Harvard students, look for print copies in your house dining halls starting on Wednesday, and in Annenberg on Friday and Saturday!

COVERS SECTION: AFRICA: READY TO PLAY?

Africa Open for Business: A critical look at China’s investment in Africa. By Victoria Hargis.

Darfur: To be Continued: Don’t be fooled by Darfur’s disappearance from the front pages. By Mason Pesek and Tyrell Dixon.

Cycle of Corruption: Corruption in Africa will not end until civil society repairs itself. By Isabelle Glimcher and Tim Lambert.

Can Soccer Save South Africa?: High expectations mask tough realities. By Kathy Lee and Taylor Helgren.

A Reflection on Ourselves: Media narratives about backwards Africa say more about us than them. By Will Rafey.

Personal narratives

Beauty in the Beast: A Harvard Student’s Take on Life Under Mugabe. By Dalumazi Happy Mhlanga.

Health Insurance in Ghana: Lessons from a trip home during J-term. By Timothy Kotin.

UNITED STATES

The Times Charges Ahead: New online business model will help the press preserve the public good. By Jeff Kalmus.

Excessive and Irrelevant Talking: How the filibuster evolved and why it’s here to stay. By Colin Shannon.

An Enlightened Approach to Illegal Immigration: Why the politics of immigration must be reconciled with reality. By Jimmy Wu.

Taking a Pickup to Washington: How Scott Brown pulled out a victory in New England. By Peter Bozzo and John Prince.

–Online-only features–

Gold Coins Tip the Scales of Justice: Why the Citizens United case is a blow to democracy. By John He.

Unfulfilled Promise: Evaluating the first year of the Obama presidency. By Adan Acevedo and Damon Meng.

Manipulating Self-Determination: Puerto Rico might become a state without wanting to. By Pablo Hernandez.

Midterm Madness: A Republican resurgence in the 2010 election? By Alexander Chen.

WORLD

The End of a Leftist Era: Why Chile’s new conservative leader isn’t much of a change. By Casey Thomson.

Putting a Price on Climate Change: Copenhagen postmortem and the question of climate aid. By Thomas Hwang and Taylor Lane.

Of Burqas and Rosaries: The EU’s Islamic identity crisis. By Ioana Calcev.

BOOKS & ARTS

The Human Factor: Eastwood does Mandela. By Jonathan Hawley.

The Case for Executive Power: A legal defense of the Bush terror policies. By Jeffrey Lerman.

People Power in DPRK?: Big brother and double-think on the peninsula. By Paul Mathis.

INTERVIEWS

Stephen Walt: professor of international affairs at Harvard. By Felix De Rosen.

Thomas Ricks: journalist, author, and Foreign Policy blogger. By Robert Long.

–Online-only features–

Jo Luck: President and CEO of Heifer International. By Sophie Angelis.

Wendy Kopp: founder and president of Teach for America. By Meredith Baker.

ENDPAPER

Bring Back the West: The value of the Western tradition in higher education. By Zoey Orol.

The current state of global climate change policy ideas is, well, depressing. Politicians from around the developing world, egged on by some zealous climate scientists, have been pigeonholed into believing that only an international, all-encompassing, sweeping global legislative action is necessary to save the planet from extinction. In the US, this means pushing a cap-and-trade system that would cost perhaps around $1 trillion and impose crippling new taxes throughout the system. Internationally, this means attempting to sit down leaders from across the globe, who generally cannot agree on fair sports practices, let alone multi-billion dollar aid transfers, and creating an agreement to halt economic activity throughout the developing world. Failures in Copenhagen, and failures domestically, signal global impasse. We’re left with a seemingly runaway climate train, chugging out deadly carbon pollutants with no solution in sight.

With all this in mind, is Steven Levitt really crazy as climate bloggers and environmentalists have surmised? In a fairly straightforward, rational economic way, Professor Levitt explained that while he admits he knows nothing about climate science, he has identified two problems plaguing all climate change legislation. First, the half-life of carbon is so long that limiting carbon emissions may have very little impact at all considering we have been stressing the atmosphere for over 200 years now. Second, the cost is just unparalleled and would have far ranging consequences on our economy. In response, Levitt proposes simple proposals like creating a large garden hose and injecting sulfur dioxide six miles up into the stratosphere, a phenomenon often seen after major volcanoes. The price tag of this plan: $200 million. Predictably, a wide range of critics of emerged in response to Levitt.

Yet, this type of geoengineering, whose scientific research was done by ingenious researchers and not crackpot economists, could in fact be the wave of the future. While politicians debate amongst themselves the value of complex caps and taxes, it may well be human innovation and ingenuity that can serve as the real solution to climate change. Too much of our politics has been singularly focused on solutions that limit carbon emissions by force, rather than investing energy and resources in problem-solving devices. While the magical garden hose is far from a perfect solution to climate chnage, there is no reason why such proposals must be immediately written off as insane. For one, it took insane ideas like cars, light-bulbs, and computers to launch us into the modern era, why is the future of our planet any different?

Photo Citation: Flickr Creative Commons

After two years of intense negotiation and eager anticipation of a new international climate-change framework, the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009 delivered weak progress towards a legally binding treaty. Conflict and stalemate characterized the negotiations in Copenhagen, often revealing deep-seated divisions between the developed and developing worlds. The widespread consensus on the seriousness of man-made global warming failed to overcome the immense collective-action problem—getting almost 200 nations to act in concert to reduce their emissions. Most of all, the conference was undermined by the failure of industrialized countries to uphold their end of the climate-change bargain.

The Road to Copenhagen
The Copenhagen Conference was the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The purpose of “COP 15” was to develop and ratify a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the only existing global treaty regulating greenhouse gases, the first phase of which expires in 2012. At Copenhagen, the Obama administration was seeking a new model in which countries would agree to national schedules for mitigating emissions, with legally binding commitments from China, India, and other emerging economies.
Far from realizing the Obama administration’s dream of a new treaty to succeed Kyoto, the parties at Copenhagen refused to ratify even the watered-down Copenhagen Accord after a week of bitter negotiations. Instead, countries merely agreed to “take note” of the Accord, an interim agreement stating their intent to begin taking action on global warming.
The Copenhagen Accord conspicuously lacks a deadline for passing a binding treaty next year at COP 16 in Mexico, lowering the expectations for and likelihood of a comprehensive action plan to address climate change in the near future. Yet the agreement at Copenhagen represented at least a modicum of progress. Alden Meyer, director of policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the HPR, “The Copenhagen Accord is clearly a work in progress. It is a voluntary framework, with negotiations to continue in 2010 towards a legally binding instrument that would either accompany or supersede the Kyoto Protocol.”
Still, the Copenhagen Accord lacks several essential elements necessary to halt the rise of global greenhouse-gas emissions. One glaring omission is a firm target for mid- or long-term reductions in emissions. In an interview with the HPR, Ben Lieberman, a specialist in energy and environmental issues at the Heritage Foundation, highlighted the lack of legally binding mechanisms. “In fact,” he said, “all that the Copenhagen Accord contains is vague aspirational language to the effect that it would be nice if each country decided on its own to reduce emissions. Even this face-saving language had to be pared back at the behest of China and other developing nations that didn’t want any hint that they might be obligated to do something.”
But David Doniger, the policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the HPR that the perception of Copenhagen as a failure is a reflection of unrealistic expectations. Doniger argued that the Copenhagen Accord successfully “provides for real cuts in heat-trapping carbon pollution by all of the world’s big emitters. It establishes a transparent framework for evaluating countries’ performance against their commitments. And it will start an unprecedented flow of resources to help poor and vulnerable nations cope with climate impacts, protect their forests, and adopt clean energy technologies.”

Show Me the Money
The Copenhagen talks ultimately hinged on the highly divisive issue of “climate aid,” or financial commitments to help developing countries combat climate change. Going into COP 15, major donor countries acknowledged the need for climate aid. Faced with increasing public scrutiny and a desire to build momentum for negotiations, many outlined tentative aid plans in the weeks before Copenhagen.
Nevertheless, just days into the conference, negotiators at Copenhagen were trapped in a stalemate. China and India opposed any meaningful targets for cutting emissions and inspection by international agencies. The deadlock persisted until Dec. 17, the penultimate day of the conference, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama administration’s intent to work with other nations to “jointly mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020” and to contribute $10 billion annually to the fast-start funding pool by 2012. Clinton invigorated the ailing negotiations, and delegates scrambled to draft a new working paper.
But the cautious optimism that percolated at the close of COP 15 would be short-lived. New statements from developed countries after the conference suggested that the funds promised as part of vague climate-aid pledges would not be truly “new and additional.” They would count existing aid for poverty, food, and emergency programs. For developing countries, this revelation was a slap in the face, confirming longstanding fears that the burden of climate change, physically and fiscally, would be on their shoulders. Without a constituency that can lobby for a fair accounting procedure, donor states will continue to leverage their financial and political clout to minimize their true contribution levels.
As James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Yes! magazine, the proposals discussed at Copenhagen were “like the indulgences of the Middle Ages. … The sinners are the developed countries, which are responsible for most of the excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They want to continue business as usual, by buying off the developing countries.”

Between COP 15 and COP 16
The overall failure of Copenhagen points to the nearly insurmountable challenge of bringing together almost 200 countries with varying degrees of economic development to agree on concrete emissions-reduction targets. The standoff between developing and developed countries can be broken only with increased commitments to climate aid. American credibility now hinges on whether President Obama can act on his promise to raise tens of billions of dollars to help developing countries adapt to global warming, a possibility only if Congress passes cap-and-trade legislation. Obama, then, must lead the charge for developed nations to take responsibility for the huge burden that climate change imposes on developing nations. Without true financial leadership from the G8 countries, backing up their rhetorical commitments to a new treaty, breaking the deadlock at COP 16 will likely be nearly impossible.♦

Thomas Hwang ‘13 is a Contributing Writer. Taylor Lane ‘11 is a Staff Writer.

Photo Credit: EBO

You could argue that the anger felt by both sides of the debate is legitimate given their beliefs on the issue. If you are a passionate believer in the man-made causes of global warming, then you’re convinced that we’re walking headlong into disaster without really wanting to do anything about it. The world as we know it is literally going to come to an end, but it seems like a lot of people don’t care. That’s pretty bad. If, on the other hand, you are skeptical about aspects of climate change, then you think that you’re parents’ hard-earned tuition fees are going towards a cause which you don’t agree with. It’s the same story with adults who don’t want their tax dollars going towards cap-and-trade and renewable energy. It seems like a logical thing to get angry about, so maybe there’s nothing weird or dangerous about having Triple C.

You could also argue that the extremes to which people take their views on the subject ends up doing their cause more harm than good. The IPCC is a good example of this. Having for years grounded their doomsday scenario is statistics such as how the Himalayas’ glaciers will melt in 35 years, they have now been forced to retract that claim. Most glaciologists think that will take at least 300 years at the current rate. In another case,  the U.N’s climate change panel claimed that global warming would cause North African crop production to fall by 50% over the next ten years. It’s this kind of evidence that prompted the a delegate from Sudan at Copenhagen to compare the effects of Western emissions on Africans to the Holocaust. This, too, the IPCC has admitted is baseless. Moreover, it’s this kind of alarmism and blatant exaggeration of facts that today leads only 36% of Americans and 31% of Britons (where the scandal of scientists faking data first erupted) to believe that climate change is definitely happening, and that man is to blame.

Similarly, the Sarah Palins of the world aren’t helping themselves by denouncing evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming as a “bunch of snake oil science” designed to “shut down a lot of our development”. In his book The Real Global Warming Disaster, Christopher Booker comes close to jeopardizing some good points (I know, hate me for it) by tying the E.U.’s enthusiastic early support for green initiatives to its underlying ambition of creating a socialist superstate. There is no doubt that ‘climate denial’ appeals to the conservative instinct, in that it inherently advocates against government intrusion and any effort to penalize big business. Why liberals tend to align so vehemently in the opposite direction is a little harder to pin down. It’s just a great big shame that what should be a genuine scientific debate is so often hijacked by the standard left-right divide in politics.

In the end, the arguments used by both climate change fanatics and deniers have legitimate points, while overall some form of climate change clearly is happening, with the role being played by pollution hard to ignore. The trouble is that the inflamed discourse we’re seeing right now isn’t helping anyone, especially global warming advocates. The sooner we take tempers down a notch, and stop raving that the world will end tomorrow if we don’t take action — as if humans are capable of controlling sea-levels and global temperature down to a tee anyway– , the sooner this debate can move forward.

The difficulty of green job promotion

Since its inception, the environmental movement has largely defined itself against corporate exploitation, and supported ecological integrity even in the face of economic opposition. Nowhere has more been at stake in this historical confrontation between environmental and economic interests than in the politics of energy and global climate change. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that carbon emissions must be drastically curtailed to avoid catastrophic warming, but the economic costs of the transition, especially in an economic downturn, are substantial enough to present significant political obstacles to action.

Over the last year and a half, environmental advocates have shifted their rhetoric away from regulation as a necessary medicine towards a new, omnipresent term: “green jobs.” The rhetoric of the green economy has saturated political dialogue for good reason. The argument made by proponents of green jobs is a win-win-win: fix unemployment, protect the environment, and establish American competitiveness in a rapidly growing international market. Even in a time of economic crisis, who can disagree with such a proposal? Yet the evidence suggests that “green jobs” has become a hollow political catchphrase, a supposedly economic and environmental boon that could end up as neither. Unless legislation is carefully crafted, its overly optimistic proponents could provoke a backlash against the larger environmental movement and complicate efforts to tackle climate change.

Shades of Green (Jobs)

Of course, effective green job promotion can bring substantial benefits. In an interview with the HPR, Dr. Benjamin Sovacool, a professor at the National University of Singapore, pointed out that renewable energy deployment saves money. It eliminates pollution, reduces dependence on foreign sources of energy, and diversifies the energy mix, which shields the economy against oil and natural gas price fluctuations. Once clean energy systems are in place, they offer innumerable benefits.

Transitioning to a green economy, however, requires more than just wind turbines. Problems with building transmission lines can delay projects for years, making it difficult for clean energy projects to operate within the short timeframe demanded by a stimulus package. As Chris Cooper, former Executive Director of the Network for New Energy Choices, lamented to the HPR, the “regulatory morass” surrounding the permitting process, driven by intractable state-federal power struggles over jurisdiction, is the “greatest enemy of renewable energy” and often matters more than the existence of subsidies.

These difficulties highlight the need for specific, context-dependent policy. Efficiency projects, such as weatherization (retrofitting buildings to save energy), net an economic return of about “seven dollars for every one dollar invested,” according to Sovacool, but the benefits of other green job strategies are more difficult to measure. Even Robert Pollin of the Political Economy Research Institute — one of the most committed defenders of green job promotion — conceded to the HPR that, “For the next five years, most of the investments in clean energy should be efficiency measures.” Government legislation must find some way to account for distinctions among green jobs, since their quality is far more important than their quantity.

Green, but Economically Efficient?

The reality, unfortunately, is that most green jobs are ambiguous: they can consist of anything from insulating homes to save energy to research and development for the next generation of solar panels. The breadth of the category complicates government intervention, since defining green jobs becomes entangled in political interests. When asked by the HPR to define green jobs, Benjamin Lieberman, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said they were “best described as politically correct jobs.” While President Obama’s stimulus package, passed in February, included about $68 billion for clean energy, it has had difficulty creating new green jobs and achieving immediate, tangible results.

Green jobs are economically ambiguous as well. According to Robert Michaels, economics professor at CSU Fullerton and a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, the debate over green jobs underscores the “desperate need for journalists to get some basic training in economics.” Michaels explained to the HPR that doling out stimulus dollars is particularly tricky because jobs are fungible. Since the unemployment market is transient and heterogeneous, new government-created jobs can easily end up being given to already-employed workers who switch over from the private sector, which would leave unemployment rates unaffected.

Michael’s analysis mirrors Leiberman’s research for the Heritage Foundation, which found that a green government stimulus would have a net “adverse impact on jobs.” One of the few empirical studies of green job promotion in Spain, conducted by Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, discovered that every one green job created came at the cost of 2.2 other jobs. More optimistic studies on green jobs, Lieberman argued, tend to forget that they are created with taxpayer dollars and at the expense of private capital that is “siphoned off from the rest of the economy.”

Furthermore, since no alternative energy source can yet compete with conventional energy generation on an open market, government-led green job creation involves prioritizing certain technologies over others, an approach which risks wasting tax dollars on ineffective solutions. In the words of Michaels, the government has always been “absolutely lousy” at picking winners, and “there’s no reason to expect” that future legislation will be any different. Immediate green job creation can even stifle renewable energy innovation by artificially locking in technologies that are more efficient today, such as wind energy, but have less future potential.

Getting Back to Basics

Significantly, all of the experts seem aware of the absence of any consensus over green jobs or energy policy. Contradicting interests — environmentalists, fossil fuel companies, nuclear providers, NGOs, green technology businesses — make directly conflicting studies almost inevitable. As Sovacool concluded, energy policy is “one of the most highly politicized areas”; waiting for everyone to agree on a policy will only ensure inaction. For this reason, as professor Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, explained to the HPR, a green stimulus is at its heart a “symbolic policy,” rather than a substantial response to global warming.

The economics of green jobs remains mired in ambiguity, but environmentalists should not treat that uncertainty as a devastating blow to their agenda. Indeed, the green movement cannot take a chance with global warming legislation by framing it as a solution to economic woes as well as environmental ones. To do so and fail would merely give more ammunition to those who already oppose climate regulation. Especially with pivotal climate talks in Copenhagen in December, environmental activists should stick to what they know best, the widely agreed-upon science and consequences of climate change, rather than dabbling in murky questions of economics. Green jobs can serve as a potential spin-off of climate policy, but never as its central justification, which must remain fundamentally environmental.

Image Credit: Greenforall.org (Flickr)

Volume 36, Number 2, Summer 2009.

“Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible,” warned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a 2007 report. This dire prophecy concerns the whole world; while developing nations are perhaps most at risk due to their limited adaptive capacities, all countries could suffer a lowered GDP, increased disease proliferation, and massive environmental refugee crises resulting from sudden climate shifts. Recognizing the threat to the United States and the rest of the world, the Obama Administration has called for domestic greenhouse gas reductions of 80 percent by 2050. To achieve this goal, however, developed and developing nations will have to collaborate to form a comprehensive successor to the Kyoto Protocol at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen this December. Thus far, despite the inherently international nature of climate change, developed and developing countries continue to look at the problem from nationalistic perspectives when determining who should be responsible for emissions cuts. In order to achieve any progress in combating climate change, the United States and other industrialized nations will have to lead with binding reduction targets and accept that participation from developing countries, while essential, will come on a dramatically smaller scale.

The international community must begin by learning from the failures of the Kyoto Protocol. This agreement failed to gain ratification by the U.S. Senate, exempted primary greenhouse gas emitters such as China and India, and essentially relied on voluntary targets. Due to these critical weaknesses, the Kyoto Protocol has thus far failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As John Ashton, the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change, told the HPR, Kyoto’s approach was “like trying to have voluntary speed limits on roads… they don’t work.” Many experts believe that, for a new agreement to achieve its determined targets, it must mandate some form of binding emissions cuts for all major emitters by implementing an economically sustainable global carbon market and encouraging technological advancement and transfer.

Impossible to Bind All?

As Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, commented to the HPR, “we must enlist the entire world to do more, and no country, not America and not China, can be exempt.” Yet binding emissions cuts in the near future for developing countries may not even be an option on the table at the U.N. climate conference this December. Jeffery Frankel, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, told the HPR, “It’s unreasonable to expect developing countries to make substantial cuts in the near term, given that these are poor countries growing rapidly… They will not want to talk about quantitative targets.” This aversion to immediate reduction also stems from the fact that, according to the World Research Institute, industrialized countries are responsible for about 80 percent of the man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Regardless of fairness, however, maintaining the status quo in developing countries for the next few years could push the earth’s climate past a critical tipping point.

The Reality of Compromise

According to Kerry’s frank appraisal, “The simple reality is: the Senate won’t ratify a treaty unless it includes meaningful pledges from India and China… The votes won’t be there for an unfair or one-sided deal.” Frankel agreed that without China’s involvement, the U.S. will not support an international treaty “for fear of leakage and lost competitiveness,” especially in the current economic climate. It may be that the international community needs to adopt a more nuanced approach whereby China and others “agree to emissions targets that are at ‘business as usual’ rates of growth right now,” focus on adopting new technology, and “agree to a framework where they would cut emissions in the future,” Frankel suggested.

James McCarthy, Harvard professor and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, identified to the HPR a “narrow window” for progress, during which Obama must take advantage of his political capital and his exceptional scientific advisors. As McCarthy insisted, there are “no winners or losers” in the current predicament. The Copenhagen climate change negotiations may be the last chance to prevent irreparable damage to the planet and its inhabitants. Developing nations must commit to future cuts and the industrialized world must lead by example.