Paris Global Climate Summit

LAURENT REBOURS/AP

Paris climate summit needs to create global framework - Two countries as different as possible, which were on opposite sides of climate debates two decades ago, are seeking to seize economic opportunities as the international climate summit gets underway next week in Paris.

The Netherlands is a small country of 12 million people with an advanced economy heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Even so, as Netherlands climate envoy Michel Rentenaar prepared for the summit last week, he argued that it is time to reject the false choice between protecting the climate and growing the economy.

India is at the other end of the spectrum — a developing country of 1.2 billion that has struggled to lift its people out of poverty. A quarter of the population has no access to electricity. It was once thought that fixing this would require long-term reliance on fossil fuels. But business-minded Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pushing ambitious solar and wind programs. His government also has developed emissions reduction plans, and clean-tech innovation in India is ramping up faster than almost anywhere.

Countries as diverse in economies, governments, resources and cultures as China, Costa Rica, the United Arab Emirates, Tanzania, Denmark, and the United States are taking steps toward cleaner energy, and seizing clean energy economic growth opportunities. Some of the moves are modest; others are monumental.

At the same time, while many consider climate change a planetary problem requiring a global response, there is a growing realization that implementation will occur primarily at state and local levels, in businesses and homes and communities. Mayors from around the world will be descending on Paris with the news that they can reduce emissions while their cities grow and flourish.

Also attending the summit will be start-ups from Boston, Silicon Valley, Mumbai, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Rio de Janeiro, Dubai, Barcelona, Nairobi, and many other places ready to launch the new clean energy light bulb, PV panel, app, battery, smart thermostat, electric vehicle, biofuel, appliance — if the United Nations can create the right framework.

Never have the global and the local been more closely linked, or more symbiotic.

This is good. Binding international agreements may compel action, but the ingenuity to discover effective solutions often comes from more local sources. Set a level playing field, move toward pricing fossil fuels in ways that finally account for their true costs, and remove regulatory barriers — doing that will allow businesses to step up to innovate technologies, financing, and deployment. The result will be similar to what we have achieved in Massachusetts: a leap from 3 megawatts of solar power in 2007 to more than 900 today; energy efficiency programs where each dollar invested returns three to four dollars in savings; participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, North America’s first carbon emissions trading program, resulting in almost $3 billion in net economic growth during its first six years; and since 1990, an almost 50% reduction in power-sector emissions while the state economy grew by 70%.

At the climate summit in 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was drafted, many underdeveloped nations argued that rich countries gained their wealth through unfettered use of dirty energy. Constraining underdeveloped nations was fundamentally unfair, they said, and would hamper their turn at economic development. That position prevailed, and the requirements of Kyoto only included developed countries.

But that argument has less purchase today. Clean energy innovations, the growing understanding of the economic costs of pollution, and deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy throughout the world show that greater emissions don’t always track economic development. That is why China, India, and many other developing countries are addressing climate change in Paris even as they desire rapid economic growth.

Achieving a global agreement in Paris will be challenging, and implementation of such an agreement will be one of the most complex political, technological, economic, and social endeavors humanity has ever undertaken. But if countries create the right global framework in Paris, with worldwide commitments for emissions reductions and continued financial assistance from developed-to-developing countries, then communities, businesses, and economies will seize the opportunity and drive toward a clean — and prosperous — energy future for all.