The Kyoto Protocol goes into affect today. Finally someone's taking a step to curb emissions growth. For those of you who don't know emissions from emo, we're looking at on average a 5ยบ celsius increase in temperatures by 2100. Kyoto attempts to curb that by imposing limits (well, actually it does more than that) on emissions. Does this mean industrial production will suffer and jobs will be lost? Maybe, maybe not. Will fossil fuel companies take it on the chin? Probably. However, this doesn't mean that the people who lose their jobs in these industries won't be able to get a job in a new, and therefore less productive, which translates into a higher job growth, alternative energy industry. Just because we're limiting emissions growth doesn't mean we're limiting consumption. As I've been saying for a while now, spend the billions on R&D now on wind and solar and you'll have a sizeable payoff soon, both economically and environmentally.
Of course someone had to be the bully and ruin all the fun and lower emissions. That would be the U.S, which produces about 20-25% of the world's emissions. The bottom line for why the U.S. rejected Kyoto was that the oil and coal industries, who contribute heavily to Bush - Haliburton ring a bell, anybody? anybody?, would have to suffer the excruciating torture of lower profits. That's it, pure shortsighted economic self interest wins out over not-even-that-far-in-the-future economic and environmental well being for everyone. According to the CEO of American Electric Power,
American concerns could be handicapped compared with Chinese or Indian competitors, because environmental regulations are stricter in the United States, even without acceptance of Kyoto requirements.
You have to be kidding me, right? You're comparing yourself against countries that don't produce nearly as many emissions as the U.S. does. Nevermind that Kyoto has a clean development mechanism in it that allows for not using up as many emissions credits if you install cleaner factories and power plants in developing countries. I can definitely see French Guyana as an up and coming competitor as well, maybe we should nuke them. I'll make a long post later on what Kyoto really aims to do.
1 comment:
Outsourcing emissions is partly what Kyoto's about. Let's break emissions down into two categories, energy and industrial. I'm not sure about cross border energy production, but in Japan's case they've met their requirements by largely going nuclear. Of course this has it's own problems, but they're lowering emissions without outsourcing.
The other part, about outsourcing emissions, is largely taken care of in the emission allocation. Because of the fear that developed countries would outsource their emissions to developing countries, the Protocol prohibits developed countries from trading with developing countries, and they can only use a portion of the reductions from trading towards their own targets. Additionally, if you're worried about the allocation (like what if the U.S. has the most credits because it emits the most), don't because the emissions credits are allocated in a reverse-grandfathering system, so the countries with the least goods get the most emissions credits (or property rights). This allows for trading while lowering overall emissions.
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