Kyoto Protocol - why it is important ...
... in the Federal election campaign.
Excerpt from the Australian:
The big electoral hoax
24 October 2007
The hoax of election 2007 is our sanctification of the Kyoto Protocol, a legacy of John Howard's folly, Kevin Rudd's distortions and the media's bias.
The great Kyoto irrationality is driven by two events. The first is Howard's epic blunder in refusing to change his mind and ratify, as there is no good reason for Australia not to ratify. And, second, contrary to every utterance from Rudd, the benefits for Australia from ratification are symbolic and devoid of practical meaning for climate change policy.
Rudd was caught out over Kyoto during the Sunday night debate. He faltered on the basic point: what was the benefit in ratifying Kyoto? Rudd, amusingly, seemed to have forgotten. This should not surprise because the benefit in ratifying Kyoto is ratifying Kyoto. Nothing else.
This debate is decoupled from real world public policy dividend. Kyoto has a universal standing as a goodwill gesture. It has the perfect image of wanting a better, cleaner world, with its opponents clinging to an older, polluted world. The power of such images cannot be denied.
But Howard has tried to deny it. His folly is unrelieved. In future years analysts will ruminate about the depth of Howard's stubborness over Kyoto in allowing his Government to be trashed during 2007 as Rudd presents himself as leader of the future, ready to ratify Kyoto. Howard has handed Rudd the "future" position, a gift on a silver tray.
There has been a periodic discussion within the Howard Government this year about Kyoto ratification. This was to be expected. After all, Howard's policy reversal on climate change during the past 12 months has been the most sweeping on any issue during his prime ministership.
Consider its scale. Having announced in late 2006 that climate change was "the biggest economic challenge of our time", Howard decided that Australia could no longer wait for the world. He commissioned a report and embraced its position: Australia will have a national emissions trading system by 2011-12, its target agreed next year, its coverage being a whopping 75 per cent of emissions, including fuel use in transport, far beyond European Union levels. Howard then launched a diplomatic campaign to win support at the APEC meeting for aspirational global targets and has endorsed a 15 per cent clean energy target by 2020.
This positions Australia, outside the EU, as a leader in climate change policy. But the public doesn't believe this for a moment. Neither does the media. As a professional politician Howard has transformed his policies, yet he cannot embrace the moralism and symbolism of the issue. His policies are never assessed on merit for a simple reason: he refuses to ratify Kyoto. Rudd has merely to utter the word Kyoto to win again and again.
Consider Howard's position. Should he ratify a protocol that is vastly popular and whose terms, as they apply to Australia, he is determined to honour and uphold? And his answer: absolutely not.
There is no political logic to such irrationality. Whenever Howard is asked why he won't sign Kyoto, his reply is that Australia will be disadvantaged. Pardon? We are pledged to meet our target of 108 per cent of emissions from 1990s levels anyway. We cannot be disadvantaged further.
Howard is psychologically paralysed on the issue. Rudd engages in amazing gymnastics of me-tooism across the spectrum, but Howard cannot perform me-tooism over Kyoto. He has made the reversal on policy but he cannot make the reversal on symbols.
As a consequence, he cannot reap any electoral gains.
Rudd's policy is remarkably similar to Howard's: an emissions trading system (though Rudd specifies a 60per cent reduction target by 2050), a stress on clean coal and a clean energy target (probably 20 per cent by 2020). But Rudd owns the politics of climate change because he has a monopoly on the symbols. Unlike Howard, he has not been a sceptic, he depicts climate change as a moral issue and he pledges to ratify Kyoto. What difference does Rudd think signing Kyoto will make? He says it will show "we are serious and want to help forge a global solution". An elusive and vague answer.
The risk for an incoming ALP government is falling for its own Kyoto propaganda. Labor seems genuinely unaware of Australia's activist diplomacy on climate change. Rudd's claim before the APEC meeting that its success would rest on an agreement over binding targets suggests he does not understand the global debate. The developing world rejects such binding targets.
A Rudd government will try to ratify Kyoto before the UN meeting in Bali in December to consider the post-2012 system. But ratification will make no difference to Australia's influence, a reality about which Labor has shut its mind.
The Kyoto Protocol applies only to industrialised nations and specifies binding targets for the 2008-12 period. Its defect is obvious: the developing world - notably China and India, where emissions are growing fastest - is exempt from any binding obligations. When Kyoto was negotiated, Australia's environment minister Robert Hill made a strong case for a pathway to involve developing nations in the process. That was rejected. So there is no legal hook in Kyoto to get developing nations, the big future emitters, into the negotiation. This is a legal-political problem for Australia, for Howard, for Rudd and for the world.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was negotiated as an addition to the foundation treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Australia is party to the treaty but has not ratified the protocol. Two years ago, talks began under the protocol for industrialised nations to negotiate deeper emissions reduction targets for post-2012. By definition, this does not involve developing nations. Such omission is untenable. It is why the existing Kyoto Protocol does not work and cannot succeed. From the start, this was Howard's critique of Kyoto and that critique is correct, a point now widely recognised.
Meanwhile, under the convention, there is also a non-binding dialogue under way on the decisive question of involving the developing world. There are two issues at stake: whether the dialogue can become a negotiation with developing nations and, if so, whether a negotiation can result in an agreement for the post-2012 period involving developing nations.
Such an agreement could be an amendment to the Kyoto Prococol or a new legal instrument.
This is, in short, a complex, agonising effort to overcome the fatal defects in the 1997 Kyoto system that misjudged the future growth rate of emissions from developing nations.
Australia's position is that there must be a broader negotiation for the post-2012 period. This is the position of the umbrella group of non-EU industrialised nations long chaired by Australia that includes Russia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand. Labor's claim that Australia is sidelined from debate or influence because of our non-ratification of Kyoto is nonsense.
Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull explains Australia's position: "I am absolutely committed to Australia ratifying a new arrangement post-2012 that is globally effective, either an amended Kyoto or a new agreement."
This is the bedrock point. If Rudd becomes PM, his immediate ratification of Kyoto will be a gesture full of hype but devoid of substance.
Rudd's real task will be to amend the Kyoto Protocol to make it work. That is the essential obligation on any Australian PM, Liberal or Labor. It is a huge task. Given this, Rudd should start talking the truth and terminate the hoax about the great moral issue.
See - The big electoral hoax.
posted by Concerned Ratepayer at 8:03 AM
6 Comments:
Excerpt from Sydney Morning Herald:
28 October 2007
Mr Turnbull:
"I've consistently made the case that what the world urgently needs is a new agreement, a new climate change agreement that is quite unlike the Kyoto arrangement, that's to say for the first commitment period that ends in 2012,'' Mr Turnbull said.
"The problem with Kyoto as it stands, is that it does not have a pathway or any binding commitment from the major emitters, in particular the fastest-growing emitters such as China and India.
"It's for that reason that Kyoto has been ineffective.''
1:28 PM, October 28, 2007
Why should we ratify anything? if we see no benefit in it - it is like this silly Toowoomba Council trying to tie Toowoomba to a whole lot of agreements before we toss them all out!
At least John Howard is a true man not to follow the populous course
8:14 PM, October 28, 2007
Excerpt from New Scientist:
Should we ditch the Kyoto protocol?
25 October 2007
We are used to hearing the likes of US president George W Bush and Aussie prime minister John Howard clamouring for the world to ditch the Kyoto protocol.
Their reasons, whether you agree with them or not, are political and economic.
But it comes as a bit of a surprise when the scientific journal Nature publishes a commentary saying the same.
In this week's issue, two UK-based social scientists – Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner of Oxford University – have published a commentary saying it's time for the Kyoto protocol process to take a curtain call.
Rayner wrote to me in an email:
"We see no evidence of Kyoto actually leading to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, much less of stimulating the fundamental technological change that will be required to achieve the 60-80% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists tell us the world will need to achieve in order to prevent what the Framework Convention calls 'dangerous interference with the atmosphere'."
Rayner and Prins think the Kyoto protocol is too simple for too complex a problem. To quote the Nature piece itself:
"Climate change is not amenable to an elegant solution [limiting greenhouse gas emissions] because it is not a discrete problem. It is better understood as a symptom of a particular development path and its globally interlaced supply-system of fossil energy. Together they form a complex nexus of mutually reinforcing, intertwined patterns of human behaviour, physical materials and the resulting technology. It is impossible to change such complex systems in desired ways by focusing on just one thing." (Nature, vol 449, p 973)
They go on to say that while there may be no "silver bullet" solution to climate change (such as setting greenhouse gas emissions targets) there may be a "silver buckshot" portfolio of solutions. And they outline five elements which they believe are key to forming such a portfolio.
They are:
Focusing negotiations of emissions caps on the big emitters rather than trying to achieve consensus among all national governments.
Allowing financial markets to figure out on their own how they want to trade carbon emissions rather than imposing a global emissions trading market.
Putting public investment in research and development into energy on a wartime footing.
Increasing the amount of money that is spent on helping people adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change.
Working on climate change at all different levels, from nations and international conventions down to regions and cities.
I think it's great that some people are thinking about how to improve the political process that is attempting to deal with climate change. There is no doubt this process needs all the help it can get: a recent study suggested that emissions need to fall more dramatically than currently envisaged for so-called "dangerous" climate change to be avoided.
And their description of climate change as a "symptom of a particular development path and its globally interlaced supply-system of fossil energy" is inspired and accurate. I once met a climate scientist who was running a research programme in West Africa, who told me the beauty of developing nations – and of countries in Africa in particular – is that they have a golden opportunity to look at the Western model, learn from its mistakes, and choose a better, more sustainable development path.
But I confess that I'm not entirely comfortable with a call to scrap the UN process entirely.
And if you look at the five points, what Prins and Rayner are suggesting does, in fact, have quite a bit in common with ongoing UN negotiations. Two of their points – energy R&D and adaptation – are actively discussed in all climate policy forums, and are on the agenda for the UN annual climate summit in Bali in December.
Where they do radically depart from the UN process is in their call to limit negotiations of emissions caps to the big emitters. The pair argue that striving for consensus among nearly 200 governments is unrealistic and counterproductive. I agree. The fact that the US government in September held talks among the world's top polluters is an encouraging sign that those whose emissions matter most are putting their heads together.
But what is not helpful is when these sorts of talks are not fed into the UN process. Then there comes a risk that one will detract from the other. Bush's climate change meeting in September took place four days after a UN meeting on the same subject, and unlike many of his peers Bush was absent from the UN meeting. Why not attend both meetings?
Bush's government also launched the Asia-Pacific climate agreement in 2005, which brings together the US, China, Australia, and others, in a pact to develop and exchange clean energy technologies. But, so far, this agreement doesn't seem to have yielded anything. Until such initiatives can demonstrate that they are concretely addressing the problem of rising global emissions, they will continue to appear as mere diversion tactics.
So, to come back to Prins and Rayner's commentary: yes, the process needs to be diversified. But it should not be frayed by a multitude of high-profile, low-impact initiatives.
10:47 PM, October 28, 2007
Excerpt from mongabay.com:
Kyoto Protocol is fatally flawed; replacement needed
25 October 2007
The Kyoto Protocol is fatally flawed and show be replaced by a more effective framework, argue researchers writing in this week's issue of Nature.
Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner of Oxford University say that while the need to address rising greenhouse gas emissions is of critical importance, the Kyoto Protocol was a hastily prepared effort that was destined to fail by failing to account for the complexity of the issue.
"Kyoto's supporters often blame non-signatory governments, especially the United States and Australia, for its woes. But the Kyoto Protocol was always the wrong tool for the nature of the job. Kyoto was constructed by quickly borrowing from past treaty regimes dealing with stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain from sulphur emissions and nuclear weapons," they write. "Drawing on these plausible but partial analogies, Kyoto's architects assumed that climate change would be best attacked directly through global emissions controls, treating tonnes of carbon dioxide like stockpiles of nuclear weapons to be reduced via mutually verifiable targets and timetables. Unfortunately, this borrowing simply failed to accommodate the complexity of the climate-change issue."
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations (ppm), 1958-2004, derived from in situ air samples collected at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii.
"Influenced by three major policy initiatives of the 1980s, the Kyoto strategy is elegant but misguided. Ozone depletion, acid rain and nuclear arms control are difficult problems, but compared to climate change they are relatively simple. Ozone depletion could be prevented by controlling a small suite of artificial gases, for which technical substitutes could be found. Acid rain was mainly caused by a single activity in a single industrial sector (power generation) and nuclear arms reductions were achieved by governments agreeing to a timetable for mutually verifiable reductions in warheads. None of this applies to global warming."
Prins and Rayner argue that not only has Kyoto failed to slow greenhouse gas emissions (global emissions have increased 35 percent since 1990 while no major industrial power -- even among Kyoto signatories -- has managed to cut its GHG output), but "it has stifled discussion of alternative policy approaches that could both combat climate change and adapt to its unavoidable consequences."
Prins and Rayner recommend a "radical rethink" of climate policy based on five key elements: focusing mitigation efforts on big emitters; allow genuine emissions markets (i.e. using a carbon tax as a price signal or cap-and-trade) to evolve from the bottom up; putting public investment in energy R&D on a wartime footing (in the U.S. $80 per year is spent on military R&D); increasing spending on adaptation strategies; and working on solutions at appropriate scales (They suggest using the U.S. federal system as a model: "the US system of federalism that encourages small-scale policy experiments at the state or local-government levels as well as with the philanthropic and private sectors")
"It will take courage for a policy community that has invested much in boosting Kyoto to radically rethink climate policy and adopt a bottom-up 'social learning' approach. But finding a face-saving way to do so is imperative. Not least, this is because today there is strong public support for climate action; but continued policy failure 'spun' as a story of success could lead to public withdrawal of trust and consent for action, whatever form it takes," they conclude.
CITATION: Gwyn Prins & Steve Rayner (2007). Time to ditch Kyoto. Nature 449, 973-975 (25 October 2007)
11:20 PM, October 28, 2007
What K Rudd is saying on Kyoto:
Mr Rudd says Australia needs to take the lead on setting targets for emission cuts, so that big emitters in the developing world have no excuse not to adopt the same tough approach.
"If we are to get countries like China and India to accept targets themselves, then developed countries must act first," he said.
"Australia must show leadership. Australia should use its influence on the United States to get the United States onto the Kyoto program.
"When that happens, China then has no excuse other than to act."
...
What has happened in the US:
On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States".
On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.
...
The US is not going to listen to Australia on this issue. China will yawn and find another excuse not to act.
10:39 AM, October 29, 2007
China will also not listen to Rudd even if he can speak Mandarin. It just means they will say no to him in Mandarin.
10:55 AM, October 29, 2007
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