After doing tons of reading on the Kyoto Protocol, I’ve come to a conclusion that the Protocol is too costly for implementation.Why?
The Kyoto Protocol, if ratified, essentially demands the reduction of six greenhouses gases to the 1990 level by the year 2008. Those gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydroflourocarbon, perflourocarbon, and sulphur hexafluoride.
All those six gases, with carbon dioxide in particular are closely related to growth and energy. The connection to energy is a simple one to make since carbon dioxide is the product of burning any carbon based material, including fossil fuel. Growth on the other hand needs energy. Due to this fact, the bigger the economy, the larger greenhouse gases emission will be.
Currently, according to David G. Victor in his book The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming, most countries greenhouse gases emission exceeds the 1990 targeted level. In order to achieve the Kyoto set goal, many countries will have to reduce their growth by a substantial amount and upgrade numerous machines to be environmental friendly. The cost of doing so is high and this is the main reason why the United States, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases withdrew from the Protocol. Recently, Russia has hinted that it will also withdraw from the Protocol.
Of course, the negotiators at the Earth Summit + 5 were aware of that and thus carbon or emission trading was introduced so the cost of emission reduction could be pulled down to a more tolerable level. This method allows the idea of aggregate instead of individual emission reduction. As a result, this allows the participants of the Protocol to continue to develop its economy.
Nevertheless, there are voices of discontent from the backroom. Emission trading is done by giving out emission permits to the parties of the Protocol. Later, unused permits by some countries could be sold to others who need to emit more greenhouse gases than the allocation. The problem is, permit allocation was not given out according to the size of the economy but rather, the allocation problem was solved by the wits of the diplomats. Therefore, some countries received more permits then it should have and more received too little.
If the Kyoto Protocol were to be ratified, Russia and Kazakhstan will gain profit by simply selling these permits. This is true due to the fall of the Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR states) economy has no way of using all of its allocation, thus creating a surplus of profitable permits. Other countries like the US, hypothetically speaking, will have to buy from Russia so as to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol. Like what Victor said in his book, no country will sign a deal that merely enriches somebody else without doing something concrete in dealing with global warming.
One way or another, with or without permits, there are losers – somebody has to cover up the cost. Yet, if the Kyoto Protocol isn’t ratified in time, the cost of damage due to global warming and the subsequent climate change will be higher than the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol itself.
Given the options, isn’t it’s only logical to accept the least costly path?
For the sake of compromise, perhaps the Kyoto’s target could be lowered but sooner or later, the emission reduction must be done to avoid probably the costliest damage in modern Human history.
p/s – The __earthinc has been nominated for flyingchair.net‘s best Malaysian weblog.
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