Balancing climate pragmatism with moral clarity

The Breakthrough crew has another report (statement? manifesto?) out called "Climate Pragmatism," co-written with a variety of other wonks, including Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute. Here's the basic idea:

A new climate strategy should take a page from one of America's greatest homegrown traditions -- pragmatism -- which values pluralism over universalism, flexibility over rigidity, and practical results over utopian ideals. Where the UNFCCC imagined it could motivate nations to cooperatively enforce top-down emissions reductions with mathematical precision, US policymakers should acknowledge that today's global, social, and ecological systems are too messy, open, and complicated to be governed in this way. Whereas the UNFCCC attempted to create new systems of global governance, a pragmatic approach would build upon established, successful institutions and proven approaches. Where the old climate policy regime tried to discipline a wildly diverse set of policies under a single global treaty, the new era must allow these policies and measures to stand -- and evolve -- independently and according to their own logic and merits.

This sounds basically right to me. As I wrote in a recent review of David Victor's new book ...

... climate campaigners must abandon their scientism and take emission-reduction targets off center stage. National leaders cannot credibly promise particular emission levels in the short- to midterm. Emissions are determined by too many forces outside governmental control, including fossil-fuel prices, trade, and the pace of economic growth. The focus on targets is an invitation to empty grandstanding and lowest-common-denominator agreements. What leaders can credibly promise are policies, and policies, not numerical targets, should be at the center of climate accords, Victor argues.

It seems clear enough that going big -- getting everyone to accept binding targets and timetables -- hasn't worked in either the U.S. and the UNFCCC. What is not as clear as the authors seem to think is exactly why those efforts have failed and what, if any, might succeed in their place. It comes down to how much you think those failures are attributable to policy and process vs. interests and power. There's always the possibility that nothing could have worked, that the imbalance of power between energy incumbents and their challengers has simply been too steep.

http://www.grist.org/climate-policy/2011-07-28-balancing-climate-pragmatism-with-moral-clarity