Joschka Fischer on global climate change

I've just discovered the home page of Project Syndicate, which provides newspapers content from a number of writers. Including Joschka Fischer, the former German Green Party leader who served as Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister during the "red-green" coalition government in Germany (1998-2005).

His most recent piece available there is The "Limits to Growth" Revisited Oct 2007. Fischer refers back to the famous report from the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth (1972), whose specific predictions proved to be over-pessimistic.

The good news for the assumptions of Western developed nations is that the Western model of a consumer society "is becoming the dominant economic model of the world, one to which there is increasingly no alternative," in Fischer's words. But when we look at the implications of the development of China and India along the lines of Western consumer society, that's also the bad news. Because the earth's ecosystems do have their limits.

Fischer mocks what he sees as the laid-back attitude of politicians in the developed countries over climate change:

But one might conclude from the bizarre debates we engage in about climate change that what the world needs is a change in its political and psychological mood, rather than a profound social and economic transformation. So, despite grand rhetoric, very little is being done. Emerging countries continue to grow every year. The US has almost totally backed away from the global fight against pollution, and, through uncontrolled growth, solidifies its position as the world’s leading polluter. The same pattern holds true for Europe and Japan, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. (my emphasis)

This is a different tone than Al Gore's pitch that what we're really lacking is the political will to address the problems of climate change.

But Fischer has concrete goals in minds that are not so different from what Gore seems to envision. Fischer stresses three key goals: creating a "global emissions market"; greater energy efficiency on both the production and consumption sides; and, both technological developments and a drastic shift of political priorites "in favor of renewable energy, rather than a return to nuclear power or coal".

I've notice a lot of energyl company ads on TV lately gushing about how committed they are to clean energy and yadda, yadda. Every time I see one of those, and especially every time I hear some Republican politician pronouncing grandly that we have to find a greater role for alternative energy sources, I think, "They're going to be making a major push for nuclear power."

Even under the best of conditions, there is likely to be a signficant growth in the reliance on nuclear power in the developing world in the immediate future. But nuclear energy has never been the low-risk, high-potential, reliable source that its advocates claim. The large amounts of radioactive waste that it produces are not so much a technological problem as a physics problems. They stay radioactive for thousands of years. The waste-storage problem alone should be enough to may nuclear power non-viable.

We have a long way to go on dealing with global climate change.

Tags: global climate change, global warming, joschka fischer