Global Warming Gridlock: Creating More Effective Strategies for Protecting the Planet

  • David G. Victor
Cambridge University Press: 2011. 392 pp. £25, $40 9780521865012 | ISBN: 978-0-5218-6501-2

There are omens and portents abroad. Not owls in the forum at midday, but spontaneous convergences of scholars of the history of human endeavours to reduce global warming. Among these, David Victor is an established expert. Global Warming Gridlock is a welcome addition to a rapidly growing set of perspectives on climate issues: on the causes of the crash of the 20-year Kyoto Protocol approach for tackling anthropogenic carbon emissions; and on possible and better alternatives. Together, these scholars are setting the stage for the next phase of global climate policies.

The change in the weather has been astonishing. When Steve Rayner and I suggested in Nature in October 2007 that the Kyoto Protocol should be ditched (Nature 449, 973–975; 2007) because it was doomed never to work and, furthermore, was licensed economic 'rent-seeking' — making money from taxpayers by promoting regulations but returning no value — the response was shock and much media attention. Nor were we alone; Victor's excellent earlier book, The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol (Princeton University Press, 2001) was one trailblazer.

Many argue that the United Nations is ill-suited to controlling carbon emissions. Credit: KURITA KAKU/GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY IMAGES

In Global Warming Gridlock, Victor rehearses why the United Nations is “ill-suited to take the starring role” because the actions of only a handful of countries really matter. He explains why a quest for legally binding agreements is futile, because it is guided by “lessons drawn from the wrong histories”: from plausible but inappropriate analogies to treaties for well-defined ('tame') problems, whereas climate is a complex ('wicked') one. As Rayner and I explained in 2007, Kyoto is basically a modified nuclear arms-control treaty. Victor agrees and adds new insights, such as the role of the 1970s quest for supersonic passenger flight, which gave rise to the Climate Impact Assessment methodologies so central to the Kyoto regime.

Today, such an analysis is no longer controversial. Even Yvo de Boer, former chairman of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, was making the case for Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA) — or 'carbon clubs' as Victor calls them — at the COP16 meeting last December in Cancún, Mexico.

Victor's book went to press just before the Cancún meeting, and predicted more of very little progress. Yet Japan gave a historic lead by declaring that it would never subscribe to a second Kyoto commitment period, thus disproving one of Victor's suppositions that Japan would never have the guts to do this. And Russia and Canada joined Japan at the G8 Summit in Deauville, France, on 29 May 2011. Meanwhile, the United States confirmed that it would remain outside the treaty.

But at Cancún, a conjurer's trick was performed. Kyoto was dead on arrival, yet some groups — led by the European Union with the United Kingdom as cheerleader, and most of the developing world — argued that it was merely sleeping. Clever diplomats applied the equivalent of morticians' rouge. Nonetheless, it is now plain that, largely for reasons of the shifting geopolitical balance of power, the Kyoto model will not prevail.

Victor's broad approach chimes with that of Mike Hulme's 2009 book Why We Disagree about Climate Change and Roger Pielke Jr's The Climate Fix from 2010 — sadly not engaged in this volume. It also resonates with the Hartwell paper of May 2010, produced by a consortium of 14 scholars (including me), which is being used by several powerful parties as a template for the way ahead.

Victor explodes three myths. The scientists' myth is that research can determine 'safe' levels of global warming, whereas, as Victor puts it, “nothing that is really interesting to scientists lends itself to consensus”. We are learning bitterly, from loss of public trust, the political costs of prematurely dogmatic statements about open-systems science.

The environmental diplomats' myth is that global warming poses a typical environmental problem and that Kyoto-type methods can attain a “mythical legal kingdom”: because if it is the law, states obey. Right? Wrong, Victor explains. Furthermore, if governments are obsessed about compliance, they will be prone to under-promise. So it is far better to work from the bottom up with carbon clubs; with NAMA; and with a modern form of Japan's original (and current) 'pledge and review' approach, whereby the achievement of declared actions is checked before moving on.

The engineers' myth is that technological energy innovation will lead smoothly to implementation. Victor has a powerful and uncomfortable discussion of the traps here. Like Pielke, he concludes that electorates will not tolerate artificially raised energy prices. Like a widening consensus of his peers, he argues that governments will need to fund research, demonstration and development with low carbon taxes because the market is prone to blow corrupt bubbles. And Victor contends that it is smart to accrue 'co-benefits' from other popular actions — such as the Hartwell goals of increasing electricity access for the poor, first tackling non-carbon dioxide causes of warming and prioritizing adaptation.

Global Warming Gridlock boosts the case that there was always a better way. It is a valuable read but also tiring: Victor weaves his arguments back and forth like intricate tapestry. Although we wonks will work through it because it is worth it, most politicians and advocates probably won't, which is a pity. This is uncomfortable but essential reading.