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The Global Warming Tragedy and the Dangerous Illusion of the Kyoto Protocol
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2012
Abstract
In 2001, 178 of the world's nations reached agreement on a treaty to combat global climate change brought on by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite the notable omission of the United States, representatives of the participants, and many newspapers around the world, expressed elation. Margot Wallström, the environment commissioner of the European Union, went so far as to declare, “Now we can go home and look our children in the eye and be proud of what we have done.”
In this article, I argue for two theses. First, the rhetoric and euphoria surrounding the 2001 deal is misplaced. This is not, as is often said, because the Kyoto agreement is too demanding but rather because it is much too weak. In particular, the Kyoto agreement does little to protect future generations. On the contrary, (at best) it seems to be a prudent wait-and-see policy for the present generation, narrowly defined. Hence, even those countries who have endorsed the Kyoto agreement should be wary of looking their children in the eye, and none should relish facing their children's children.
Second, the failure of the Kyoto agreement can be explained in terms of the underlying structure of the problem. Climate change involves the intersection of a complex set of intergenerational and intragenerational collective action problems. This structure, and in particular its intergenerational aspect, has not been adequately appreciated. Yet until it is, we are doomed to an ineffectual environmental policy.
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References
1 Quoted in Brown, Paul, “World Deal on Climate Isolates US,” Guardian, July 24, 2001, p. 1Google Scholar.
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5 Revkin, Andrew, “Deals Break Impasse on Global Warming Treaty,” New York Times, November 11, 2001, p. A8Google Scholar. Others were more circumspect, but still positive. Olivier Deleuze, Belgium's energy and sustainability minister, said that he would rather have “an imperfect agreement that is living than a perfect agreement that doesn't exist.” Quoted in Andrew Revkin, “178 Nations Reach a Climate Accord; U.S. Only Looks On,”New York Times, July 24, 2001, p. A1.
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7 At this point, ratification by Russia is not a foregone conclusion. President Putin promised in 2002 to have the process under way by the beginning of 2003, but by October 2003 this had still not occurred. Many commentators had initially assumed that Russia would be eager to ratify, since the economic collapse following the end of Communism had reduced its own emissions and therefore appeared to give it a large surplus of permits to sell once the Kyoto targets were in place. More recently, however, some have expressed doubts about this scenario. For example, in October 2003, Andrei Illarionov, an advisor to President Putin on economic policy, was widely reported to oppose Russian participation, saying that it would “doom Russia to poverty, weakness and backwardness.” See Tim Hirsch, “Climate Talks End Without Result,” BBC News, October 3,2003; available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3163030.stm; and Paul Brown, “EU Presses Moscow to Save Kyoto,”Guardian, February 26, 2003, p. 13.
8 In game theory, such a situation can be described as a many-person Battle-of-the-Sexes game. Global warming is described in these terms in Jeremy Waldron, “Who Is to Stop Polluting? Different Kinds of Free-Rider Problem” (Cornell University, 1990, unpublished). See also Mabey, Nick, Hall, Stephen, Smith, Claire, and Gupta, Sujata, Argument in the Greenhouse: The International Economics of Controlling Global Warming (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 356–59, 409–10;Google Scholar and Barrett, , “Political Economy of the Kyoto Protocol,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 14 (1998), PP. 36–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Sometimes this is based on analysis. See, e.g., Mendelsohn, Robert O., ed., Global Warming and the American Economy (London: Edward Elgar, 2001),CrossRefGoogle Scholarwhich argues that the economic benefits of global warming will marginally outweigh the costs in the United States. Sometimes, however, it seems simply to be inferred from the U.S. stance in negotiations. See, e.g., Mabey, et al. , Argument in the Greenhouse, p. 408Google Scholar; and Nitze, W. A., “A Failure of Presidential Leadership,” in Mintzer, Irving and Leonard, J. Amber, Negotiating Climate Change: The Inside Story of the Rio Convention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 189–90Google Scholar. In both cases, there is a serious problem in coming up with realistic assessments of possible costs. For a much more complex analysis, see National Assessment Synthesis Team, Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000Google Scholar); available at http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/nacc/default.htm.
10 In the immediate aftermath of the United States's withdrawal from the Kyoto agreement, the U.S. president and Japanese prime minister agreed to high-level bilateral talks on areas of common ground and for common action on climate change. Shortly after Japan started to express reservations about ratification in January 2002, the second round of talks took place in Tokyo. Japan ratified later that yearGoogle Scholar.
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18 Of course, some rewards are passed on in the form of technological advances and increases in the capital stock. This raises the prospect that future generations might be compensated for the damage they inherit through having better resources with which to deal with it. However, in general, the point is limited because much of the benefit of emissions is not passed on but simply consumed; technology and capital are far from perfect substitutes for environmental quality; and the precise physical effects of global warming are unpredictable but likely to be severe, and possibly catastrophic, so that effective deployment of the inherited benefits to mitigate them would be extremely difficult.Google Scholar
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25 The United Kingdom is an exception here. In early 2003, it released a white paper promising deep reductions in emissions by 2050. Yet, even at this early stage, the House of Commons's Science and Technology Committee was reported as concluding that the white paper “contained few practical policy proposals that gave any confidence that its targets and aspirations could be met,” and that, of the specific targets of 10 percent renewable power generation by 2010 and 20 percent by 2020, the former was said to have “no prospect,” and the latter to be doubtful. Staff and Agencies, ‘“No Chance’ of UK Meeting Greenhouse Targets,”Guardian, April 3, 2003; available at http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,9061,929046,00.htmlGoogle Scholar.
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40 See Brown, , American HeatGoogle Scholar.
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