Banking on the future
On Friday (11 December) an EU summit in Brussels pledged to raise €2.4bn from January to help the world’s poor countries cope with rising seas floods and famine. This is part of an estimated annual €7bn package from industrialised nations around the world. On 4 December, it was announced that public sector support for the UK bank bailout was £850bn (€945bn).It’s impossible to calculate the financial cost of dealing with climate change – both to control global warming, and to pay for the effects of catastrophes – because nobody knows for sure to what extent the temperature will rise and over what period. Predicted outcomes vary from inconvenient to apocalyptic depending on how high the thermometer climbs. However, it’s estimated that averting catastrophe could cost as little as 1% of global output – as long as that amount is invested in well designed policies. The cost of saving the world’s banks was 5% of global output.
The topic: ‘Is the EU contributing its “fair share” to combating climate change?’ was introduced on Friday into our GYP climate change debates. The debate is still ongoing at the time of writing, but views being posted, include: ‘…the EU countries are doing much more than any other nation’, and: ‘No matter how much the EU agrees to contribute, some will always claim that it is not enough’.
Many people raise the point that it’s not simply a question of how much money is contributed, but what nations also do themselves to combat climate change, such as pledging to cut CO2 emissions and tackling deforestation. Current results are Yes: 62%; No: 23%; Maybe: 15%
The day’s other hot topic was: ‘Climate change is a security issue’ – introduced following President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, during which he said:
“The absence of hope can rot a society from within. And that is why helping farmers feed their own people — or nations educate their children and care for the sick — is not mere charity. It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action — it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance.”
Climate change as a security problem is slowly gaining political ground. In our own debate more than 68% agree that it is a problem. If the US truly believes that it is, then it remains to be seen whether it will shift its position from investing heavily in combating the effects – the security issue, to investing heavily in solving the cause – the climate issue.
Of course there is the vague, intensely-remote chance, that one-day somebody in a dusty corner of the White House or Whitehall might link climate change to the banking problem – then we’ll see how quickly the problem gets solved, and how much money gets thrown at it…