breakers. Instead, we need a sufficient signal to unleash the private and public resources to begin decarbonization. With that, we will start walking in the direction of our goal but leave ourselves open to shortcuts we can't see at the outset.

Letter from: Kevin Robert Gurney