能源技术革新 挽救地球的最后机会

The world faces an unprecedented challenge: to change the high-carbon energy DNA of the global economy in the next three decades to low carbon. This requires directed technological change on a historic scale.

世界面临史无前例的挑战：在未来30年将全球经济的能源DNA从高碳转变为低碳。这需要一种历史性的有控技术革新。

It could well fail, and with failure will come a planet wrecked by climate change. At Tuesday’s UN climate summit, nations began the negotiations to last through 2015 that are our last chance to change course.

这一变革很可能失败，如果失败的话，气候变化将给地球带来巨大的破坏。在上周二的联合国(UN)气候峰会上，各国开始了将持续至2015年的谈判，这是我们做出改变的最后机会。

The reasons we need to change course on the economy, energy and environment are diverse and interconnected. They include persistence of extreme poverty and rising inequality; human-induced climate change; the destruction of biodiversity; and, most generally, the many challenges of a large and growing world economy and population that press far too hard on the earth’s fragile ecosystems and resources.

我们需要在经济、能源和环境方面做出改变，改变的理由是多样化的、彼此关联的。这些理由包括：难以根除的极度贫困，日益加重的不平等；人为导致的气候变化；生物多样性遭到破坏；而最主要的理由是，庞大并日益增长的世界经济和人口带来了许多挑战，这对地球脆弱的生态系统和资源造成了极大的压力。

The question is not the need for change but how to achieve it. The challenges of global-scale social and economic change are profound, not least high levels of inertia visible in the world’s economic and technological systems – industry, energy, transport, production, trade and investment.

问题不在于是否有必要改变，而是如何做出改变。要在全球范围内从社会和经济方面做出改变，挑战是艰巨的，尤其是全球经济和技术体系——工业、能源、交通、生产、贸易和投资——存在显而易见的巨大惰性。

The inertia of the global economy results from several powerful factors: long-term infrastructure, vested interests (perhaps no lobby is more powerful than Big Oil), geopolitical competition, short-termism and massive technological uncertainties and challenges. The world needs to chart a new low-carbon energy trajectory, but what will it be? Of course, different countries will make different choices and should be supported to do so.

全球经济的惰性源于多个强有力的因素：长期基础设施建设、既得利益者（或许没有比大型石油公司更强大的游说集团了）、地缘政治竞争、短期主义和巨大的技术不确定性和挑战。世界需要绘制新的低碳能源轨迹，但这种轨迹是什么样子？当然，不同的国家将会做出不同的选择，而且我们也应该支持他们的选择。

For the politicians, the issue of climate change is deeply unpleasant. It is filled with uncertainty and technical complexity; it involves time horizons far beyond election cycles; it requires patient long-term investments; and it requires new public-private institutions that are no joy to design and implement over the din of lobbyists. And these issues involve counterintuitive choices, such as stranding fossil fuel reserves that have been discovered but cannot safely be burned because of the need to limit carbon emissions.

对政客们来说，气候变化问题令人头疼。它充斥着不确定性，技术上也非常复杂；它的时间跨度远远长过选举周期；它需要耐心的长期投资；而且它需要建立新型的公私合作机制——在游说者的吵吵嚷嚷中，这种机制是很难成功设计和实施的。这些问题还涉及一些违反直觉的选择，比如停止开采已被发现、但由于需要限制碳排放而无法安全燃烧的化石燃料储藏。

These considerations have so far caused 22 years of inaction since the signing of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. So how to move forward? Here’s my take. First, we should hold on for dear life to the globally agreed commitment to keep the rise in mean temperature below 2C. This is not meant to be a target, mind you; it is meant to be an upper limit. By all accounts, right now we are on a 4C-6C trajectory instead.

基于上述问题，世界在自签署《联合国气候变化框架公约》(UNFCCC)以来的22年间无所作为。那么应该如何推进进展？我的建议有如下几点。首先，我们应该坚持全球达成一致的承诺，让平均气温升幅低于2摄氏度。提醒人们注意的是，这并不是目标，而是上限。人人都说，我们现在实际上已经处于气温上升4至6摄氏度的轨迹当中。

Second, each of the countries that is a big emitter (and many other high-income and smaller middle-income countries) should agree to design – and present to the world – a country-specific pathway to deep decarbonisation by 2050 that is consistent with the 2C limit. Such deep decarbonisation pathways would provide country-level scenarios of how each of the world’s leading economies proposes to cut emissions to 1-1.5 tons a head by 2050, implying a reduction of about 90 per cent in the US, and about 80 per cent in China and Europe.

其次，每个温室气体排放大国（以及其他许多高收入国家和规模较小的中等收入国家），都应该同意设计（并向世界展示）本国到2050年深度脱碳的路径规划，该规划要与气温升幅不超过2摄氏度的上限相符。此类深度脱碳规划应让我们从国家层面上看到，所有全球主要经济体计划如何到2050年将人均排放削减到1-1.5吨——这意味着美国减排约90%，中国和欧洲减排约80%。

Third, the world’s governments and leading businesses (especially in energy, transport, industry and construction) need to undertake a massive and co-operative programme of research, development, demonstration and diffusion of low-carbon technologies. A clear, predictable carbon tax would help those technologies by giving a market-based incentive to shift from carbon; but carbon pricing is not enough to generate the rapid development and uptake of new technologies, or the network infrastructure to deploy them.

第三，世界各国政府和大型企业（尤其是在能源、交通、工业和建筑领域）需要大规模地开展合作项目，对低碳技术进行研发、论证和传播。明确而可预测的碳税将对放弃高碳提供市场激励，从而有助于这些技术的发展，但现在的碳价还不足以让新技术迅速发展和实施，也不足以促进用于实施这些技术的网络基础设施的发展。

Such public-private partnerships in low-carbon technologies are not a new type of co-operation. They are familiar from the military sector, informatics, computing, space science, genomics and physics (as in the government-backed hunt for the Higgs boson). Several leading economies are indeed very good at directed technological change. But when it comes to low-carbon energy, we just haven’t really tried.

低碳技术上的此类公私合作并非新的合作模式。它们常见于军事部门、信息学、计算科学、空间科学、基因组学和物理学领域——寻找希格斯玻色子(Higgs boson)的政府支持项目就是这样。多个主要经济体实际上非常擅长于有针对性的技术变革。但就低碳能源来说，我们甚至没有真正尝试过。

There is a narrow path up to climate safety. It involves holding on to a clear goal, in this case the 2C limit. It involves finding practical pathways to success for each of the big emitting countries. And it requires a well-funded, generation-long effort to develop the low-carbon technologies that we will need.

通往气候安全的道路狭窄。它包括坚持明确的目标，也就是2摄氏度的升温上限。它还包括为每个排放大国成功减排找到切实可行的道路。它需要资金充裕、长达一代人之久的努力来开发我们需要的低碳技术。

As the politicians met at the UN this week, they had not yet decided on such a bold, co-operative, generation-long effort. Yet our survival depends on it. Tuesday’s gathering will have mattered if its pushes political and business leaders in the direction of survival. We can save our planet and ourselves if we decide to do it. With crucial negotiations ahead in 2015, next year will be the year of decision.

当政客们上周在联合国会晤之际，他们还没有就如此大胆、需要一代人之久的合作努力做出决定。然而，这关系到我们的生死存亡。如果上周二的峰会把政界和商界领导人推向为人类存活而努力的方向，那么峰会将是具有重要意义的。如果我们决定这么做，就可以挽救我们的星球和我们自己。2015年将举行关键的谈判，那将是决定性的一年。