Climate Change Policy Failures

The following sections are included:

• Contents

• Acknowledgments

In September 2009, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that “worldwide sea surface temperatures [were] the warmest at least since 1880, when such records were first systematically compiled.” In January 2010, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released data on Earth’s surface temperatures showing that the decade ending in 2009 was “the warmest on record.” The hottest year was 2005; the second-hottest was 2009; and the “other hottest recorded years have all occurred since 1998.” In January 2011, NASA and NOAA announced jointly that the latest temperature readings show 2010 was tied with 2005 for the hottest year in recorded human history. Annual and regional variations in surface temperatures are inevitable, but the trend toward greater global warming and climate change is unarguable from a scientific perspective…

As UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, recently observed: “The bottom line is that our climate is changing fast, and the world has been too slow in response.” Yet, the major GHG-polluting nations have not come close to agreeing on realistic policies for avoiding or mitigating climate change risks. Conflicting national interests and priorities have undermined many climate change proposals, but of equal importance most political leaders do not realize that they lack a clear understanding of climate-related issues; and therefore, they are bound to continue making climate-policy mistakes with tragic consequences…

Economic incentive programs, including cap-and-trade systems, carbon offsets, and GHG taxes, are widely supported in climate-policy circles on the grounds that they can achieve more efficient emissionsreduction outcomes. Firms with low pollution control costs will choose to curtail their emissions, while firms with high pollution control costs will purchase tradable allowances or offsets that enable them to continue their discharges at a cost, or they can choose to pay the pollution tax under a GHG tax scheme to avoid the imposition of more expensive technological emissions-reduction mandates. Under economic incentive mechanisms, GHG sources are able to decide for themselves based on their individual circumstances and profitability whether to reduce their discharges using current technologies, undertake research to develop innovative methods to decrease their regulatory costs, purchase tradable GHG allowances (or equivalent “tradable permits” or “pollution shares”) to avoid expensive pollution control requirements, or pay the carbon taxes imposed under a GHG tax scheme…

Since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992, nearly constant negotiations have been aimed at creating a generally acceptable international policy to counter global climate change. Highly-publicized summits attended by many heads-of-state of UNFCCC signatory nations have been held in Kyoto, Bali, Copenhagen, and Cancun; and secondary meetings on climate change issues were held in Barcelona, Berlin, Bonn, The Hague, Marrakesh, Oslo, Poznan, Seoul, Tianjin, and other locations. These climate-policy negotiations have featured wide-ranging discussions about mitigation, adaptation, funding, monitoring and verification, technology transfers, and institutional or programmatic designs among thousands of diplomats with conflicting national interests and priorities. Aside from the Kyoto Protocol, which established a first phase of minimal emissions-reduction obligations for developed states that are expected to expire in 2012, and the voluntary Copenhagen Accord, which asks all nations to commit to their own chosen levels of GHG pollution control, little international agreement has been achieved because of crucial differences in the positions of the major blocs of nations. Nevertheless, the practice of holding an annual succession of international meetings on climate change problems with a plethora of interstitial negotiations is still flourishing…

Overcoming global climate change will probably be the most difficult, expensive, complicated, controversial task the human race has ever undertaken on a collective basis, and there is certainly no guarantee that we will succeed in meeting this responsibility to the Earth and to future generations of human beings. Successful climate change policies must accomplish two demanding goals concurrently: eliminating as much residual GHG pollution as feasible to stabilize and then reduce the atmospheric GHG concentration that causes the greenhouse effect, and promoting greater economic and social welfare in developing countries that otherwise will continue discharging more GHGs into the atmosphere every year. Regrettably, the world’s leaders go on debating whether to reduce GHG pollution 20%, 30%, 50%, 60%, or 80% by various future target dates, while relying on consensus emissions-reduction programs, including cap-and-trade systems and carbon offset programs, that cannot achieve either essential function…

Will our descendants 100 or 200 years from now praise us for adopting thoughtful policies to limit climate change dangers, or will they sharply criticize us for failing to reduce the climate-related risks that our generation has been creating? Fierce condemnation appears far more likely than praise because the world’s major GHG-polluting nations are continuing to increase their harmful discharges while international negotiations, national emissions-reduction commitments, and voluntary lifestyle changes have not begun to reverse this self-destructive behavior in any significant way. We cannot make real progress on climate change problems until our political leaders and climate experts recognize that the consensus emissions-reduction mitigation approaches are bound to fail while they continue allowing persistent residual GHG discharges to increase the cumulative atmospheric GHG concentration…

The following sections are included:

• Endnotes

• Index