If the concept of “Cool Britannia” was a strong selling-point in the Tony Blair success story, climate change has made the world anything but cool for his successor as prime minister, Gordon Brown. Less than three weeks away from the Copenhagen global conference on climate change, British Ambassador Shan Morgan could hardly have chosen a more timely topic for the annual business luncheon of the English-Speaking Union (ESU) last Tuesday.
Throughout her speech Morgan was at pains to present the issue as an opportunity as much as a problem, She described climate change as “my top personal priority” since arriving here almost a year ago and among the big four for London’s Foreign Office alongside counter-terrorism, conflict resolution and developing effective international institutions. And nor is British Foreign Secretary David Milliband a lone voice here — the recent disappearance of an entire village in a flash flood has really awoken public awareness.
Environmental concern was not just “tree-hugging,” she said, but a profoundly economic issue with alarming implications for agricultural drought, strain on buildings and many other aspects. British economist Lord Stern has been a pioneer in quantifying this economic cost, estimating that it could cost as much as 20 percent of global production by mid-century — to place this in context, the acute international crisis of the past year is expected to cost between two and four percent of global production.
And because this is a global problem (greenhouse gases do not respect borders), Britain is looking at the whole world including Argentina — London is helping to finance a CEPAL/Fundación Bariloche study on the economic impact of climate change for Argentina, with input from British ministerial experts.
Britain (responsible for two percent of global emissions) has a “historic responsibility” as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution and has more than complied with the Kyoto Protocol with the firm commitment to reduce emissions by 80 percent by mid-century. But action is needed from the United States, China, Brazil and the rest of the European Union if emissions are to be halved as urged by the world’s top scientists — otherwise all countries will suffer together.
In Morgan’s view, this global scourge is especially relevant to Argentina both as a threat and as an opportunity. The South American region as a whole is vulnerable, according to Britain’s Hadley Centre, with scenarios of Amazon drought, the disappearance of Andean glaciers, sagging farm productions and extreme weather events in general. Argentina certainly knows all about drought and an acute lack of water is forecast for the Cuyo region in particular.
But switching to renewable sources of energy is an investment as much as a cost, said Morgan — all these new technologies will require new industries and the creation of “green jobs” will spur growth while important sums would be saved from expensive fossil fuel bills (not to mention public health from less urban pollution). As Brown has pointed out, those switching first will reap important advantages from these growth areas of the future.
If the City of London has become a world leader in the carbon trading emerging from the Kyoto Protocol, the finances to pay for this transition to a low-carbon economy will flow from developed to developing countries (to the tune of 100 billion dollars by 2020 according to Brown) — and this can only benefit Argentina. And, as always, Argentina has its natural advantages such as some of the windiest places on the planet.
Looking ahead to Copenhagen, Morgan warned her audience from expecting everything from this event which could only be a milestone at best — but she also warned them against resigning themselves to the impossibility of a deal in Denmark, as frequently forecast in the press. While a final legal treaty looked improbable, it was consensus which really mattered and that looked eminently possible, judging from the statements of the US, Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders.
Yet she also stressed that this negotiation would not be easy (“if it was, then a global deal would have been achieved a long time ago”) and that there were many voices to urge that tackling global recession came first. But that logic was fallacious, Morgan insisted — inaction was too expensive while action now would speed up the new opportunities for the future (“opportunities that can drive economic growth, promote social development and create jobs”).
Based on Britain’s experience, Morgan said that the next stage in Argentina was to spread awareness via the media and civil society, also highlighting that “this is an opportunity, not just a threat.” In Britain the issue had seemed too technically difficult for much of the population and had encountered widespread skepticism — now there was a national consensus that this issue is “too important to ignore.”
Asked by the Herald if organic farming and windmills would suffice for a world population expected to reach nine billion in the next 30 years, Morgan admitted the need for nuclear power — she also touched on the problem of agricultural emissions in feeding the world of the future.
Her speech was preceded by Gerónimo Frigerio from the Inter-American Development Bank (BID), the recipient of an ESU scholarship to attend a week of international debate at Mansfield College, Oxford. Frigerio said he had expected a politically correct consensus and was startled by the frank discussion of global thinking versus local action, the future of Western dominance with the rise of China, development, poverty, corruption, etc.
Morgan was introduced by ESU president Malcolm Rodman, who said that the shadow of drought in the four last harvests should make the urgency of climate change evident, even if day-to-day politics always seemed to take priority.
The guest speaker was accompanied by fellow-ambassadors Lucy Duncan (New Zealand), Philomena Murnaghan (Ireland) and Tony Leon (South Africa) as well as the US Embassy attaché for the environment, science and technology, Russell Menyhart; also representatives of HSBC Bank and British Airways and such luminaries of the English language world as Ofelia Veltri and Litty Mora.
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