On the Road to Munich

English version

Last December in Bali, after a breakneck pace of scientific and economic reports, the world met and decided that we need a global mega-deal on climate to be concluded late 2009 in Copenhagen. What can we expect?

This new Kyoto Protocol, set to go into force in 2012, is meant to be the blueprint for the survival of the planet as we know it. Kyoto I has not been a resounding success. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase.

The Copenhagen climate negotiations pit the maintenance of power, short term economic growth, jobs and welfare against the acute need to muster global solidarity to tackle our jointly spun muddle of environmental problems never seen in human history.

The perfect agreement must be negotiated in Copenhagen. Followed by the perfect implementation. This will not happen. Instead, the picture that emerges from environmental ministers, scientists, negotiators, business leaders and journalists is anything but encouraging:
The time to Copenhagen is entirely too short.

The negotiations are driven by diplomats and bureaucrats who have worked together on this for a decade. “We politicians have a tough time piercing this club.” Politicians come and go, the deal-making complex remains.

The climate talks are like the WTO’s endless rounds of dense, complicated negotiations, almost impervious.

The results are so technically complicated that both compliance and precise implementation become all the more difficult.

Trust and solidarity are scarce commodities in the international system. The North up against the South, where the problems already are and will continue to be the greatest.

Knowledge “gushes” forth. It takes too long for new insights to break into the arenas of politics, technology and action.

The Stern Review, published in October 2006, became an instant global standard of the macroeconomic effects of climate change. Last month, at a seminar in London on China and Climate, Lord Stern revealed that he had “substantially underestimated” the power and dynamics at work in climate changes as well as the economic and human consequences.

Economist rely too much on the rationality and effects of fiscal policies and regulations. They ignore too readily the inventive capacity of human beings to find self-serving loopholes. Lord Stern may well have to repeat his revelation in two years: “I underestimated the dynamics of the problem.”

Among leaders there is a widespread fear to be seen as “alarmists.” They prefer to be seen as “well-balanced” among their peers. Leaders and experts can handle the truth. The people cannot. Thus, Pearl Harbor.

This time is different. Everyone must have access to the leading edge of knowledge, to doubt and to the broadest possible discussions. A boundless problem can only be solved across all boundaries. Communication and global participation are the prerequisites to mitigating the effects of the environmental crisis on nature, humans and the economy – not the close to the vest tactics of national interests.


It should be naive to believe that the Copenhagen negotiations – call that Plan A – will result in a perfect international solution to the ongoing expansion of civilization’s conflict with the biosphere. Every political party, every company in every country has its own specific interest to protect. They have a Plan B. If Plan B defeats Plan A, a state of “environmental protectionism” will emerge. The world becomes fragmented.

Therefore we need a Plan C
Plan C must start out from the basis of the problem itself, in its entirety, its compounded complexity. It must originate in knowledge, common ethics and human equality, in democratic principles that transcend borders. It must begin with nature’s boundary conditions of balance and stability. Plan C must, at the outset, recognize that it is not possible to negotiate with nature. We can only negotiate with ourselves. It must start off cautiously with each other, humanity and nature. For isn’t the human agenda to live together for millions of years to come, or?

Plan C must start from the insight that human interests are far more in common than in conflict with each other. Conflict of interests is the organizing principle of the modern society. The road to Copenhagen must not end up in Munich, an unsustainable compromise to maintain, for a time, the appearance that all’s right with the world. In Copenhagen, those most responsible for the negotiations must produce the most important of innovations: a formula for cooperation for a mutually dependent world.

Plan C must trigger action now. Today’s political debate gives the impression that humanity has considerable maneuvering room. It’s not there. Nature’s change processes are in full swing. Above all, we ought not accept any increase of carbon dioxide above the current level of 430 CO2e. Instead, we ought to reverse it.

The main points in a Plan C would be an immediate introduction of a global CO2 tax to bring forth changes in behavior and new technology. We need an immediate moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and industries that lack clean burning and storage. We need to make it immediately clear to the public that we will lower CO2e emissions to one ton per capita within a foreseeable timeframe. This means that developed nations must do much more than developing nations. Plan C must build upon the principle of equality.

In Munich the British thought they had sidestepped the greater evil – a war against fascism – by giving in to a lesser evil, Hitler’s annexation of the Sudentenland. The result was a devastating world war. Now again we find ourselves in a situation with no room for compromise. But this time the demands cannot be made upon any other. They can only be made upon ourselves.

Bo Ekman


Published in Svenska Dagbladet, March 4, 2008