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Consensus is now urgent for climate change

By Zhang Haizhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-29 08:46

Exclusive | Lord Deben John Gummer

LONDON - A leading British campaigner on climate change has urged the international community to be pragmatic and accept different manners to address the challenge, as Western ways "don't fit" China's situation.

These comments, by Lord Deben John Gummer, an ex-British environment secretary and current chairman of the environmental consultancy company Sancroft International, came a week ahead of the UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico.

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The 70-year-old, who served as Britain's environmental secretary from 1993 to 1997, also called on Europe and China to join hands to address global environmental issues - when the United States is not "capable politically" to make efforts on an international level.

"There is more than one way to skin a cat," Gummer told China Daily, using an English idiom. Sometimes Americans, he noted, believe "there's only one way to do things - and that tends to be the American way."

"If we want to move these things forward, we have got to talk to each other in a different manner," Gummer said in a pointed criticism of stances countries adopted during last year's UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

The biggest failings at the Copenhagen summit, he noted, were rooted in the fact that the major players were far too vested in their own difficulties.

The Americans "gave nothing" - even though President Barack Obama "wanted to give something".

China "wanted to deliver a solution to climate change", but was - and remains - stuck in internal difficulties like its "huge number of poor people", the "real issue" of development - not to mention a strong "internal pressure" of social stability, among other things.

The "failure" of Copenhagen, he said, was an inability of participants to find a way to overcome narrow, internal issues and self-interests in the name of achieving tangible, effective goals.

"So let's stop starting at the basis of disagreement," said Grummer. "Let's go the other way and say: 'this is our agreement'."

Soon after Copenhagen, a disillusioned Gummer decided to step down as a Member of Parliament - a post he had held since 1979 - to focus his efforts on the campaign to fight climate change.

According to The London Guardian, Grummer said he had been forced to "rethink plans for the future" following the "very disappointing results" of the Copenhagen negotiations.

Regarding the coming UN climate summit in Cancun, Gummer said that "there's a chance of doing something - as most of us realized we have to do something".

But realistically, he added, expectations are, at this point, "of course nil".

China has recently said a "balanced package of decisions" could be clinched at the conference, but he called on developed countries to show sincerity to bridge differences with developing ones.

In the US, Obama's attempts to pass climate change legislation were already stalled before recent mid-term elections gave more power to his Republican opponents.

Here in the UK, meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron has played down chances of a global agreement at the next UN climate summit in Mexico this week.

Gummer noted cooperation between Europe and China is just the starting point - and the only way forward to deliver a global solution for climate change, as they are the "two groupings capable of finding ways to".

"If we could cooperate, for example, on emissions, we will lay down the terms in which the world will work. If we agree it, there won't be anyone who disagrees," Gummer said, adding the US would also be forced to follow suit.

"Because big American companies (can) start saying: 'Look! We have to deal with the rules and decisions' which are made by the governance run by Chinese and Europeans," he added.

Europe and China, according to Gummer, should begin their cooperation by establishing a carbon market, in which China could sell carbon credits to the EU and in return buy the latter's expertise and know-how.

"We are not yet in the moment in which the two markets can easily interact. (It) seems to me we ought to be working together to see whether there are ways the two markets could do so," Gummer said.

"We now have to take it on the basis of practical necessity, which is a total revolution", he said finally, stressing we now live in "the most exciting moment since the renaissance".

China Daily