[Comment] Before Copenhagen is flooded
LYKKE FRIIS
01.07.2008 @ 10:47 CET
EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - We live in an epoch where the cherries in Washington D.C. blossom right after New Year's, where polar bears have great difficulties finding food because the distance between the ice floes is getting bigger, and where the geography classes I attended in high school apparently are tagged with a sell-by date, because I surely was not taught that there is a reliable sea route along the northern coast of North America.
World leaders will meet at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next autumn (Photo: EUobserver.com)
In this epoch, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that there is a 90 percent chance that the present climate changes are caused by human activity. The prognosis coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which inspired former European Commission President Jacques Delors to suggest that the creation of a common energy policy could play the same role in forging a sense of purpose across Europe as coal and steel played in the 1950s.
Furthermore, some European politicians have also proposed a genuine Marshall Plan with the aim of ensuring that developing countries can enjoy the economic growth we have enjoyed in the West without being impaired by heavy carbon quotas. Why should developing countries pay the price of our industrial revolution whilst the carbon culpable economies have been allowed to jump the gun?
Showdown in Copenhagen
The onus is now on world leaders who will meet at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next autumn. Their job is to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new deal. More often than not, political negotiations of this scope are distorted by discretionary interests - national or business - who try to throw a spanner in the works.
It would be naive to think that special and one-sided interests can be excluded from the process altogether. Political outcomes are hardly ever entirely rational and objective. But they can be improved by making well-established knowledge and validated research results part of the equation.
This is exactly the reason why the Danish Government has decided to support the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, which the University of Copenhagen will be hosting roughly eight months prior to the political showdown in Copenhagen. The purpose of the scientific congress is to enable scientists to provide an overview of the newest research within the broad climate change field.
Research results can never be translated into unambiguous, clear-cut policy initiatives. Nevertheless, the scientific congress may provide important guidelines as the UN and governments later draft what perhaps will be termed the "Copenhagen Protocol."
A proper blend of serious research and goal-oriented politics may just serve as the remedy for our fever struck planet. But before world leaders, Nobel Prize laureates, their entourages and the media flood Copenhagen, allow me to suggest three virtues of scientific endeavour that should be honoured as we embark on this venture of "scientific politics."
First, scientific efforts that will shed light on climate change issues should be international in their scope. Almost by nature, research communities cut across national boundaries.
Therefore, it is imperative that top researchers from across the globe are invited to Copenhagen. It also merits attention that the scientific congress is organised by the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) - a partnership of the world's leading research universities, including Berkeley, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, Peking and Copenhagen. A cornerstone in IARU, which also pinpoints the purpose of the scientific congress, is to create possibilities in research that will be better than any single university can provide on its own.
Improved candlelight
Second, although natural sciences are of course instrumental as we attempt to explain - and ultimately reverse - climate changes, other disciplines should not be omitted from analysis. For example, contributions from social sciences may indeed prove valuable as we try to elucidate the societal repercussions of natural disasters stemming from climate changes, including flooding and desertification. Just think about the Middle East or Darfur where access to water is arguably a key trigger in conflicts over land.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, it is worthwhile to step back for a moment and think about the nature of research. Although scientists should respond to current problems in society, including environmental decay, an artificial push for quick innovations through applied research will be difficult to achieve without the foundations of pure, basic research. Yet there is a tendency, that can be identified at national as well as European level, that policy-makers favour applied research at the expense of basic research.
Indeed, critics have even presented the following provoking hypothesis: If the Danish Physicist Hans Christian Orsted, who discovered electromagnetism in the early 19th century, had lived today, he would only have improved candlelight - simply because the available funding had limited his research agenda.
It is imperative that we remember these virtues of scientific endeavour before we combine science and politics – and before Copenhagen is flooded.
The Author is Pro Vice Chancellor, PhD., University of Copenhagen