By Samantha Pergadia '11

United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development Jomo Kwame Sundaram said the international community needs a "big push" effort to address climate change, during a speech in 016 Robertson Hall Monday evening.

"Rather than see [climate change] as a problem that should be solved incrementally and gradually, what is really needed is a ‘big push’ effort,” Sundaram said. “This would allow us to address a number of challenges early on and make significant savings in the long run.”
 
Sundaram said that this move would involve a greater initial investment burden in the near term, but the returns would be significant. He estimated that it would involve $2 trillion over the next two decades, but would save $40 trillion down the line.
 
Sundaram said that this plan is feasible and should be implemented with official development assistance, carbon credits from developing to developed countries, international taxes, a reallocation of existing spending and global feed-in tariffs. To keep developing countries in the conversation, Sundaram suggested adding a promise of energy subsidies.
 
“This emphasis on a ‘big push’ right now is very important,” Sundaram said. “It departs from the current approach of ‘emit now and clean up later.’ ”
 
Sundaram said that the financial crisis has had negative impacts on climate change. He added, however, that his approach to climate solution could help financial growth.
 
“The problem we have coming out [of the financial crisis] is the collapse of aggregate demand,” Sundaram said. “It is precisely for this reason that our approach to climate change allows the opportunity for a huge push to investments, which will help to kick-start growth.”
 
He added that his plan could create the kinds of jobs that are needed to help aggregate demand.
 
“We are calling for what might be called a ‘Global New Deal,’” Sundaram said.
 
In his 85-slide PowerPoint presentation, Sundaram gave an overview of the major challenges facing climate change and the unique circumstances for developing nations.  
 
“The situation right now is recognizably very dire,” Sundaram said. “The G8 suggests that a two-degrees Celsius change is about what the world can tolerate, while the scientific community suggests a 1.5 degree Celsius change as the maximum.”
 
Sundaram noted the globally high use of energy and the relationship between energy use and national development.
 
“Next to food, energy consumption is the second highest consumption item in most people’s consumption basket” Sundaram said. “Raising the cost of energy will have very unequal affects and will adversely affect the poor in most instances.”
 
Using graphs that depicted the correlation between energy consumption and human development indicators, Sundaram noted that energy consumption is needed to raise the standard of living for many nations. He added that raising the cost of energy would have “serious implications” for some developing nations.
 
“Taxing carbon dioxide emissions will raise energy costs, hampering improvement and development standards,” Sundaram said. “This points to the challenge of trying to improve living conditions in the world while affecting environmental change.”
 
Sundaram also said that the current discourse on climate change unjustly focuses on “big emitters” - nations whose absolute consumption amounts are high - rather than on nations with high per capita consumption rates.
 
“The current discourse has been greatly influenced by President Bush’s successful attempts to change the terms of the discourse” Sundaram said, adding that the focus on big emitters came after the U.S. rejected the Kyoto protocol.
 
“The Obama administration has accepted this discourse and continues to negotiate within these terms,” Sundaram said. “This approach ignores the fact that on a per capita basis, the big emitters may not be big emitters,” he added, noting that though China and India are considered big emitters, their per capita emissions are very low compared to America’s.
 
“A great deal of energy consumption is related to production rather than consumption” Sundaram said, adding that over half of China’s per capita usage of energy per day is from industry.
 
Sundaram also said that the current emphasis on price mechanisms is based on a past attempt to appease and include the U.S. in discussions.
 
“Europe wanted to move toward market-based mechanisms to appease the U.S.,” Sundaram said, “But at the end of the day, the U.S. did not join the Kyoto protocol.” 
 
“A global deal already exists,” Sundaram said. “It may be an inferior deal, but it exists. The focus shouldn’t be on erasing the Kyoto protocol, but on elaborating it.”