More than 160 nations are gathering at The Hague in
the Netherlands through November 24 to reach final agreement on the
implementation of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Clinton
Administration, led by Vice President Al Gore, had agreed to the
Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions in December 1997 at the third
Conference of the Parties (COP-3) to the Convention in Kyoto,
Japan.
The
Administration took this action just five months after the U.S.
Senate had unanimously passed a resolution stating that it would
not ratify any global climate treaty that would seriously harm the
U.S. economy or fail to require developing and developed countries
to reduce their emissions within the same compliance time frame.
The Administration has yet to submit the treaty for Senate
ratification. Moreover, the continuing national and international
debates about the causes and extent of global warming have raised
fundamental questions about the real need for this agreement and
its feasibility.
The
Kyoto Protocol establishes mandatory, differentiated targets for
the world's developed countries to reduce or limit their greenhouse
gas emissions. Under its negotiated terms, the United States must
reduce its emissions of six greenhouse gases by 7 percent below its
1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. However, U.S. carbon emissions
are projected to be 43 percent above the Kyoto-mandated cap by
2010. The gap between projected emissions and the Kyoto cap will
grow to 51 percent by 2015. At the same time, developing countries
such as China, India, and Mexico, whose emissions will exceed those
of developed countries in the same time frame, are exempt from such
requirements.
Three years after the Protocol was
adopted, the Clinton Administration has failed to secure the
Senate's support for the treaty. In signing the Protocol on
November 12, 1998, the Administration had signaled both the intent
to seek Senate ratification and the intent to pursue the treaty's
goals without it. The Administration has taken the position that
"global climate change is one of our greatest environmental
challenges" and has established a domestic plan to try to meet the
unratified Protocol's unrealistic goals. It
proposed regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant,
promised the business community financial rewards through credits
for early action to reduce greenhouse gases, and significantly
increased federal spending and tax credits for climate change
"research" and "investment" programs.
Although the Administration is taking
steps to implement its domestic plan of action, it has had much
less success with other parties to the Protocol in resolving the
many complex international implementation issues. Despite more than
four meetings involving more than 160 nations, there has been
little real progress to date. For the Protocol to enter into force,
it must be ratified by at least 55 nations representing at least 55
percent of the total carbon dioxide emissions emitted in 1990 by
the developed nations of the world. So far, only 30
nations have ratified the Protocol--all developing countries. Among the more
contentious issues to be resolved are how to measure emissions
reductions, the rules for an emissions trading system, how to
estimate removal and storage of carbon by forests and other natural
"sinks," and the consequences for non-compliance.
It
was expected that the parties attending the COP-4 meeting in Buenos
Aires, Argentina, in November 1998 would make progress in
negotiating the unresolved issues, but little was accomplished. The
parties agreed to set a two-year timetable for a work plan that
would culminate in successful completion of negotiations at the
COP-6 meeting now taking place at The Hague. Then, after little
additional progress had been made at the COP-5 meeting in Bonn,
Germany, in October 1999, the delegates made a commitment to bring
the Kyoto Protocol into force no later than 2002.
According to Michael Zammit Cutajar, the
COP-6 meeting's Executive Secretary, "The [Hague] meeting's success
will be measured by the early entry into force of the Kyoto
Protocol--I hope by 2002, ten years after the adoption of the
Convention at the Rio Earth Summit." But as Cutajar had
observed at a preliminary meeting this past September in Lyon,
France, "No major industrialized country is going to commit itself
to the Kyoto Protocol until it knows the economic consequences."
There will be a major push at The Hague to
save the Kyoto Protocol. The slow progress in negotiating
implementation underscores how unworkable the framework is and how
much is at stake for participating nations. For the United States,
analysis of the Protocol clearly indicates that a fully implemented
Kyoto Protocol will negatively affect the U.S. economy, American
jobs, the environment, the U.S. standard of living, energy costs
and use, global competitiveness, the balance of trade, and--perhaps
most important--national sovereignty. As the previous
COP meetings have demonstrated, the real negotiations will go on
behind closed doors, and most of the difficult issues will not be
agreed to until the last minute, if at all. These decisions will
have long-lasting consequences for the United States and the next
President.
Unfortunately, the timing of the COP-6
meeting requires that the interests of the United States in these
negotiations are represented primarily by a lame duck
Administration rather than by the newly elected President and his
Administration. Moreover, the ongoing fiscal year (FY) 2001 U.S.
budget negotiations have forced a lame duck session of Congress and
created uncertainty for Members who would otherwise consider
attending the meeting at The Hague to monitor the negotiations. The
interests of the United States would be better served if any final
agreements on implementation were postponed until the COP-7 meeting
to be held next year in Morocco.
LATEST CLIMATE CHANGE REPORTS CLOUD
NEGOTIATIONS
Here's a sobering thought: 20th century temperatures rose about 10
times the amount that Kyoto would prevent in the next 50 years,
and, at the same time, life span doubled, crop yields quintupled,
and the greatest democratization of wealth in the world's history
took place.
--Patrick J. Michaels and Robert Balling,
Jr., The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air
About Global Warming.
The
extent of human impact on the climate remains the subject of highly
complex scientific analysis. Many uncertainties surround even the
theory of "global warming." Initially, it was commonly thought that
climate change, particularly global warming, could be explained as
a simple cause-and-effect relationship between increases in
greenhouse gas emissions and increases in average temperatures.
The
conventional thinking has been that man's industrial activities
increase greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and
trigger warming with environmental consequences. But the findings
of recent scientific research raise questions about these long-held
assumptions. As technology improves, other variables that affect
climate are better understood. These include cloud changes, carbon
sinks, solar radiation, tropospheric ozone, tropospheric aerosols,
and volcanic aerosols. The more that is
learned about the climate change process, the more inadequate the
existing climate change models become. The temperature change they
predict is continually reduced as more information and better
models become available.
Dr.
Kenneth Green, Director of the Environmental Program at the Reason
Public Policy Institute, has put the observed changes in the
climate in perspective:
Our
ability really to know what the climate is doing is limited by a
short observational record and by the uncertainties involved in
trying to figure out what the climate was like in the past or might
be like in the future, for comparison with recent climate changes.
While the Earth's climate has been evolving and changing for over
four billion years, recordings of the temperature only cover about
150 years, less than .000004 percent of the entire pattern of
evolving climate. In fact, temperature records are spotty before
the 1950s and only cover a tiny portion of the globe mostly over
land.
Every five years, the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assesses the state
of global warming science. In its 1995 Second Assessment Report on
global climate change, the IPCC released its now famous and widely
reported conclusion that there is a "discernable human impact on
the climate system."
Less
widely reported was the same report's conclusion that "it should be
clear...that current data and systems are inadequate for the
complete description of climate change." The IPCC report
responded to the question of whether climate changes can be
attributed to human action by stating:
Although these global mean results suggest
that there is some anthropogenic component in the observed
temperature record, they cannot be
considered compelling evidence of a clear cause-and-effect
link between anthropogenic forcing and changes in the Earth's
surface temperature.
Thus, while there is some warming, there
remains considerable uncertainty about how much of it is due to
human activity.
Over
the last year, a series of National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
reports have confirmed significant uncertainties regarding the
science of global warming, the inadequacy of U.S. climate models,
and the tools available to study global climate. The September 1999
report produced by the Academy's National Research Council
Committee on Global Climate Change Research, Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways
for the Next Decade, for example, concludes:
It
would be a misinterpretation of U.S. administration policy and
agreements at the Kyoto conference to conclude that the causes and
characteristics of global change are sufficiently clear that
scientific inquiry in this area should be limited to mitigation
measures. The agreements at the Kyoto conference are based on a
general understanding of some causes and characteristics of global
change; however, there remain many scientific uncertainties about
important aspects of climate change.
On
March 30, 2000, Elbert W. Friday, Director of the National Research
Council's Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Board, made it clear in
testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
that the comprehensive review of the climate change research
reflected in the Pathways report
points to serious deficiencies in U.S. capabilities with respect to
the monitoring of climate change trends, making it much more
difficult to draw conclusions about the long-term behavior of the
climate system.
In
January 2000, another National Research Council report concluded
that both the surface-based temperature record (which shows a small
global warming trend) and the satellite-measured temperature record
(which shows a very slight warming trend--a rate less than
one-third the rate observed at the Earth's surface) are correct. As the Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature
Change report points out, "climate models generally predict
that temperatures should increase in the upper air as well as at
the surface if increased concentrations of greenhouse gases are
causing the warming."
In
other words, all climate models project a rise in the atmosphere's temperature from
the surface to about five miles up because of increasing levels of
greenhouse gas. But if the global average temperature records are
correct, then the climate models are wrong. The layer of the
atmosphere measured by satellite instruments should warm at a
faster rate than the surface, according to the climate models, yet
the records show the opposite occurring. The report concludes:
Regardless of whether the disparity is
real, the panel cautions that temperature trends based on data for
such short periods of record, with arbitrary start and end points,
are not necessarily indicative of the long-term behavior of the
climate system.
Based on these findings, Dr. John Christy
of the Earth System Science Laboratory at the University of
Alabama-Huntsville has observed, "One finds it difficult to
conclude the climate change is occurring in the U.S. and that it is
exceedingly difficult to conclude that part of that change might
have been caused by human factors." Christy also
points out that satellite data show most of the planet has
experienced below-average temperatures. He notes:
Has
hot weather occurred before in the U.S.? All time record high
temperatures by states begin in 1888. Only eleven of the states
have uniquely seen record highs since 1950 (35 occurred prior to
1950, 4 states had records occurring before and after 1950). Hot
weather happens. Similar findings appear from an examination of
destructive weather events. The intensity and frequency of
hurricanes have not increased. The intensity and frequency of
tornadoes have not increased.... Droughts and wet spells have not
statistically increased or decreased. Last summer's drought in the
Northeast was remarkable in the sense that for the country as a
whole, the typical percentage area covered by drought was below
average. Deaths in US cities are no longer correlated with high
temperatures, though deaths still increase during cold
temperatures.
THE FIRST NATIONAL ASSESSMENT AND A LEAKED
IPCC REPORT: SCIENCE OR POLITICS?
On June 12, 2000, the Clinton Administration's Global Climate
Change Research Program (GCRP) in the Department of Energy released
a draft of its first National Assessment, which predicts that U.S.
temperatures will soar by 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. This widely
reported conclusion contradicts the recent trend in the scientific
community toward more moderate predictions of warming and its
likely consequences. In 1990, for example, the IPCC predicted an
increase of 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. In 1992, it predicted
an increase of 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit by that year. And in 1995, it
predicted an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100--40 percent
below its 1990 prediction.
The
release of the draft report for public comment followed two rounds
of technical peer review. Congress had directed in the FY 2000
appropriations bill that all research
used in the National Assessment be subject to peer review and made
available to the public prior to its use in the actual Assessment,
and that the Assessment be made available to the public in the Federal Register for a 60-day public
comment period. The Administration agreed to this requirement; but
when it released the draft GCRP report last June, elements of the
Assessment addressing regional and sectoral impacts were not made
available for review.
Members of Congress have questioned the
timing of the draft's release and the circumvention of the peer
review and public notice requirements. Moreover, the compressed
timetable for review makes it more likely that the National
Assessment will be included in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report,
due out in early 2001. Evidence suggests that the IPCC has already
used the U.S. draft report in its assessment, and in fact
references it, which has
triggered a lawsuit by three Members of Congress and public policy
organizations alleging violations of the Federal Advisory Committee
Act and the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Act, as well as
congressionally directed restrictions on federal spending. President Clinton
released the final report on November 11, just as the negotiations
were set to begin.
Less
than two weeks before the U.S. presidential elections, copies of
the IPCC Assessment's draft Summary for Policymakers were leaked to
the Associated Press and other media, and the issue of global
warming became part of the election debates. The Summary suggests a
higher range of potential warming than previous estimates and
higher sea levels by 2100, with global average temperatures
increasing between 2.7 degrees to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit, and sea
levels by 14 to 80 centimeters.
Dr.
Kenneth Green, who reviewed part of the Third Assessment but not
the IPCC's leaked report, highlights several key things the Summary
fails to do. Specifically, it:
-
Does not
explain that increases in predicted future temperatures
from the last IPCC assessment are due to added worst-case scenarios
generated outside the careful peer-reviewed publication of the
Third Assessment Report, rather than changes in gathered evidence
or empirically documented trends in climate, energy use, or
greenhouse gas production;
-
Does not spell
out how extreme the worst-case scenarios are;
-
Does not
explain that predictions of future climate were generated
not with state-of-the-art models, but with simple climate models
that cannot reliably reproduce known temperature changes of recent
years;
-
Does not
provide the contextualizing information needed to
communicate accurately what scientists have learned about past
climate changes, current climate function, or future climate
expectations;
-
Does not
mention that observed climate changes are only partially
due to human activity; and
- Was not peer
reviewed by the same experts who reviewed the technical
reports from which it is derived.
Because the leaked Summary for
Policymakers lacks information for putting the document into
perspective, Dr. Green concluded that the leak "can only harm the
search for a consensus statement of knowledge and the search for
appropriate responses to the risks posed by climate change."
Regrettably, the IPCC's Third Assessment
appears to repeat the disturbing pattern that characterized its
Second Assessment in 1996. For example, "discernable human
influence" language was added to the Second Assessment's Summary
for Policymakers after the report had already been approved by the
IPCC in 1995 but before the report was printed in 1996. Several
other changes in the Summary were made after the IPCC had approved
the report in 1995.
In
the four months leading up to The Hague negotiations this month,
efforts by the Clinton Administration and the United Nations to
release the conclusions of these draft reports prematurely have
created an atmosphere of distrust and seriously impeded any certain
understanding of the factors that contribute to climate change.
Clearly, much more research is needed before the United States
commits to such a costly and burdensome policy as the Kyoto
Protocol.
WHAT'S AT STAKE AT COP-6
There will be a major push at The Hague to save the Kyoto
Protocol. Both the number of outstanding issues to be resolved and
the failure to address many of these issues over the past three
years underscore the reality that the Protocol is fundamentally
flawed.
A
review of the issues reveals that the Protocol is also inherently
unfair, placing the United States at a significant disadvantage
compared with Europe and other developed nations. In addition, the
United States would be forced to take costly steps to curtail
energy consumption and reduce emissions even as emissions
worldwide--driven particularly by growth in the emissions of
developing countries--increase overall. Finally, the United States
would be subjecting itself to the enforcement mechanisms of
yet-to-be-determined international organizations that would
exercise considerable control over U.S. energy and land use.
Fortunately, the Kyoto Protocol will not
become binding on the United States until ratified by two-thirds of
the Members of the U.S. Senate, which is not likely to happen any
time soon. As of September 12, 2000, 84 countries had signed the
treaty, including the United States, the European Union (EU) and
most of its members, Canada, Japan, and several developing nations
such as China that are not bound by its emission reduction targets.
To date, none of the 30 countries that have ratified the Kyoto
Protocol are developed nations.
Unresolved Issues
The outstanding issues are significant. The delegates at
COP-6 will be working to define the rules by which the so-called
Kyoto Mechanisms (on international emissions trading, the clean
development mechanism, joint implementation, and carbon "sinks")
will be implemented and establish the rules and enforcement
measures for non-compliance.
Emissions
Reductions
Developed countries (referred to as Annex B countries) in
the Protocol are committed to reducing overall emissions by at
least 5 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. The amount
by which developed countries must change their emissions is
reflected as a percentage of base year 1990 emission levels and
ranges from 92 percent (a reduction of 8 percent) for most European
countries to 110 percent (an increase of 10 percent) for Iceland.
The United States accepted a level of 7 percent below its 1990
levels by 2008 to 2012. The EU agreed to an average of 8 percent
below the combined 1990 levels of its members by the 2008 to 2012
time frame. Australia, by comparison, will be allowed an 8 percent
increase.
How
realistic the targets are remains open to debate. According to the
U.S. Energy Information Administration, total U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions in 1999 were 0.8 percent higher than in 1998 and 10.7
percent higher than in 1990. U.S. carbon
emissions are projected to be 43 percent above the Kyoto-mandated
cap by 2010. The gap between projected emissions and the Kyoto cap
grows to 51 percent by 2015. To meet the target, the United States
would have to cut emissions by more than one-third in less than a
decade.
A
recent report by the Worldwide Fund for Nature estimates that the
EU will fail to achieve its target of an 8 percent reduction from
1990 levels by the year 2010. A review of five
government reports and one independent study by WEFA, a U.S.
econometrics consulting firm, found that all the reports conclude
prospects are not good that the United States, Canada, Japan,
Australia, and New Zealand could meet their Kyoto targets without
relying on such measures as emissions trading or carbon taxes, and
that prospects for meeting reduction targets through additional
fuel substitution are small.
Developing
Country Participation
A fundamental flaw in the Kyoto Protocol that is unlikely
to be resolved during the COP-6 negotiations is that it does not
require "meaningful participation" by the developing nations. Only
38 developed nations have binding emission reductions targets.
Moreover, the Protocol requires nothing
from any of the world's top developing country emitters of carbon
dioxide, which include Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran,
Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan--about
150 nations in all. Yet these nations soon will emit more carbon
than the United States while being able to dictate the compliance
terms for the United States and other developed countries. China
leads the world in coal use and CO2 emissions from coal, and coal
use in China and other Asian developing countries is expected to
increase significantly over the next 20 years. Forecasts show world
coal demand growing nearly 70 percent between 1995 and 2020, with
China and India accounting for 85 percent of that increase.
On
July 25, 1997, the Senate overwhelmingly passed Senate Resolution
98 (the Byrd-Hagel Resolution) to express its intent that the
United States not be a signatory to any protocol that does not
mandate "new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce
greenhouse gas emissions for the developing country Parties within
the same compliance period" imposed on developed nations. Many developing
countries have rapidly growing economies and will become the
largest emitters of greenhouse gases within the next 15 to 20
years. Because greenhouse gases know no boundaries, stabilization
of greenhouse gas concentrations would require global
participation. Moreover, regulating the emissions of only a handful
of countries could lead to the migration of energy-intensive
production--such as the chemical, steel, petroleum, refining,
aluminum, and mining industries--from industrialized countries to
the growing developing countries that are not subject to the Kyoto
restrictions.
Developing countries also have rejected
overtures by the Clinton Administration to reduce their emissions
of greenhouse gases, insisting instead that they desperately need
to use carbon-based energy to overcome poverty. Since 1997, only
the developing countries of Argentina, Kazakhstan, and Bolivia have
agreed to reduce their emissions. Side negotiations between a
handful of other developing countries and the United States have
occurred, but these countries are discussing voluntary commitments
in exchange for generous technology transfers and other aid from
the United States--and only outside of the formal framework of the
Kyoto Protocol.
The
impact that developing countries are expected to have on CO2
emissions makes it very unlikely that the Protocol will have any
real effect on global temperatures. At best, the Kyoto Protocol
would lower the projected temperature during the next century by
only 0.1 degree Celsius.
Emissions
Trading
An international emissions trading system is the only way
to effect significant reductions in the costs of meeting the Kyoto
targets. The Protocol would allow each country with a binding
emission reduction target to use emissions trading, and other
flexibility mechanisms such as "bubbling" emissions with other
countries, to meet the target. Developed countries that reduce
their emissions more than their required national targets could
then sell their excess "credits" to another country that is finding
it more difficult or expensive to reduce its emissions.
An
emissions trading system allows countries (and private entities
that are so authorized) to buy and sell emission allowances. Such
trading is intended to supplement domestic actions, so that a
nation could not entirely meet its targets through trading.
The
U.S. position is that there should not be any limits on the amount
of emission reductions that can be achieved through emission
trading. But the EU and others argue that there should be caps
limiting a nation's ability to use the mechanism, consistent with
the Protocol's requirement. Ironically, the EU would not impose
such a cap on its own ability to "bubble" the emissions of its
members.
Another key emissions trading issue to be
addressed is the concern that certain countries, such as Russia and
Ukraine, which should be able to meet their targets with minimal
effort could sell large quantities of credits to others after they
do so. Yet, there is
considerable doubt that an emissions trading system will be
workable even among the developed countries, because demand for
credits will likely outstrip supply.
For
the United States, the ability to take advantage of an unrestricted
global emissions trading system would make a significant difference
in reducing the economic impact of compliance with the Protocol.
Studies show that an unrestricted emissions trading system could
reduce the amount of economic productivity in the United States
that is lost to compliance from as much as $200 billion to $400
billion to between $100 billion and $200 billion. Yet it is not at
all clear that enough credits would be available, since the system
would be restricted to developed nations. In addition, even
if developed nations could buy from developing nations, they would
have to pay a lot to attract credits from developing nations at a
time when the developing nations are focused on economic growth and
are projected to be the largest emitters in the future.
Clean
Development Mechanism
The clean development mechanism (CDM), seen by many
developing countries as a wealth transfer cash cow, would permit
the United States and other developed countries to receive some
undetermined amount of "credit" towards their Kyoto emissions
targets by financing "sustainable" projects in a developing country
that would help it reduce its emissions. CDMs are the only vehicle
permitted by the Protocol that allows developed countries to get
emissions credits from developing countries.
Under the CDM program, some yet-to-be
determined bureaucratic international regulatory body would decide
what constitutes a "sustainable" project and who would bear the
responsibility for the validity of the emission reductions
(credits) that result from these projects. Among the tests to be
applied would be whether there are emissions reductions beyond what
would occur without the project (the "additionality" test).
CDM
transaction costs would be high. The United States and other
developed nations would pay for the costs associated with
developing and staffing the project, as well as a share of the
costs of setting up and running the international regime that would
oversee the CDM program. Finally, developed countries would pay for
helping developing countries, which are particularly vulnerable to
the adverse effects of climate change, to meet the costs of
adaptation.
Joint
Implementation
As is the case with the CDM, the purpose of Joint
Implementation (JI) is to allow developed countries with high
mitigation costs to spend resources on mitigation activities in
other developed countries where mitigation costs are lower. JI is
envisioned as a system that allows a developed country to receive
"credit" toward its emissions targets by contributing to a project
in another developed country, particularly in Europe or the former
Soviet Union. It would allow the developed countries, or companies
from those countries, to share the emissions reduction units. This is one of
several mechanisms promoted by the United States that would permit
a developed country to meet its emission reduction targets at a
possibly lower cost than that of domestic implementation.
Carbon
Sinks
Another issue under active negotiation by the COP parties
is how to estimate removal and storage of carbon by forests and
other sinks, such as soils and oceans. Carbon sinks are natural or
man-made systems that absorb and store carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. Trees, plants, and the oceans are carbon sinks that
have tremendous potential to reduce emission levels, though too
much is currently unknown to determine by how much.
No
agreement has been reached on what constitutes a carbon sink or how
changes in a forest would affect its capacity to remove and store
carbon. The inclusion of sinks in the Kyoto Protocol does not
change the 1990 baseline for the United States, nor does it change
the overall reduction commitment. It is unclear just how sinks
might help the United States reach its emission-reduction
commitment.
The
U.N. scientific panel that provides technical analysis to the
parties, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, completed
its study on land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF)
activities to identify their roles as carbon sinks and deal with
the measurement and verification issues related to them. Some European
countries and environmental groups object that the use of sinks
would allow the United States to avoid deep cuts in its
emissions.
The
June 2000 report suggests that land use changes in developed
countries alone could meet the Kyoto targets. In addition, the
report says that approximately 1.8 billion tons of emissions per
year could be avoided if deforestation were stopped. The
deforestation source of avoided emissions is more than three times
the Kyoto target. Thus, with proper management of sinks, the Kyoto
Protocol would become irrelevant. Vigorous challenges by Europe and
environmental activists to the use of sinks can be expected.
The
rules currently being negotiated relating to sinks will have a
direct impact on landowners in America and could give control of
U.S. land use policy to the United Nations. The Protocol requires
that carbon sinks be included in determining how much carbon
dioxide is in the atmosphere at a given time. This means, simply,
that land use, land use changes, and forest use and growth must be
monitored and reported to the United Nations. Exactly which lands
and which forests to monitor are among the issues on which the
delegates are having difficulty reaching agreement.
The
carbon sink discussions should be of particular interest to
Americans, especially in view of the President's announcement that
he intends to protect millions of additional acres of wilderness.
This is precisely the kind of action that proponents of the
Protocol could claim as necessary to reach the Kyoto Protocol's
targets.
The Role of
Technology
The most significant way to improve living standards and
generally improve environmental well-being is through a growing
economy and the technological advances that such growth brings.
There is a strong desire among those who support the Protocol to
try to establish a timetable for the deployment of new
technologies. By doing so, they could in fact undermine the very
technological advancements they seek. WEFA's review of five
government studies and one independent study showed their agreement
that the cost and longevity of energy-using equipment will make it
difficult to improve energy and carbon efficiency in the short
term. In addition,
there is limited opportunity for
technological innovation, demonstration, commercialization and
acceptance in the short time period before 2008-2012.... [T]he
reduction in carbon emissions that would be necessary to meet the
goals may require leap-frogging technologies or technological
innovation, both problematic and expensive.
While it is true that the deployment of
new energy-efficient technologies can help to address concerns
about climate change, it is simply unrealistic to expect that
governments can dictate the path of technological advancement.
Technological advancement cannot be mandated. In the short term,
there are no technologies that could make the unrealistic Kyoto
Protocol emission reduction targets any more realistic.
CONCLUSION
There may still be desperate efforts at the COP-6 meeting at The
Hague, which runs through November 24, to save the Kyoto Protocol.
Three years and more than four meetings since the Protocol was
first adopted in Kyoto in 1997, participating nations have made
little progress toward resolving the many complex implementation
issues. Supporters within the United Nations and in Western Europe
place much hope on making significant progress at The Hague to
propel the Protocol toward final ratification; but the road to The
Hague has been long and difficult, and it is unlikely that the
grand expectations for COP-6 will materialize.
The
continuing difficulty in working out implementation details
underscores the fundamental problems that plague the Kyoto
Protocol--problems the U.S. Senate recognized even before the
Clinton Administration agreed to the treaty. The Protocol is a
flawed agreement for addressing global temperature changes and
their impact on the environment. Considerable uncertainty remains
about the science of climate change and mankind's contribution to
it.
The
United States would be better served by turning its attention to
improving its research and climate modeling capabilities in the
short term. The global environment would be better served if the
United States turned away from the global command-and-control
regulatory approach reflected in the Protocol toward a "no regrets"
domestic plan of action. Such a plan should be based on the
understanding that strong economic growth propelled by low tax and
deregulatory policies and a competitive domestic energy market will
lead to long-term improvements in energy efficiency and new
technologies that will do far more to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions than could the Kyoto Protocol.
Angela Antonelli is a former Director of the
Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage
Foundation.