opendemocracy on "Dumping on Kyoto"

opendemocracy — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:40:04 +0000

David,

There is another "realist" attack on Bali coming from Martin Wolf in his FT column. It is quite thoughtful; this is his argument:
- Kyoto targets have been flouted
- the rich are unlikely to tighten their belts for the poor
- therefore we need _real_ scare tactics: not 3C temperature increase, but 40C, Venus-style feedback loops, accompanied by
- a demonstration that low carbon is not hair-shirt

What worries me in this argument is that we are socially well inured to end-of-the-world Wolf-crying.

Where do you see a motivation for a deal coming from - if not liberally using the politics of energy-independence?

Tony

Dumping on Kyoto, David Steven

David Steven — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:58:27 +0000

‘Kyoto's failure haunts new U.N. talks.' ‘Time to ditch Kyoto.' These recent headlines have found a ready audience among those who have never liked the treaty.

But has Kyoto really proved a let down? Or is it performing as advertised when it was agreed with great fanfare in 1997, and then ratified a little over 7 painful years later?

In its scene setter for the Bali talks, the LA Times lays out three familiar charges against the treaty. The US, the world's largest emitter, didn't ratify. China and India were never asked to take on a target.

And most damaging of all, those countries which did agree to be bound by Kyoto either took on illusory targets or have little chance of meeting them.

Quote:

Japan: Emissions up 13% since 1990. Canada: A 27% rise. Spain: A 61% increase. Outside the former Soviet bloc, only six of the 23 industrialized Kyoto countries have cut their carbon dioxide emissions since 1990 -- leaving few nations positioned to meet next year's reduction targets.

Not so fast, say Kyoto supporters. Yes, the US is a problem, but that's not our fault. How could countries as poor as India and China be denied a chance to grow? And, while some countries will miss their targets, overall Kyoto's commitments will be met.

Let's focus on the final point. According to the UN projections, Kyoto countries will reduce emissions by 11% by 2012 from the 1990 baseline at current rates of progress. Additional planned policies could add 3% onto that, while credits purchased abroad, combined with protection of forests and other carbon sinks, adds another 2%.

In all, then, cuts total up to a reasonably creditable 16%.

But isn't this all to do with Eastern Europe's collapsing industry and the planned phase out of coal in the UK? The Japanese made precisely this complaint in their press conference yesterday.

In part it does, but progress is not entirely illusory. The EU is trumpeting the fact that it's on track to meet its 8% target at current rates of progress, but reckon it may make cuts of around 11.5% as other policies bite. (In comparison, the US is around 16% above 1990 emissions levels according to 2005 figures.)

Despite this, Harlan Watson, the chief US negotiator, is far from convinced that Kyoto is performing as advertised. "How effective has the current regime [Kyoto] been in reducing emissions?" he asked. "Perhaps the current regime, which is supposedly legally binding, is not doing the job."

I asked him what he thought about European claims of success. He believes the EU will only meet its target by buying credits from overseas, something UN and EU figures currently dispute. He was also deeply sceptical that deeper cuts were possible:

Quote:

The Kyoto countries that have obligations now, the developed countries, are having a great deal of difficulty in reducing emissions. There are only a few countries that have reduced emissions absolutely...Taking on even deeper cuts [after 2012] is going to be a steeper hill to climb.

So what are the alternative proposals coming from those who oppose Kyoto? It's worth a look at a much touted commentary piece from the highly-respected science journal, Nature, which has many Kyoto foes besides themselves with joy.

Written by Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner, their time to ditch Kyoto manifesto claims that only the deluded, pompous and prideful could possibly think that another set of binding targets was worth bothering with.

Quote:

In politics, however, sunk costs are often seen as political capital or as an investment of reputation and status. So we acknowledge that those advocating the Kyoto regime will be reluctant to embrace alternatives because it means admitting that their chosen climate policy has and will continue to fail.

But the rational thing to do in the face of a bad investment is to cut your losses and try something different.

Prins and Rayner are fully convinced of the climate change threat. They just think it is too complicated to be ‘amenable to an elegant solution.' They write that we are faced with ‘a nexus of mutually reinforcing, intertwined patterns of human behaviour, physical materials and the resulting technology.' Faced with such complexity, they argue, binding targets are futile in the extreme.

So what's the alternative?

A carbon tax would be a good, simple idea, but are not worth thinking about as they're too expensive to be politically feasible. Cap-and-trade is at once too ambitious and too slow to deliver results.

Which leaves them with one big idea (get governments to spend a lot of money on research into new technologies) and a handful of small ones. Help people adapt to climatic change for example (a subject that apparently that has apparently been taboo even to talk about until recently). Get local government and philanthropists to do their bit. Label consumer products more effectively.

In Prins and Rayner's world, ‘governments would focus on navigation, on maintaining course and momentum towards the goal of fundamental technological change, rather than on compliance with precise targets for emissions reductions.'

This iconoclastic argument would probably be more convincing were it to be heard at a dinner party when slightly drunk. For for all its tough talking, it can't escape that there's one big problem with its own big idea. The government spending they propose would require putting ‘public investment in energy R&D on a wartime footing'.

Prins and Rayner suggest that this is simply a matter of finding the equivalent of everything the world currently spends on defence:

Quote:

It seems reasonable to expect the world's leading economies and emitters to devote as much money to this challenge as they currently spend on military research - in the case of the United States, about $80 billion a year.

Now spending that sort of money may well be a reasonable response. It should even buy some compelling new technologies (though how wisely governments would invest it is a moot point).

But getting the Americans to spend $80 billion on basic research? I look forward to seeing Prins and Rayner travel to Washington to lobby for that tax hike.

Until they succeed, and given signs of Kyoto's modest success, I reckon targets of some kind do indeed remain the only game in town.

open Democracy News Analysis - Dumping on Kyoto, David Steven - Comments

opendemocracy on "Dumping on Kyoto"

Dumping on Kyoto, David Steven