Kyoto Protocol in Peril

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/opinion/04THU1.html?th

 

December 4, 2003Kyoto Protocol in Peril

The news from Moscow on Tuesday was not good — Russia, a senior official said,

had decided not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Combined with

President Bush's decision two years ago to abandon the pact, Russia's rejection

would have effectively killed it. Then yesterday came word that it might have

been a false alarm, a negotiating tactic to strengthen Moscow's leverage in

economic talks with the European Union, and that Russia was indeed " moving

toward " ratification.

 

Let us hope this is the case. The 1997 protocol has many flaws. It is, however,

the only international response to the global warming problem thus far devised,

and at the very least it provides a plausible framework for collective

international action.

 

One would never know this by listening to the Bush administration. Indeed, it

can be argued that Russia would not be having second thoughts about the Kyoto

accord had Mr. Bush himself decided not to bail out. Under the terms of the

agreement, Russia — whose economy collapsed in the 1990's, and whose

global-warming emissions were thus well below the limits imposed by the treaty —

would have profited handsomely from selling unused emissions credits to

countries with booming economies. But the market for these credits, and Russia's

potential economic gains, diminished sharply when the United States, which would

have been a major buyer of credits, pulled out.

 

Meanwhile, the Bush administration continues to bad-mouth the treaty at every

opportunity, the most recent example being an amazingly slippery piece of

demagoguery by Paula Dobriansky, the under secretary of state for global affairs

and the lead American delegate to a follow-up meeting on the Kyoto agreement

that is now taking place in Milan. Writing in The Financial Times, Ms.

Dobriansky begins by trashing the climate agreement as an " unrealistic and

ever-tightening regulatory straitjacket. " She then goes on to praise the Bush

administration's alternative — a mix of research and development into

" breakthrough " technologies and voluntary emissions controls by American

companies — as much the better plan.

 

Ms. Dobriansky fails to mention two key points. The first is that the Bush

administration's program would allow greenhouse gases to keep building up, even

though atmospheric concentrations are already alarmingly high and the name of

the game is to stabilize and then reverse them. Mr. Bush's approach would

translate into an actual increase in emissions of 14 percent over the next

decade.

 

The second is that voluntarism will not work. While some companies seem willing

to do something about global warming on their own, history has shown that the

private sector as a whole will neither create new technologies nor, more to the

point, put them into broad use without strong financial incentives. The Kyoto

framework provides just such incentives because it combines mandatory limits on

emissions with substantial, market-based rewards for operating more efficiently

and then asks all companies to do their part. Ms. Dobriansky's belief that

companies will spend heavily on breakthrough technologies if their competitors

are not doing likewise is sheer fantasy.

 

The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 120 countries, including nearly all of

the industrialized nations. Most have pledged to soldier on with their own

efforts to reduce emissions, despite Mr. Bush's negativism and regardless of

what Russia ultimately does. But it will not be easy for these countries to make

major investments in cleaner power plants, alternative fuels and all the other

things that must be done to reduce emissions while the United States, in effect,

gets a free ride. The battle against global warming will never be fully joined

unless America joins it.

 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

 

 

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