The International Response

It seems like this problem is rooted in international politics and the international agenda. I would like to talk about that. Clearly, the present administration in the United States has given, as we say, a thumbs down on climate change initiatives, rejecting the Kyoto treaty, and so on. What effect does that have on Europe, and in Sweden, if the leader of the West moves in that direction?

Of course, that is not good. We need a global agreement about this. We understand what's going on at the state level here in the United States. For example, here in California, it's very much on [the agenda], you have your very own climate change program and so on. But we need the United States in the Kyoto process for one reason, and that is [it's] the only way to have a discussion with the developing world. For example, President Bush is talking about [how] instead we [should] go for technical development, [and] of course, that's the way we all are working; to reach the Kyoto targets we need technical development. We [also] need a multilateral approach to the developing world, so we can handle that situation.

It's a pity, I must say, that because what's happened in the United States to combat climate change doesn't seem so problematic. On the state level, as I said, there are different targets, but we need the whole Western world in, so we can have good discussions with the developing world.

And the problem with the developing world -- in China, we're talking about a billion people who are on the threshold, or in the process, of becoming developed, and it becomes very important, especially in this climate change debate, that they buy in to new technologies or new ways of developing that we are [exploring].

The challenge is, of course -- now we are talking about China -- they are developing extremely fast. Both United States and Europe in general have outsourced environmental problems by [using] China as the factory of the world, more or less. [In] other parts of the developing world, India and such countries which are not yet [very developed], it's natural for people to fulfill their needs, but if they are doing it in the same way as we have done, then we are in a real crisis.

We need to have cooperation, we need to share technology, we need to decrease much of our own emissions so they can increase their emissions, because I think that we'll have a carbon-based system also in the future but not so fast use of coal and oil. So, the industrialized world needs to [work] in cooperation with the developing world about these issues.

In a way we have a twofold problem. On the one hand, we in the West and the developed world have to slow down the rate at which we're emitting all of these carbons that are effecting global warming, but on the other hand, if the developing world came on board on the same trajectory, all of that would be undermined. We have to put them on a path where they don't go through the same developmental history that we did.

We need to create the space for them. I mean, 25 percent of the people in the world use 75 percent of the oil resources, and also probably other resources. To give them a fair chance to develop their societies, we need to create the space for them, because the planet cannot manage [if] they increase emissions in the same way or lean on the same type of emission level as we are doing.

Now I know earlier in your career you were involved in several sets of international arrangements, the biodiversity treaty, the Arctic Council, [where] scientists and government got together and identified the problems in these areas. Are there any insights that you developed from that experience that help us identify the problems if we go forward? There must be a lot of convincing of all parties that some sort of a deal has to be worked out, an agreement about the problem that takes account of the different interests at the table. Talk a little about that.

The biodiversity [problem] is nearly the same managing as climate change. It's going also very fast, the loss of biodiversity. What that means for our way of living and the use of different organisms, not only for food but also for medicines and such things in the future, seems to be very problematic.

What this Arctic [problem taught] me was that the Arctic is the sink of all pollutants we emit on the northern hemisphere. Sooner or later, you find the pollutants, and some of them are really problematic for both humans and [other] organisms. You have obvious problems there, also, you have an impact on human beings on these pollutants. What with the the chemicals we use in agriculture, and so on, the Arctic will also be the sensor for climate change. We have new signs that something is going on there by all the Arctic ice [melting].

So, it's an early warning system.

Really early warning system. In fact, it's rather funny, when I was chair of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, in our ministerial meeting in Altba in '97, the United States said, "We also need to make an assessment of the climate change." The other countries were unprepared to include that, but we decided to do that, and we produced now a thick report, a key area report, about what's happened in the Arctic. And it has had a huge impact on the climate change negotiations! So, I think the Arctic is a good demonstration area for early warning, as you said.

Is it fair to say that the scientists were the first to have a sense of the implications of all of this because of the work that they were doing as scientists in universities or in research institutes?

Yes, absolutely. This Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program is totally dominated by scientists. What we also found about different substances in the Arctic gave pressure [to ratify] the Stockholm Protocol for Persistent Organic Pollutants, which is another international agreement to get away from the track [of emitting] pollutants which are extremely dangerous. So, it has been very good for the work in other fora, this Arctic work.

As I prepared for this interview it recalled to my mind the arms control debates of the sixties and the whole concern about the nuclear arms race. There, also, it was the scientists who played a leading role by analyzing the implications of the nuclear arms race. So this sounds very much like that.

Yeah. We talked about climate change; I think the first time it was raised was by the Swedish Nobel Prize winner, Svante Arrhenius, in 1903, and then it was picked up again by Professor Bert Bolin, the first chair of IPCC, the climate change panel. So, it has been stressed by scientists, and as you can see, it has been put on the political agenda by scientists.

One of the things that we're experiencing in this country is a distrust of scientists, strangely enough, because of the "can of worms" they seem to be opening up in issues like cloning and in terms of genetically modified foods, and so on. But here, in this area, it seems that the legitimacy of what scientists are saying is not questioned as much. Is that fair?

You mean, what we think in Europe about this GMO, and such things?

Right. I know that the Bush administration has made arguments questioning the science involved here, but I would imagine that in Europe that, as we say, doesn't have traction. That doesn't win support.

No, absolutely not.

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