Collide-a-scape

Experts who are grappling honestly with the national security/climate change nexus will wince when they see this post by the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson. It’s the kind of blatant political exploitation of recent headlines that some scholars warned about when the climate security meme was picked up prominently by mainstream media last summer.

Johnson, doing his best impersonation of a mid-2000s Thomas Friedman op-ed column, makes this argument:

If the world moves away from oil dependence, Iran’s regime will no longer be able to rely on petrodollars to stay afloat. Other unfriendly regimes propped up by carbon-fuel money, such as Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, will also feel the pinch, improving our national security and making it less likely our armed services will fight battles amid the oil fields. For that to happen, the United States must pass comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation as fast as possible, the stronger the better.

If the world moves away from oil dependence.  Brad, are you living in a CAP bubble? When you look at these projections, do you see that happening anytime soon? (By the way, those forecasts might be underestimated a wee bit.)  And what about China’s trajectory? And its willingness to do business with bad actors to meet its voracious energy needs?

If Iran’s nuclear ambitions are to be reigned in before they cause serious international trouble, it won’t be because of a carbon cap (which hardly seems around the corner), it’ll be because China will not want to upend the deepening energy relationship it has developed with Iran.

If you read this post in Grist, and David Biello’s piece in Scientific American, you’re likely to walk away feeling encouraged by the recent China-U.S. joint statement, which lays out the common ground between the two countries on a host of issues, including “climate change, energy, and the environment.”

But if you want a more nuanced perspective, check out this post from Simon Donner, who also advises,

Read through the statement, and it is appears that both countries expect coal to remain king, and that emissions reductions will depend on the development and widespread implementation of CCS [carbon capture & sequestration] technology at coal-fired power plants.

So climate advocates applauding this “progress” between China and the U.S. must be feeling pretty good about that clean coal technology on the horizon.

Over at Foreign Policy, Daniel Drezner offers a tutorial on international relations theory as it applies to international climate change negotiations:

China has supplanted America as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. From an economic perspective, we are witnessing a transition from a bipolar world (the US + EU) to a multipolar world (OECD + BRICs). International relations theory is not sanguine about what this means for international cooperation. In theory, a concert of great powers can still foster cooperation. Possible does not mean likely, however.  In practice, as the number of powerful actors increases, the likelihood of meaningful cooperation declines.

Advocates of the Waxman-Markey climate bill argue that the odds of such cooperation greatly improve if the U.S. brings a congressional commitment to the bargaining table. Drezner remains unconvinced:

my expert take is that Waxman-Markey is kind of like Obama’s other soft power initiatives–they certainly don’t hurt, but they also don’t help all that much either.

Prodded by his editor to offer an alternative course of action, Drezner suggests that an international climate change framework

link adaptation benefits to constructive steps on mitigation.  The expert consensus on global warming is that regardless on what is done to mitigate its effects, adaptation to elevated levels of greenhouse gases will be required. Furthermore, this burden will fall disproportionately on the developing world.  Unlike mitigation, which is a pure public good, adaptation is an excudable benefit.  If a climate change regime proffers an adaptation fund of some sort linked to concrete steps on mitigation, it could nudge the big LDC emitters towards the necessary levels of cooperation

That’s intriguing. I wonder what climate policy experts make of this.

Krugman goes to China and makes a stunning discovery:

I have seen the future, and it won’t work.

Seriously, though, the rest of his column effectively highlights–momentarily, at least–the grim specter hanging over the global warming debate, otherwise known as the “China problem.”

This op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor suggests that “environmental engagement” could serve as sort of a back-door channel for easing U.S.-China tensions:

Environmental collaboration is unlikely to hit politically sensitive buttons, and thus offers great potential to deepen dialogue and cooperation. Military-to-military dialogue can facilitate the sharing of best practices on a range of environmental security issues. It can help both nations and their regional partners prepare for natural disasters – which are expected to intensify in a warming world – and improve the ability of civilian agencies and militaries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. It can also develop personal relationships that can provide deeper understanding in times of crisis.

This is a good example of the nexus between the maturing field of environmental security and foreign policy.

However, in terms of any future global agreement limiting carbon emissions, climate change is a sensitive issue for China that could also further complicate U.S.-China relations, something the op-ed authors gloss over.

Still, I think they are on to something:

Environmental security issues – and climate change in particular – could be among the most productive avenues for US-China military cooperation. The world’s largest per capita emitter (the United States) and its largest total emitter (China) of greenhouse gases should identify specific areas for cooperation before the upcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Environmentalists recognize the upside too, with some offering a detailed set of recommendations here, on how the U.S. and China can engage on climate change-related issues in advance of the Copenhagen meeting.

UPDATE: As the Guardian reported earlier this week, perhaps China is softening its position on climate change.