Davos

English version

At the World Economic Forum in Davos the climate issue took off like the proverbial IPO. No one wanted to miss that train, or get passed by to opine on the question of the day. They had good reason: five days later the UN climate panel (IPCC) released its most authoritative report to date.

When power talks climate change and carbon dioxide emissions, they show up in clattering helicopters from Zurich’s airport, or in bulky black German limousines, or in American SUV’s. It’s no wonder that the head of Porsche, and now joined by Angela Merkel herself, stirred up a war of words over EU’s plans to lower emissions levels for automobiles. This would “favor small car manufacturers in Italy and France.” The question that the Davos forum actually formulated was this: can we depend on the free market’s own interests for solutions to the transition to a continuously sustainable symbiosis between human beings and ecology? I don’t think so.

According to the IPCC’s report, global warming of the planet is “unequivocal.” The prognoses center on the rise in density of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from 385 ppm today to 550 ppm within the foreseeable future. At 3°C, says Jim Hansen of the Goddard Institute, among others, we are talking about “another planet.”

The question is how the world’s nations will arrive at a binding agreement on shared responsibilities and emission quotas.

“Can the markets save the planet?” was the headline for one of the sessions. With its near evangelical atmosphere it almost felt as if the climate threat were a god sent opportunity for new growth and innovation. New technology must be a large part of the solution. But we know that new complex technologies, especially when they must be scaled up quickly, create new problems that were never part of the calculations. The energy system upon which we built today’s society has not proven itself to be sustainable. Of course new technology is needed, but also needed are changed values and behavior.

Fundamentally one must come to the insight that it is not nature itself that is the threat or the reason for the climate – water – air pollution problems, to desertification or deforestation. It is humankind. The soon nine billion of us are the threat.

We human beings can negotiate and solve problems among ourselves. But with all of the might we have built up to hold power over each other, we cannot force the glaciers of Greenland and Himalaya to stop melting or the Aral Sea to be once again an inland sea.

It’s plain narrow-minded to think that the climate problem can be solved isolated from other crises which our species and our societal models incur upon nature.

It’s naive to think that nations and voters, companies and consumers are ready to change from a growth agenda to a safety first principle. Governments and companies do not survive in today’s societal logic without growth, higher profits and more jobs. This was precisely the power coalition that convened in Davos.

What opportunities exist then for the nations of the world to reach agreement on the complex issues that impact all of us at the same time? Take, for example, the free trade negotiations, the so-called Doha Round which has gone on for five years with the goal to open EU and US markets to the developing world. While Africa has 12 percent of the population, the continent’s share of world trade has fall to just 2 percent.

EU’s trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, exclaimed that he “had never in my ministerial career dealt with a more complicated problem than the agricultural part of the Doha Round.”

If global trade issues are difficult, then climate and environmental issues are a negotiation nightmare. The current so-called Kyoto Protocol is about as powerful as Chamberlain’s deal with “Mr. Hitler:” “Peace in our time.” Kyoto was to have lowered carbon dioxide emissions by 5 percent below the 1990 level. Yet now the global level of emissions has already risen 25 percent over that level.

We can only imagine the difficulties of negotiation that will develop when quotas of emissions rights are to be set between the rich and developing nations. Don’t believe anything other than that China, India and Africa will demand greater concessions at the rich nations’ cost.

Global warming also brings along with it all the other conflicts concerning the exploitation of the eco-system – the capacity of which sets the limits for growth – and above all the water resources of Asia and Africa. Physicist and astronomer Martin Rees led a discussion in Davos on the origins of life. In his low-key manner he asserted that the long-term survival of life forms on this planet is now being decided during the 21st Century.

Do we have the optimal societal organizations and economic models in order to be able to solve those problems that we have created for ourselves? The task is not made easier by the fact that the authority of the sovereign nation-state is weakened not least by the virtual network society’s almost bacteriological expansion. Power and information spreads; decentralization and individuality gain the advantage. In of itself this is a positive development, but it makes all the more difficult for the necessary, globally collective decisions to be taken on such issues as trade conditions, climate change and terrorism.

In the foreseeable future nation-states must develop the necessary institutions for a globally functioning, lawful society. This must be built upon the entwined mutual needs brought about by globalization.

We need something akin to the WTO for global negotiations with the power and authority to impose sanctions on climate and energy security issues. It is a matter of the defense of common global security and everyone’s access to a system of justice. Not a particularly unwarranted requirement.

At the final session in Davos, the Republican presidential candidate John McCain said that we can never plan for “nature’s capriciousness.” In the end he invoked his god. This still remnant vision, held by many, of humanity as the crown of creation and “nature” as capricious, threatening, and therefore necessary to control and exploit one-sidedly is presumably one of the important roots to the evil we have put upon ourselves.

A new vision is needed of just what a long-standing sustainable society actually means. What does the formula look like that makes it possible for us in every situation and technological environment to merge the equation of social order/economic development/energy production with the ecological systems’ expanding or shrinking capacities and potentialities? Such a common vision/frame of reference should be formulated to serve as a platform to solve the great issues of our time.

This is first and foremost an existential/practical philosophical question, not a market issue. At the conclusion of the Tällberg Forum 2006, the former president of the Czech Republic Václav Havel said that humankind would not manage the task ahead if it is not able “to put an end to mankind’s arrogance towards nature.” To do this human beings must act collectively with at least “a moral minimum.”

In Davos the discussions did not reach so far as the moral questions.

Bo Ekman