tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8860714.post1499014376887491022..comments2023-10-05T11:42:57.648+01:00Comments on Grains of Sand: 'Radically rethinking climate policy'Caspar Hendersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04667141284390082748noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8860714.post-21088767703825917642007-10-25T17:46:00.000+01:002007-10-25T17:46:00.000+01:00Now that Steve Rayner and Gwyn Prins have publishe...Now that Steve Rayner and Gwyn Prins have published their commentary in <I>Nature</I>, I have done a more complete response: <A HTTP://BACONBUTTY.BLOGSPOT.COM/2007/10/DONT-DITCH-KYOTO-PROTOCOL.HTML HREF="" REL="nofollow">Don't ditch the Kyoto Protocol</A>.<BR/><BR/>In doing this, I've concluded the ideas aren't really worth much at all - their supposedly radical alternative proposals aren't radical or alternative, but based on misunderstandings of what the Kyoto Protocol does and doesn't do.Clive Bateshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15614056019814665135noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8860714.post-31053870412934344452007-10-11T19:44:00.000+01:002007-10-11T19:44:00.000+01:00I agree with some of this, but not all... the pro...I agree with some of this, but not all... the problem is an international, intergenerational collective action challenge in conditions of uncertainty and widespread indifference to impacts several decades ahead. That's not a 'framing error' - it just is what the problem is.... and so I'm not sure that going local will do the trick. Having said that, all politics are local, and global efforts need a mandate - but we are more likely to act globally and locally if we think it is a common endeavour and not beset by free-riding, gaming and opportunism. <BR/><BR/>Some thoughts on the 5 points...<BR/><BR/><B>1. Abandon universalism – work with the fewer than 20 countries that ‘really’ matter (and only around 10 if EU is counted as a political block);</B><BR/><BR/>No, a C-20 is effectively happening <I>in parallel</I> and is actually what happens in negotiations anyway - through a 'contact group' or other such negotiating device. there is lots of scope to find consensus amongst big players outside the UN meetings, but to imagine this can replace a broader forum is wrong. Where this goes wrong is to ignore the value of a global agreement and how the agreement might change shape in the future: for example through global sectoral agreements (eg. for aluminium or aviation) or if the approach moves on to a 'policies and measures' agenda - eg. setting global product standards. It should also seek to involve all countries in cap and trade or harmonised carbon tax regimes. There is also the financing (CDM) and adaptation aspects of Kyoto. The other reason to have all countries involved is the moral pressure of those states that have most to lose (and gain). Nothing in that stops a 20<BR/><BR/><B>2. Allow genuine emissions markets to evolve from the bottom up;</B><BR/><BR/>What does this mean? A market is only as good as its cap - the market bit improves efficiency, not the environmental outcomes (unless you allow that trading facilitates agreement to tougher caps). Where do meaningful caps come - certainly not from the free play of perceived national self interest if the EU system is anything to go by. If you join markets that have different degrees of scarcity, then the effect is to dilute the more scarce with the less scarce. Does bottom up mean 'voluntary participation'? Does it mean based on localised legislatures (ie. US states or municipalities)? Where will they get their sense of common purpose from? <BR/><BR/><B>3. Increase investment in adaptation (currently only around $1.5bn spent on adaptation as against approx. $19bn on mitigation). </B>;<BR/><BR/>I could not agree more. Mitigation at the very best will slow the warming trend and it wont start doing that noticeably until 2040. The interesting thing that has escaped many commentators is that adaptation is not a choice really - the impacts and risks will arise whether you expect and prepare for them or not. Mitigation is a choice, albeit an irresponsible one to duck. Above all - they should not be traded off... they are are completely different.<BR/><BR/>However, I don't think it will appear as an itemised expenditure like $1.5bn or $19bn - it's more to do with doing and spending what we already do and spend differently (and probably more expensive too). <BR/><BR/><B>4. Work the problem at appropriate scales (provinces, states, cities, local trading systems)</B>;<BR/><BR/>Okay - but what is truly local, bearing in mind the tendency of antis to argue that local differences are 'distortions'? Could you imagine the cap-setting trouble we would have if each EU member state set its own cap or carbon tax? What if each US state set different vehicle emissions standards etc. I think things like renewables policy, building rehabilitation, local transportation, spatial planning might be a good local thing. But its less obvious with economic instruments, large scale energy supply, product standards etc.<BR/><BR/><B>5. Make wartime levels of public investment in [green] energy R&D.</B><BR/><BR/>Let me propose a thought experiment... if we only ever had the technology available today, 11 October 2007, could we address the climate change challenge? I think we could go a long way... I think the real deficit is in <I>policy innovation</I> and political will - ie. that which causes the available low carbon technologies to be widely applied. <BR/><BR/>You only have to look at the state of the existing building stock to realise that new technology is the least of the problems. The sort of wartime effort we need is not a Bletchley Park, Manhattan Project or dambusters effort, but more like the distribution of Morrison shelters - effective bomb retardants based on the old-tech plasticity of metal - and gas masks.<BR/><BR/><B>Missing from the list</B> I think global sectoral agreements (steel, aluminium, cement, oil, aviation, shipping,); global product standards; focus on securing 'no-regrets' measures, especially in developing countries (who can object to committing only to do those things that are otherwise beneficial); very large North-South transfers to buy-out carbon intensive development; tackling deforestation; reforestation; the use of time (policies that build up gradually to give a large effect - eg. a $200 /tCO2 globally co-ordinated tax introduced over 40 years... <BR/><BR/>CliveClive Bateshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15614056019814665135noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8860714.post-65292025814865412732007-10-09T18:10:00.000+01:002007-10-09T18:10:00.000+01:00The first few paras of your report of Rayner'stalk...The first few paras of your report of Rayner's<BR/>talk really pushed my buttons. I'm no fan of the Kyoto process, but the idea that Shrub was right to ignore it and his only mistake to wait til now to push technophilia and voluntary targets as the "real answer" is at best disingenuous and at worst stupid. I doubt Rayner is stupid (so I can only assume ...<BR/><BR/>But as I read on I found myself agreeing with more or less everything on the table - scale issues, focusing on key players, reframing the<BR/>debate in development terms, getting an adequate level of investment - everything in fact save his enthusiasm for geo-engineering (more evidence that he spent too much time in the States; certainly as part of the US national laboratory system).<BR/><BR/>What I don't think he was offering was a radical rethink - I reckon it was like a mainstream version of the <A HREF="http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/news_upinsmoke.aspx" REL="nofollow">Up in Smoke</A> agenda, with a liberal dose of faith in carbon markets. And as for Oxfam sticking to clean water supplies and malaria - well, that's such an easy argument that even Bjorn Lomborg and Roger Bate make it. In what way is that radically reframing the debate? Still, you got me thinking - that can't be a bad thing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com