Posted on April, 28 1999

Gland, Switzerland: It is a curious fact that when a breeding duck is threatened on its nest, it simply falls asleep. Similarly, if a chimpanzee finds itself in immediate danger, it reacts by averting its eyes and scratching its chest. This sort of thing is known as "displacement behaviour", and is a phenomenon very familiar to zoologists. But of course it is also something not infrequently noted among observers of the human species  the habit of dealing with a threat by pretending it is not there. Perhaps we really are closer to the animal kingdom than we care to admit.

In human terms, perhaps the most spectacular current example of displacement behaviour concerns reaction to the dangers arising from climate change.

I suppose it is hardly surprising that when the world was first alerted to global warming, its probable causes and its likely effects, the overwhelming response was to dismiss the idea. Denial, after all, has long been a well-known feature of the thought processes of homo sapiens. What is worrying, though, is the attitude that has been demonstrated by supposedly responsible people in the three years or so since the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officially recognized a "discernible" human influence on the world's weather systems.

To be sure, there was some applause when the international community appeared to wake up to the dangers of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. The impression of urgency was reinforced by a continuing series of "freak" weather events that, in the light of the climate panel's statement, could only be perceived as manifestations of something going wrong in the atmosphere. During the past three years we have experienced everything from crippling droughts and the devastating forest fires in South East Asia and the Amazon, to severe and deadly floods. Then last year, a new and more sinister development was noted in the widespread and potentially disastrous bleaching of coral in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere.

As it has turned out, however, "freak" reactions were not to be confined to the weather. Yes, we have achieved an international convention on climate change and the so-called Kyoto Protocol  hammered out in the eponymous Japanese city  designed to regulate, and indeed to reduce, the emission of the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. But this is the point at which the human form of displacement behaviour kicks in.

A few weeks from now, climate convention negotiators from around the world will meet in Bonn to discuss the rules arising from the Kyoto Protocol. The main topic of discussion will be what have become known as "flexibility mechanisms", but in fact that is just a polite term for the avoidance of dealing with the danger.

What we hear about under the heading of "flexibility mechanisms" will be such things as joint implementation and emission trading. Behind these high-sounding phrases, though, lies a reality that casts serious doubt on the will to deal with the urgent challenge that almost everyone concedes now faces us. The fundamental premise is that industrialized countries will be permitted to acquire emission rights from other nations or to fund cleaner energy projects in the developing world

 and by so doing to "repatriate" carbon dioxide emissions that will count against their national targets. In plain terms, what that means is that the countries producing most of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, will be able to go on doing so, but claim they are reducing emissions by buying them in from somewhere else.

If you began to suspect an element of madness here, you would be correct. For example, what happens if a country such as Russia sets itself an unrealistically high level of future emissions and sells the excess for hard currency to a large polluter such as the United States? The answer is that Russia goes on producing the amount of CO2 it would have done anyway, as does the big polluter, and the Kyoto rules are met by emissions that would not have been made anyway. Nothing actually changes, and there is no let-up in climate change. Displacement behaviour, or what?

The Kyoto Protocol calls on industrialized countries to limit their carbon dioxide emissions over the years 2008 to 2012. In Russia's case, this involves returning emissions to the level recorded in 1990. But the reality is that by 1994, the CO2 emissions from Russia were already 31 per cent below the 1990 figure  which means it is estimated that by 2008 the country's annual emissions could be 700 million tonnes lower than the target allocated to it under the Kyoto agreement. The emission trading negotiations about to take place could see Western countries bidding for that emissions gap and applying it to their own agreed quotas, so that real action to cut their own emissions can be avoided.

To illustrate the scale of what would be a huge confidence trick, 700 million tonnes of carbon dioxide is equivalent to the emissions of 125 large coal-fired powered stations or of 230 million average cars travelling 10,000 miles each.

It took a delicate political balancing act to achieve the Kyoto Protocol, but the prospect of crude horse-trading over poorly thought out "flexibility mechanisms" could destroy that fragile consensus and wreck the prospects for a credible attempt to prevent climate change. In the industrialized nations, governments and the private sector alike have to face up to the fact that nothing less that a real downward trend in CO2 reductions will suffice.

There may be a case for some emissions trading, but buying "hot air" must not be allowed to distract attention from the urgent necessity to treat climate change seriously. If we do not do it sensibly now, we shall be forced into drastic and economically devastating action during the coming century.

Fine weather for ducks?

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