Durban, South Africa—The U.N.’s climate change
conference here in South Africa winds down today. As usual with
these conferences, as the end becomes nigh negotiators turn elusive
and rumors run rampant. At the moment, it looks like the
negotiators will approve a new mechanism for distributing climate
reparations to poor countries, the Green Climate Fund. At earlier
Conferences of the Parties (COP-15 and COP-16) in Copenhagen and
Cancun, rich countries promised to distribute $30 billion in aid to
poor countries by 2012 to help them adapt to climate change. The
rich countries further promised to send $100 billion in such aid to
poor countries annually beginning in 2020.
The preferred options of the poor countries for funding the
Green Climate Fund in the draft negotiating text state that COP-17
“decides that all adaption finance shall be provided in the form of
grants and wherever possible, through direct access” and “decides
that the main or/major source of funding will be public sources.”
Poor country politicians are very anxious that the climate change
adaptation aid comes directly from the taxpayers of rich countries
and is sent directly to their governments’ coffers. About the Green
Climate Fund, U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern said, "I have a fair
amount of confidence this is going to get done in a positive way.”
Frankly, the sad,
decades-long record of the failure of trillions of dollars in
foreign aid to spur economic development in poor countries does not
provide much optimism that developing country governments will
handle climate change aid any more effectively.
The other big issue at COP-17 is what is going to happen to the
Kyoto Protocol. Poor countries want rich countries to make
commitments to further cut their greenhouse gas emissions for
another five years. However, Kyoto signatories Russia, Japan, and
Canada have declared they will not do so. The European Union says
that it will make further emissions cuts under the Kyoto Protocol
on the condition that the COP-17 agree to adopt a “roadmap” with
the goal of negotiating a new treaty by 2015 that would be legally
binding on all countries, especially major emitters like China and
the United States. That new treaty would go into force by 2020.
As of late Thursday night, COP-17 negotiators were haggling over
various options [PDF] concerning the “roadmap.” One option on
the table is a multiple choice draft statement which merely notes
that the Parties will agree to make “a set of decisions to be
adopted at the [18th][19th][21st][X] session of the Conference of
Parties.” In other words, we agree to decide something or other
about climate change and adopt it whenever. A roadmap to
nowhere?
Given all of the focus on keeping the Kyoto Protocol alive,
let’s pay a visit to an alternative universe. In this universe,
President Bill Clinton submits the Kyoto Protocol to the U.S.
Senate for ratification. And in this world, the U.S. Senate does
not vote
95 to 0 that the United States should not sign on to any treaty
that that did not include binding targets and timetables for
developing as well as industrialized nations because that "would
result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.”
Instead, the U.S. agreed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 7
percent below their 1990 levels. As it happens, the U.S. emitted a
total of
6.2 billion tons [PDF] of greenhouse gases in 1990. Now, let’s
also say that the U.S. fails to meet its Kyoto targets. This is not
implausible. After all, Kyoto signatories Japan and
Canada [PDF] failed to meet their greenhouse gas reduction
targets in the real universe.
Under the Protocol, countries that fail to meet their targets by
making domestic cuts in emissions can promise to meet their targets
in the next five year commitment period or they can buy some sort
of offsets to fulfill their treaty obligations. To make it simple,
let’s assume that the U.S. could buy emissions credits in the
European Trading Scheme market. So what might have happened?
In 1990 the U.S. emitted about 6.2 billion tons of greenhouse
gases and the goal was to emit 7 percent less than that by 2012.
The actual commitment period ran five years from 2008 through 2012.
In order to get some idea of how much the U.S. emitted, let’s add
the actual emissions as reported by 2008 and 2009. The figures for
the final three years are not yet available, but in 2010 U.S.
emissions of carbon dioxide increased 200 million tons. So let’s
add that to the 2009 figure and assume that overall greenhouse gas
emissions stabilized at that level for the duration.
Over the years the price for European emission credits has swung
wildly back and forth, rising as high $44 per ton and falling to
near zero. The current price hovers around $7 per ton. Based on the
above assumptions and calculations, the U.S. will have emitted more
than 5.8 billion tons more than its Kyoto target during the
relevant period. Had the U.S. had to buy offsetting credits when
the price per credit was $44 per ton that would have added up to an
outlay of about $255 billion. At $7 per ton, it would amount of
about $40 billion. Of course, had the U.S. been in the carbon
market that would likely have pushed the price for emissions
credits up substantially.
But what if the U.S. had actually fulfilled its treaty
obligations in this alternative universe, what would the costs have
been then? Since the U.S. did not join the Kyoto regime most
econometric studies were done over a decade ago. For example, Yale
University economist William Nordhaus has been modeling the
economic effects of climate change policies for a long time. Back
in 1998, he and Joseph Boyer calculated that if the U.S. joined the
Kyoto Protocol the total global cost of treaty compliance would
amount to
$716 billion [PDF], of which two-thirds would be paid by the
U.S. Nordhaus also estimated that the costs of compliance would
outweigh the benefits by a ratio of seven to one. Interestingly,
the Swiss bank UBS just issued a report that concluded that the
European Union’s emissions trading scheme has
cost European consumers €210 billion ($283 billion) for "almost
zero impact" on cutting CO2 emissions.
Finally, one little bit of drama occurred during U.S. climate
envoy Stern’s address to the plenary session of the COP-17.
According to
news reports, Middlebury college student Abigail Borah
interrupted Stern’s speech declaring, “I am speaking on behalf of
the United States of America because my negotiators cannot. The
obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition
for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to
wait. We need an urgent path to a fair ambitious and legally
binding treaty.” Borah was apparently applauded by many delegates
before she was removed from the auditorium by police.
Note: This is the fifth daily dispatch from the U.N. Climate
Change Conference in Durban. The conference ends Friday. I will be
reporting from the conference until the bitter end.
Ronald Bailey is Reason
magazine's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and
Moral Case for the Biotech
Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.
No comments:
Post a Comment