New at Reason

David Weigel | June 23, 2006

Shikha Dalmia reports back on the (un)surprising failure of a major global-warming business initiative.

Comments

The Wine Commonsewer|6.23.06 @ 3:10PM|#

Shikha is great.

Now, I'm going to the beach........

|6.23.06 @ 3:43PM|#

Seems kind of stupid to bash a market-based scheme for reducing global warming just because it wasn't set up right. It's the first time this has been tried, so of course there will be problems but with any luck we will learn from it and improve it. I'd much rather global warming was reduced in this way than by more command-and-control style measures.

Just 'adapting' to global warming might be a good option if we had a few spare planets to move to if something unpredictable went wrong.

|6.23.06 @ 3:57PM|#

hmmm....

A) So the answer that comes to my mind is to adopt a trading schema that acutally mirrors the one used for sulfur dioxide, one based on past performance.

B) If temperatures could be reduced by 0.1 dgree...isn't that better than allowing temperatures to raise by a few degrees? (assuming dire rumors of temperature calamity are actually true)

C) So Britain made a good faith effort and is coming close but not all the way...it might not meet the goal, but it is better than doing nothinig. If anything they acheived greater energy security, made their economy more efficient, and reduced pollution.

|6.23.06 @ 4:30PM|#

As a believer in the concept of tradeable credits, I hope that the system doesn't fall completely apart. Not a lot of cause for optimism, based on the article.

Is there, or has here been, an attempt to set up an automatic reduction in the overall pool of credits over time?

Would it be possible for civic- minded outside entities, motivated by their belief that the pool of credits is too large, to buy credits and remove them from the pool? If there is a perceived glut, prices should be low.

|6.23.06 @ 4:54PM|#

I'd much rather global warming was reduced in this way than by more command-and-control style measures.

Of course, this assumes that (a) human activity contributes to whatever warming is occurring in a meaningful way, and (b) that such human activity is subject to command-and-control (or responsive to markets).

I have serious doubts about (a) and (b), myself.

|6.23.06 @ 5:22PM|#

Seems like the system needs to be tweaked before we call it a failure. C'mon, this is "Reason" not "I-already-made-up-my-mindson".

|6.23.06 @ 10:54PM|#

this seems an especially churlish objection given that, if the US had participated in the negotiations over the kyoto carbon-emission trading scheme, we might have been able to improve it considerably. plenty of high-powered US economists have studied the issue and think it workable; intrastate emissions trading has proved very useful in reducing "acid rain" and downstream pollution in the northeast from coal-powered plants in ohio and the like. the US would have had powerful leverage: create a workable system or we walk. and US businesses, having already made a huge number of emissions-reducing changes in the ordinary course of complying with US environmental regulations, could have used their credits and expertise to make massive improvements in coal-fired plants in third-world countries. the movement from "it's not happening" to "ok, it's happening but it's not due to human activity" to "ok, human activity is playing a role but we can't do anything about it" is...unhelpful. I think market-based emission trading is the best way to seek reduction in global warming without internationally mandated rules. such a scheme would have the additional immediate advantage of reducing ordinary pollution in the third world countries where the heavily polluting plants are located. US air has become dramatically cleaner in the last 30 years, and this is a good in and of itself. it would be so for other nations as well, absent grand reductions in global temperatures. and US energy firms were, on the whole, surprisingly open to a transparent, known system on which they could base future operations, and under which they would basically get tax breaks. so, color me really, really, really unimpressed.

|6.23.06 @ 11:42PM|#

I meant interstate.

|6.24.06 @ 5:39AM|#

Is it always to be libertairan to be for markets? If my nieghbour upstream is affecting me whats my market solution other than buying him out or having some kind of force to make him stop? There are scientist talking about Scientific solutions that are not command and control in the sence of mandates to reduce carbon output. What about them?

Hey I am for Markets for most things but come on.

(This is assuming were are causing it)

|6.24.06 @ 2:02PM|#

yeah AGW is bullshit...but if it was true tradable CO2 markets would be the solution. Kyoto may be broken but those who are Human caused global warming belivers should really be jumping over themselves to fix it.

|6.24.06 @ 3:26PM|#

Joshua C.,
assuming AGW is true do you, or anyone you can link to, have a cohesive replacement?

|6.24.06 @ 4:08PM|#

p.s.
I realize that it depends on 'How True' AGW actually is. Which even if true, we don't yet have a near perfect working model. For starters, let's rephrase AGW into...AGCC, Anthropogenic Global Climate Control. This makes the focus clearer I think, and presents it as a technical & (presumeably) solvable engineering problem.

Controlling CO2 is very important to all that, but a future Kyoto replacement needs to consider the total Insolation effect of all parts of the system, methane, albedo, water vapor etc...even if we don't understand it all yet; hard but doable. I am using the tentative term 'Insolation Credits'.

But as mentioned having tradeable credits based on past performance is an improvement over guessing on future performancce.

The future Kyoto Treaty system needs to be resistant to corruption of the process. An idea I have is to simply tarrif all imports and use the tarrif to buy Insolation Offsets. Thinking about this...

|6.24.06 @ 8:31PM|#

Every convenient lie about global warming in one convenient package.

From pretending that it was "previously believed" that temperature trends were flat to pretending not to understand why there is a Phase I in Kyoto.

It was nice of the author to let everyone who is not in her choir know, straight off, not to bother reading her tripe.

|6.26.06 @ 2:30AM|#

From pretending that it was "previously believed" that temperature trends were flat to pretending not to understand why there is a Phase I in Kyoto.

like joe says "It was all part of the plan for Kyoto to fail."