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Curbing Global Warming the Easy Way: An Alternative to the Kyoto Protocol*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Marco Verweij
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Extract

Global Warming Poses the Gravest of Ecological Risks, and presents numerous hurdles to international environmental agreement. A major initiative to pre-empt this threat is the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In this article, I argue that this treaty constitutes an ineffective attempt to curb global warming, and should be replaced by an alternative set of domestic and international policies.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , 2003 , pp. 139 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2003.

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Raimund Bleischwitz, Christoph Engel, Henry Farrell, Archon Fung, Frank Hendriks, Adrienne Héritier, Alkuin Kölliker, Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer, Susanne Lohmann, Barbet Punt, Steve Rayner, Michael Thompson, Jan Zielonka and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. I am also indebted to Tom Heller for several stimulating discussions on the topic of the essay.

References

1 Greenhouse gases include: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chloro-fluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride, water vapour, black soot and tropospheric ozone.

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3 A range of critiques of the global-warming thesis can be found at: http://www.ncpa.org/hotlines/global/gwhot1.html.

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6 See: http://www.unfccc.de/resource/convkp.html.

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10 See: http://unfccc.int/resource/natcom/index.html.

11 Two other such mechanisms are ‘joint implementation’ and the ‘clean development mechanism’. Ronald Brunner has argued that these proposals amount to ‘technocratic hubris’, while Robert Repetto has labelled these plans an ‘institutional nightmare’ that would breed moral hazard problems. See Brunner, , ‘Science and the Climate Change Regime’, Policy Sciences, 34 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Repetto, R., ‘The Clean Development Mechanism: Institutional Breakthrough or Institutional Nightmare?’, Policy Sciences, 34: 3–4 (2001), pp. 303–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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14 Other allocation mechanisms are possible. ‘Bench-marking’ would make the size of emission permits dependent on some form of business activity (e.g., a steel firm would have permission to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases for each ton of steel that it produces). However, in case of unexpected economic growth, this allocation mechanism runs the risk of not reaching the absolute targets that the Kyoto Protocol foresees. This might necessitate extra policy measures, which could affect the prices of the permits. ‘Auctioning’ would entail letting companies obtain permits by having them bid for them. From an administrative point of view, this is the most practical allocation mechanism. But it is also the system most vehemently rejected by companies. See European Commission, ‘Green Paper on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading within the EU’, available at http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/environment/docum/0087_summary.pdf (23 June 2002).

15 Confidential author's interview at the Seventh Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, Marrakesh, 3 November 2001.

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25 Figures taken from US Department of Energy, Choices for a Brighter Future: Perspectives on Renewable Energy, http://www.eren.doe.gov/power/choices.html (10 July 2001); and from U.S. Department of Energy, State Energy Alternatives, http://www.eren.doe.gov/state_energy/technologies.cfm, (10 July 2001).

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38 J. Dooley, P. Runci, and E. Luiten, Energy RD&D in the Industrialized World, op. cit.

39 In terms of the models that have been built to predict the costs of combating climate change, I am siding here with the conclusions that follow from ‘bottom-up models’, and against the results of ‘top-down models’. For this distinction, as well as a useful overview of the literature on modelling the costs of climate change, see Edmonds, Jae, Roop, Joseph M. and Scott, Michael J., Technology and the Economics of Climate Change, Washington, DC, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2000 Google Scholar.

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