Seeking agreement on international climate policymaking - Ecology

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 2003 by Seth Dunn

Convergence

There are ways in which separate U.S. and international strategies might eventually converge. Various proposals for a U.S. national cap-and-trade program for carbon are being considered within the Bush Administration and Congress. One of these proposals, from Richard Morgenstern of Resources for the Future, would combine elements of a tax and trading system to allay concerns that carbon prices may skyrocket. Meanwhile, legal amendments to the Protocol could allow the permits that result from such a program to be recognized in the Kyoto system, and for Kyoto permits to be recognized in the U.S. system. However, this could create significant complications for multinationals operating within and outside the U.S., and could require agreement to certain terms dictated by governments that are already party to the Protocol, just as countries seeking to join the World Trade Organization must demonstrate an adherence to certain internationally accepted norms.

These challenges, and the failure of the U.S. to provide a credible alternative to Kyoto, lend weight to the argument of British climate policy expert Michael Grubb that the Kyoto Protocol remains the best method to achieve global action on climate change. Grubb contends that, if the EU leads an international effort, joining with Japan and Russia, to bring the Protocol into force, the U.S. will be under greater pressure to rejoin. This also would, he concludes, provide a long-term structure for controlling emissions and strengthen the international framework for continuing action. Further, it would demonstrate industrial-country leadership, making it easier to bring other nations on board at a later date, and it would bring to the private sector the certainty it seeks--and needs--regarding regulations and targets in order to foster the technological development and spread of energy-efficient and low-carbon technologies.

Indeed, achieving the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol at the earliest possible date will maximize the options for governments and businesses to map out strategies for meeting the Kyoto targets and for making progress toward the broader goal of climate stabilization. Bringing the Kyoto Protocol into force is the single most-important action needed to strengthen climate policy at both the national and international levels.

International climate policy would benefit as well from a specific long-term goal, on which scientists have yet to agree. In the June 2002 issue of Science, Brown University's Brian O'Neill and Princeton University's Michael Oppenheimer propose a carbon dioxide stabilization target of 450 ppmv (parts per million by volume), but note that this option would be foreclosed by further delay in reducing industrial-nation emissions. They thus conclude that the Kyoto accord "provides a first step that may be necessary for avoiding dangerous climate interference."

Although climate policymaking is still young, a decade of hindsight has made at least two things clear: Climate change has established itself on the radar screen of policymakers around the globe, and it will not be going away any time soon. As Thomas Schelling observes in the May/June 2002 issue of Foreign Affairs, "The greenhouse gas issues will persist through the entire century and beyond. Even though the developed nations have not succeeded in finding a collaborative way to approach the issue, it is still early. We have been at it for only a decade. But time should not be wasted getting started. Global climate change may become what nuclear arms control was for the past half century. It took more than a decade to develop a concept of arms control. It is not surprising that it is taking that long to find a way to come to consensus on an approach to the greenhouse problem."