COP17: Durban delusions

Another journalist described the event as resembling a "big alternative lifestyle expo" with "earth mother" vibes. But can green theology and eco-evangelism save humankind and restore a played-out planet? The COP-17 Working Group 3 believes so. The villain in its draft Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth was "the capitalist system". It – and not rapid population growth, unpredictable natural cycles, etc - was causing "great destruction, degradation and disruption of Mother Earth, putting life as we know it today at risk through phenomena such as climate change".

Climate politics

Deeper scrutiny of the weird world of international climate politics is long overdue. When, for example, did "climate change" first appear as the justification for wealth transfer on an unprecedented scale from the developed world to the developing world?

Ever since the 1992 UNFCCC codified dubious notions of "dangerous" climate change, "climate debt" and "precautionary" action, UN bureaucracies have been moving slowly (at least 17 years) – but inevitably - towards this highly politicised end-game.

For many UN members, climate debt has two components: Adaptation debt - compensation owed to the poor for the damages of climate change they have not caused; and emissions debt - compensation owed for their fair share of the atmospheric space they cannot use if climate change is to be stopped.

The UNFCCC's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established in 1988 by the UN Environment Programme and UN World Meteorological Organization, provided the agency's climate juggernaut with a deepening alarmist narrative over two decades, successfully getting the issue on national political agendas.

When an accurate history of the UN's long involvement with the issue is written, it will be clear how eagerly – and in my view prematurely - the developing world (and other players) embraced it, years before the IPCC and its researchers ruled (incorrectly) the science was "settled". It will be a case study in politicisation of science and entrenchment of confirmation bias on a grand scale.

Did the UNFCCC's desired policy options – anthropogenic carbon dioxide and climate "stabilisation" - create a feedback loop between politics, science, and science funding? Did it lead to an overconfident assessment of the importance of greenhouse gases in driving future climate change? Did it compromise agency impartiality and the level of confidence claimed for its model projections (not predictions)?

The UNFCCC's primary objective was to prevent 'dangerous' human interference with the Earth's climate. Under Article 3.1 of its Principles, the Parties "should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities."

It assumes collective global action actually can stabilise greenhouse gas concentration levels at about either 550 parts per million or 450ppm by about 2100 and meet the Copenhagen (COP-15) objective of limiting global warming to below 2C above preindustrial levels. Yet this controversial objective is not based on an established law of Nature that quantifies the precise relationship between human-generated GHC levels and global surface temperature. (There is no such law.)

Uncertainty, however, has never bothered either the UNFCCC or IPCC. When in doubt, use the (pseudo-scientific) precautionary principle to justify your preferred course of action. Article 3.3: "The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures."

As for "climate vulnerability", IPCC has defined it as 'the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes'.