Europees CO2-emissiehandelssysteem: 'We weten niet wat het kost en we weten niet of het werkt'

The two basic questions with any purchase. How much does it cost? Will it do the job? Jill Duggan is from the European Commission’s Directorate General of Climate Action. She is the EC’s National Expert on Carbon Markets and Climate Change. She was head of Britain’s International Emissions Trading. She is in Australia to tell us how good Europe’s emission trading system is and why we should do something similar. No one, therefore, should better know the answers to the two most basic questions about this huge scheme. The cost? The effect?. So on MTR yesterday, I asked them. Duggan’s utter inability to answer is a scandal - an indictment of global warming politics today.= (listen here):

AB: Can I just ask; your target is to cut Europe’s emissions by 20% by 2020?

JD: Yes.

AB: Can you tell me how much - to the nearest billions - is that going to cost Europe do you think?

JD: No, I can’t tell you but I do know that the modelling shows that it’s cheaper to start earlier rather than later, so it’s cheaper to do it now rather than put off action.

AB: Right. You wouldn’t quarrel with Professor Richard Tol - who’s not a climate sceptic - but is professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin? He values it at about $250 billion. You wouldn’t quarrel with that?

JD: I probably would actually. I mean, I don’t know. It’s very, very difficult to quantify. You get different changes, don’t you? And one of the things that’s happening in Europe now is that many governments - such as the UK government and the German government - would like the targets to be tougher because they see it as a real stimulus to the economy.

AB: Right. Well you don’t know but you think it isn’t $250 billion.

JD: I think you could get lots of different academics coming up with lots of different figures.

AB: That’s right. You don’t know but that’s the figure that I’ve got in front of me. For that investment. Or for whatever the investment is. What’s your estimation of how much - because the object ultimately of course is to lower the world’s temperatures - what sort of temperature reduction do you imagine from that kind of investment?

JD: Well, what we do know is that to have an even chance of keeping temperature increases globally to 2°C - so that’s increases - you’ve got to reduce emissions globally by 50% by 2050.

AB: Yes, I accept that, but from the $250 billion - or whatever you think the figure is - what do you think Europe can achieve with this 20% reduction in terms of cutting the world’s temperature? Because that’s, in fact, what’s necessary. What do you think the temperature reduction will be?

JD: Well, obviously, Europe accounts for 14% of global emissions. It’s 500 or 550 million people. On its own it cannot do that. That is absolutely clear.

AB: Have you got a figure in your mind? You don’t know the cost. Do you know the result?

JD: I don’t have a cost figure in my mind. Nor, one thing I do know, obviously, is that Europe acting alone will not solve this problem alone.

AB: So if I put a figure to you - I find it odd that you don’t know the cost and you don’t know the outcome - would you quarrel with this assessment: that by 2100 - if you go your way and if you’re successful - the world’s temperatures will fall by 0.05°C? Would you agree with that?

JD: Sorry, can you just pass that by me again? You’re saying that if Europe acts alone?

AB: If just Europe alone - for this massive investment - will lower the world’s temperature with this 20% target (if it sustains that until the end of this century) by 0.05°C. Would you quarrel with that?

JD: Well, I think the climate science would not be that precise. Would it?

AB: Ah, no, actually it is, Jill. You see this is what I’m curious about; that you’re in charge of a massive program to re-jig an economy. You don’t know what it costs. And you don’t know what it’ll achieve.

JD: Well, I think you can look at lots of modelling which will come up with lots of different costs.

AB: Well what’s your modelling? That’s the one that everyone’s quoting. What’s your modelling?

JD: Well, ah, ah. Let me talk about what we have done in Europe and what we have seen as the benefits. In Europe, in Germany you could look at, there’s over a million new jobs that have been created by tackling climate change, by putting in place climate policies. In the UK there’s many hundreds of thousand of jobs.