Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/673696
14 NOT long ago I ran into an old friend while out and about on a spec- tacularly sunny day… in the middle of January. We both commented on the extraordinary spell of good weather we were having for that time of year… and this friend of mine cracked a joke that would get stuck in my memory. "It's a pity we're talking about 'glob- al warming', and not global freezing," he pointed out. "If the news was all about how winters were going to get colder and more miserable, we'd probably already have solved the problem by now. But weather like this? Who would want to change that?" He was joking, of course… yet there seems to be an element of truth to his observation. Last week, Malta became one of 171 signatories to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change; but even as countries agree on a common strategy to counter global warming, scepticism contin- ues to run high. Not only is the global economy still largely dependent on fossil fuels – and (in the case of many countries, including Malta) still very far from achieving their UN renewable tar- gets – but there is also a perception that various cataclysmic predictions have so far failed to come true. And even if cases of extreme weath- er – or, in our case, extreme drought – seem to have become more com- monplace, they are notoriously diffi- cult to put down exclusively to global warming; and even then, to conclude that the warming is itself down ex- clusively to human intervention. Just before this interview with Michael Zammit Cutajar – who, in 1991, helped set up the interim secretariat that would eventu- ally become the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – I watched a short UN-produced documentary he sent me on the subject. Informative though it was, there were nonethe- less several admissions that various effects of global warming (such as, for instance, rising ocean acidity) are impossible to actually predict. There seem to be too many 'don't knows' in this equation. Even if sci- entists worldwide are in almost unanimous agreement on the issue, the abundance of question marks makes it too easy for people (and, more pointedly, countries) to adopt a 'wait-and-see' approach. This creates added problems for people like Zammit Cutajar, whose job is in part to convince the world – through the United Nations – that this really is a global problem that re- quires urgent attention. Does he en- counter this kind of resistance him- self… and how does he respond to it? "It is very difficult to get the point across," he concedes. "Take the Paris agreement itself, for instance. On paper, it binds signatories to limit global warming to within 2 degrees. What is 2 degrees? To most people it sounds like nothing; it's the sort of temperature change that happens every day, between morning and evening. And yes, warmer winters are not an unattractive prospect… even I myself commented earlier this year about 'what a wonderful winter' we had in Geneva. In fact, we didn't have a winter at all. So it's true that, at first sight, it might not seem so bad. But the reality is that we are looking at long-term trends…" As for responding to scepticism, he prefers to leave that to climate change scientists. "I've been im- mersed in this issue for 20 years… but not as a scientist. In my case, it's more a question of whether I have trust in the process that produces, every five years, a scientific assess- ment by the intergovernmental cli- mate change panel. The answer is yes. There are masses of scientists contributing to this: they can't all be conspiracy theorists. The ratio of those who think this is a problem, against those who think it isn't, is immense. As Al Gore pointed out in his film 'An Inconvenient Truth', it is something like 900 to 10…." How does he account for so much resistance to the idea, then? "I don't think there really is all that much resistance. I'm afraid to say that climate change scepticism is partly a product of journalism: jour- nalists love to say, 'on one hand', and 'on the other'… just like economists. They will always bring out the other view, even if the other view has no credibility…" As an example he points towards an article that appeared that same morning in the Financial Times. The headline was: 'Clouds over Paris agreement'. "There's nothing new in what the article actually says, though; it just points out that there are 55 coun- tries, that between them account for 55% of global emissions, which have yet to ratify the agreement. That's not a 'cloud'. That's part of the con- ditions…" Apart from journalists and econo- mists, politicians too are often the cause. "If you follow the language of the IPPC reports, they're extremely prudent. They don't want to come out with a politically charged state- ment that can't be proven. Other- wise, they'd be accused of looking for a political headline. But that, typically, is what politicians want. The yearning for a soundbite along the lines that 'the world is going to end tomorrow'. But scientists will never tell you that. I remember, for instance, former British prime min- ister Gordon Brown saying: 'This is our last chance to save the world' at the Copenhagen summit in 2009. Of course it isn't: the world is not going to disappear. But with politicians it is always cataclysmic, one way or the other. And the scientists keep plodding along in the background, hardening the evidence they have ac- cumulated over the years…" At the same time – not to stick up for politicians, or anything – they're also the ones who have to take all the difficult decisions… not to men- tion shoulder the responsibility afterwards. Couldn't all this scien- tific prudence therefore be counter- productive? Wouldn't it be more direct and to the point for scientists to spell out exactly what politicians should be doing? "That is another thing scientists will never say. They won't tell you what to do… still less who should do it. Instead, they will say: 'this is the likely result of this set of actions'. Then it's up to governments to get the results they want. Even the tar- gets that were agreed to in the Paris agreement are the result of political negotiations; they were set by coun- tries, not scientists. They represent a political judgment, not a scientific opinion, on what can be done. Speaking of which: the Paris Agree- ment has been hailed as a crucial step forward, even if (as Zammit Cutajar earlier pointed out) there has been conflicting coverage in the interna- tional press. But how important is it really? "The agreement itself is a big po- litical success, in that it brings all countries aboard the same boat. It will build on nationally-determined 'best efforts', strong accountability and five-yearly stocktaking aimed at increasing ambition. The details still have to be negotiated, but it defi- nitely puts us all on the first step of a potential 'Stairway to Heaven'…" Nonetheless an agreement it re- mains. "When you sign an agree- ment, it means that it is your inten- tion to ratify it and put it into effect. As yet, there isn't the legal obligation to do so. Signing is largely symbolic, even if it is a politically important symbol…" For Zammit Cutajar, however, the negotiations leading up to this agree- ment were arguably more revealing than the outcome. "You can see that we've come a long way. At the beginning, some 20 years ago, I remember clearly how countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela and so on used to dismiss global warming as 'non- sense'. Then you had China claim- ing it was 'caused by sun-spots', or something similar. This sort of thing has stopped. The Saudis no longer question the science behind climate change during negotiations. I think the younger generation of Saudi leaders are starting to look for ways to do things differently. They are reading the signs. And they have masses of solar power… if they can export it." Other previously sceptical coun- tries have also changed their stance: some more recently than others. "A few weeks ago there was an under- the-counter move by a Third world lobby group that is very much against the agreement, arguing that it would be better to wait for the details to be hammered out before signing. This group was completely overridden by China, and later by India. China and the USA issued a joint statement – which they have been doing on this issue for some time now – to the ef- fect that they intended to sign, and bring the agreement into force as early as possible." Does the agreement go far enough to address the problem, however? "That depends on how individual countries go about implementing policies. If there is political consen- sus – as there is, now – that we need to do something about it, it follows that we have to look at policies that give incentives for certain actions and disincentives for others. A car- bon tax, for example, so that what you pay for a car depends on its pet- rol consumption. Incentives to insu- late buildings with double glazing… there are all sorts of measures that can be taken." Ultimately, he adds, this is an economic issue more than an en- vironmental one. "The underly- ing challenge is how we power our economies. On the surface it is also a scientific issue – albeit a different type of science – and there is a lot of investment in research and technol- ogy. But the most important thing is government policy. If govern- ments sit back, there would be no economic incentive to find the new technology. But if you start steer- ing the market towards the need for that, there would be a much greater response. Technological developers are in it to make money, at the end of the day; they are not philanthro- pists. The challenge, then, is to make it economically sensible to do the right thing. Up until now, he adds, it has always been more economically sensible to do the wrong thing. "This is why the Paris agreement is so important." Despite this apparent consensus, outstanding issues linger. "There are questions concerning the ratification of the agreement, which is done dif- ferently by different countries. Malta, for instance, will ratify the treaty; but the United States will not. This is because 'ratification', in the US, in- volves approval by the Senate. And there is a fear that the Senate – which is controlled by the Republicans, who also aspire to have a President soon – might block it. So the Americans have worked the whole thing out so that the agreement is covered by existing international commitments under the 1992 convention, or by existing US legislation. There's noth- ing 'new' about it, so there's no need for Senate approval. And because US approval was so indispensable for this agreement, that's the way it was done… the quantitative conditions are not binding." This brings us to its local impact. Malta has added its signature to the 171: on paper, we have bound our- selves to the same conditions im- posed on much larger and highly in- dustrialised countries like America, China, and so on. This may give rise to scepticism of a different nature: I myself have Interview By Raphael Vassallo maltatoday, SUNDAY, 1 MAY 2016 It was Malta that first put climate change on the international agenda in 1988. So one reason why Malta should take this issue seriously is that… we invented it PIONEERS Part of the solution