Why Asia Is Ignoring Global Warming

In the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, traffic moves as slowly as blood

through a corpse. Streams of motorcycles part for SUVs and diesel-spewing

buses, and everyone gets nowhere fast. The air is clogged from the vehicle

exhaust and from the frequent forest fires that break out around Indonesia.

Once home to some of the most extensive rainforests in the world, Indonesia

is now losing trees at a faster rate than any other nation in the world, to

flames but also to rampant logging. Since equatorial trees soak up carbon

dioxide when they're alive and release the gas when they're cut down or

burned, Indonesia's rapid deforestation is the main reason why this country

of 245 million is the third-biggest carbon emitter in the world after the

U.S. and China. But like other developing countries, the Indonesian

government says it needs to focus on economic growth to raise its people out

of poverty — and that likely means that trees will be cut, cars will be

added and carbon emissions will only go up.
Keep Indonesia in mind as the world digests the third and final chapter

of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) latest assessment

on global warming, which was released Friday morning in Bangkok. While the

first two sections made for depressing reading — nailing down the scientific

basis for global warming and laying out nightmare scenarios of the havoc

climate change could wreak — the last chapter is comparatively optimistic.

Drawing on the work of thousands of scientists vetted by officials from over

100 countries, the IPCC reported that future carbon emissions could be

controlled using current technology like nuclear or renewable energy — and

that it could be done without bankrupting the global economy. "Measures to

reduce emissions can, in the main, be achieved at starkly low costs,

especially when compared with the costs of inaction," said Achim Steiner,

Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), one of

many prominent international environmental officials who attended the Bangkok

press conference for the report's release. European Environment Commissioner

Stavros Dimos drilled home the message: "There is no excuse for waiting."
But while the technological path to climate-change action is clear, the

politics are getting even more complicated. As economic growth shifts to the

developing world — especially in Asia — so will future carbon emissions. So

whether the world can effectively combat climate change will be determined by

countries like Indonesia and India — and especially China, which could pass

the U.S. as the world's top carbon emitter any day. European nations have

staked out bold positions on carbon cutting, and even in the U.S. momentum is

gaining on real climate-change legislation. But if growing developing

countries choose to ignore global warming, even the most radical actions from

the developed world could be rendered meaningless.
The worrying news is that over the past several months, China in

particular has begun to replace the U.S. as the main obstacle to stronger

climate-change action. During the IPCC negotiations that took place this week

in Bangkok, Chinese delegates — with the support of India and other

developing nations — tried to tone down the report, pushing to remove the

most ambitious possible targets for future carbon-emissions levels. That move

failed, but it's unlikely to be the last time China and India drag their feet

on climate change. And as long as those two nations send out signals that

they're unwilling to consider substantial global-warming action — especially

anything that could result in mandatory targets on emissions — even green

Democrats in Congress will have a difficult time defending carbon controls at

home. "It ought to be clear that the developed world will not move without

something from the developing nations," says Eileen Claussen, president of

the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
But at the same time, she adds, "there's no chance of getting China

unless the U.S. steps up." That leaves the world, well, stuck in a Chinese

fingertrap. Because developing nations have emphasized that they can't afford

to jeopardize the pace of economic growth for the sake of the environment,

the only climate-change solutions they're likely to accept will be ones that

come cheap. Fortunately the IPCC says that's possible; the new report

concludes that the cost of stabilizing global carbon emissions by 2030 could

require as little as one-tenth of a percentage point per year of global

growth through the end of the century. Those costs will still have to be

borne by someone, and the developing nations will rightly push for North

America and Europe to pick up the check. Expect that argument to be renewed

at the next major UN climate change meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali

at the end of the year.
Developing nations make the point that they're not responsible for the

vast majority of carbon dioxide hanging around in the atmosphere, which was

put there by Western countries during their own development over the past 150

years. They argue that their own per-capita emissions rates are still far

lower than those of Western nations, and that therefore climate change isn't

their responsibility. True, but wrong. Future global warming will hinge on

how we deal with future carbon emissions, most of which will come from

developing Asia. The gravity of climate change politics has moved east, to

China, India and Indonesia. Their decisions will largely determine what kind

of world we'll be living in.