International Organisation for Knowledge Economy and Enterprise Development

"ISSUE OF THE MONTH"

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The focus must be on making everything that is politically possible to unleash the innovative and creative power of individuals and firms to address the real problem we face.

In the wake of Copenhagen, no longer is our concern about weighing the economic costs of taking action against the risks of continued inaction. The focus must be on making everything that is politically possible to unleash the innovative and creative power of individuals and firms to address the real problem we face.

The greatest congregation of world leaders that has ever met took place Copenhagen in December 2009. They could not, however, leave the city having forged any workable deal, to address the onset of man-made Global Warming.

There is no way in which we can estimate with certainty the costs and benefits of taking - or deferring - action in response to the increase in the atmosphere’s trapping of the heat from solar energy, caused by human activity.

The processes that contribute to global warming are inherently complex. The predictability of events is not least diminished by the remarkable resilience to change displayed by the living ecosystems of our planet, which means there are critical, pivotal tipping points when the pressure of human activity will have reached a level that unleashes unpredictable series of effects on the environment. The change then brought about will in some respects be irreversible, in the sense that destruction is definite. The resilience of nature, which yet keeps hiding what is under way, will thus be gone at the point when the outcomes are clearly visible and beyond question.

Not only are the natural processes unpredictable. So are people. It is not possible to know with what speed and rate of success we are able to respond to the issues, once confronted with them. Since the dawn of history the ingenuity of mankind has constantly brought surprises. Once forced to cope with a given problem, we have generally been able to resolve it more effectively than could have been predicted.

In other words, we do not know precisely how high the costs of global warming will turn out to be, brought about by dramatic changes in weather conditions and in the productivity of the world’s living systems. We do not know how costly action to reduce emissions to a tolerable level - whatever that is - will be. We are, however, starting to get a hunch of the directions in which we may expect to stumble, should we continue as we are, and what subsequent risks we run.

In regard to the costs of global warming, and especially given the huge reservoirs of methane looming under the gradually thawing Siberian permafrost, there is a risk of catastrophic underestimation. Meanwhile, it is not only likely - but certain - that the capabilities of scientists, industrialists and people in general to act on requirements to reduce our carbon footprint will be much greater than we can imagine, leading us to overestimate those costs.

What is also very important is that Copenhagen, hopefully once and for all, shattered the outdated perception that environmental concerns were the luxury of the affluent. Those countries that requested the most far-reaching actions were poor rather than rich, and requests for resource transfers on their part finally came second to their call for any sort of meaningful deal leading to real action to address the problem at hand.

At this point, it is no longer a question of putting economic costs of action against the risks that follow from inaction, and asking ourselves what sacrifice is merited to avoid a catastrophe. The focus needs to be on doing everything politically feasible to unleash scientific, technical, innovative, industrial and individual human effort to address the problem we are faced with. Awareness and attitudes become key, along with the presence of incentives for people and organizations to act. Already, the floundering of world leaders casts doubt on what rewards action will generate. Thus, the forces of reason must get their act together to remove the smokescreens that confuse our judgement, evidently still striving to convince us that, in a world marked by uncertainty, eventually the best thing for us will be to do nothing and then see what comes. The reversal of that kind of attitude must come both ways – top-down, as well as bottom-up!

Allocating funds to research and transfer of technology is part of the solution, but without a clear communication strategy that puts out – and beyond doubt – the message that humanity must and will respond to the issue at hand, action will be slow in coming. This means there needs to be a new sort of alliance, one which cuts across the selfishness and narrowness of mind unfortunately generated by the preoccupation on reaching consensus among nation states. A proper communications strategy needs to take on board the importance of education systems, media coverage, means of raising attention and fostering inspiration, and the like, to make it clear that we will collaborate to reward those that contribute with solutions, and request those that drag their feet to alter their minds. It is time to start focusing on how to get the solutions in place, spanning all countries and kinds of economic activities.
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