Volume 290, Number 5493, Issue of 3 Nov
2000, pp. 920-921.
Copyright
© 2000 by The American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
But even before the meeting, there are murmurings that the negotiations are bound to fail. The United States simply won't ratify any treaty that requires such wrenching reductions, numerous observers say. "I don't know anyone who believes the U.S. is going to ratify this agreement" as it stands now, says economist Henry Jacoby of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Others are less pessimistic, but nobody is truly optimistic. "As it is currently configured, U.S. ratification would be really tough," says economist James Edmonds of the Washington, D.C., office of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. And if the United States bails out, the protocol is, if not dead, in very deep trouble. "You don't absolutely have to have the United States," explains Jacoby. "But without the U.S., all of Europe, Japan, and Russia are needed" to meet the requirement that countries responsible for 55% of greenhouse emissions must ratify the treaty to put it in force. Already, policy wonks on the fringes of the negotiations are scrambling for alternatives. Some think that by tweaking the rules, the negotiators at The Hague can sweeten the deal enough so the United States could eventually sign on. But if it is too sweet, other countries may balk. The United States, for example, would like to buy its way out of many of its obligations through deals reducing emissions beyond its borders.
Other analysts say that, eventually, the targets themselves will have to be delayed. Still others are planning how to reduce emissions in a post-Kyoto world if the U.S. bails out completely. None of these options would be popular with many European developing nations, who expect the United States to shoulder emissions cutting at home.
The dim prospects for ratification center on how disruptive and how expensive it would be for countries, particularly the United States, to achieve their target reductions. The protocol calls for an average 5% reduction of emissions below their 1990 level. For the United States, the world's biggest emitter, it mandates a 7% reduction below 1990 levels. What with the robust economic expansion of the past decade, the required U.S. reduction amounts to "a 30% reduction beneath business as usual," notes climate researcher Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "Can you imagine the United States in the next 10 years doing that?"
Eileen Claussen can't. She is president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia, an organization dedicated to reducing greenhouse emissions. Even so, she says, "I think it's going to become clear to a lot of countries--not just the U.S.--that they're not going to meet their targets. It's already clear the U.S. won't meet its target." Indeed, a Pew Center study of five European countries suggests that only the United Kingdom is on track to meet its Kyoto target, and Germany is perhaps close. Not coincidentally, it's the United Kingdom that vehemently opposes U.S. efforts to buy its way out of substantial emission reductions in its domestic energy sector.
Costs to the United States are "highly uncertain," says economist John Weyant of Stanford University. Given the range of assumptions about Kyoto and the economy, says Weyant, "model projections range from relatively low cost--a couple of tenths of a percent of U.S. gross domestic product [per year]--up to 3% to 4%." For instance, if countries bring online new energy-efficient technologies--everything from light bulbs to hydrogen fuel cells for cars--costs would drop significantly. But major technology changes are unlikely before 2012, Weyant maintains.
For that reason, U.S. negotiators want to adjust the basic rules, often called the "framework" for the Kyoto Protocol, to allow for maximum flexibility. Emissions trading among nations may enable the most wiggle room. As outlined in the protocol, an industrialized nation that doesn't want to reduce its own emissions could buy a permit from another industrialized nation to emit so many tons of greenhouse gas, presumably at a lower cost. But there's a catch. Trading is already restricted to industrialized countries, and the United Kingdom has floated a proposal that restricts the proportion of a country's reductions--read, the United States--that can be taken this way.
Another means of adding flexibility is the protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. The CDM would allow an industrialized country to join with a developing country, which under the protocol has no obligation to reduce emissions, in an emission-reducing project in that country. The idea is that the developing country would reap the benefits of a nonpolluting energy source and the industrialized country would get credit for the reduced emissions. But again, the devil is in the details. What projects would qualify? A nonemitting nuclear power plant? An ecologically disruptive hydroelectric dam? Some proposals stipulate that only renewable energy and energy-efficiency projects qualify.
Claussen, who played a key role in negotiating the protocol while at the State Department, thinks getting the right rules in place is the first step. Basically, she would like to see minimal restrictions on flexible mechanisms such as CDM and on carbon sinks. Then, "after the framework is in place, people may still say, 'Oh my, we're not going to make it,' and there will be some adjustment of the targets."
Some think Claussen is being overly pessimistic. Daniel Lashof of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., says, "It looks like the U.S. will get a lot of the flexibility it wants" at The Hague. Even so, the country "should and can get the majority of reductions domestically," he contends. "What will decrease future emissions is requiring firms to invest in emission reduction now."
Environmentalists may not see the necessity of delaying implementation of big emission reductions, but a lot of economists do. "Kyoto is a political compromise designed to get us moving on carbon-emission reductions," says Weyant. But "studies suggest it's not an optimum path" to the unspoken goal of Kyoto: stable greenhouse gas concentrations a century or two from now. Whereas the environmentally inclined insist that the world must tackle the greenhouse with vigor now, economists like Michael Toman and his colleagues at Resources for the Future (RFF) in Washington, D.C., argue that the world can reach its long-term goal much more cheaply by putting off much--but not all--of the needed emission reductions. This "back-loading" of deep cuts in emissions would be cheaper, Toman argues, because it would allow an orderly replacement of long-lived, fuel-burning equipment and the use of technology not yet available, among other advantages.
Economists also have alternatives intended to keep costs down and reassure countries that costs won't skyrocket. William Pizer of RFF, for instance, proposes a "safety valve" approach. The costs of emission permits could float until they hit a predetermined ceiling, so governments would know in advance the worst case, or most expensive, scenario. MIT's Jacoby agrees: "You need some sort of safety valve so governments aren't committing to something they can't meet. That's going to take time." He notes that it took 50 years for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to evolve into the 138-nation World Trade Organization. Kyoto might evolve the same way, he says. "A few countries agree on really narrow things and gradually build up a system over time, in contrast to the 'big bang' approach of Kyoto. That way, it doesn't die."