First, I think you are mistaking me for an anti-action person. That is not correct. I know very well from reading the literature that action of global warming can, even under realistic, achievable scenarios, achieve real savings for the economy and serve policy goals such as reducing dependency on foreign energy sources.
As such, I reject the position of folks who are against taking action on global warming because “we’re in recession” (not yet) or “it’s too expensive” because such a position rests on an unbalanced analysis, focusing solely on costs, not factoring in real direct benefits, as well as implicit benefits. Frankly, I like to focus on the less warm and fuzzy real direct economic benefits since I like concretes. And I agree with your cites that these are enough to merit action.
That being said, Kyoto was not workable. As I mentioned earlier, its legal structure was misconceived and fairly inflexible, above all as read by the EU and Japan. (Whose collective lack of action makes them yet more hypocritical than Bushbaby —I do kinda like this moniker but no I’m not going to send it to the Nation, its just a fun name to me. If anyone else wants to feel free.) International emissions trading, even between a limited set of nations (i.e. the verifiable nations were fraud is least likely), has been ruled out by the EU and Japan to my recollection. Recall the letter Krugman signed which you are citing calls for fully market oriented policies. One can not characterize Kyoto in that manner, IMHO.
Now, in re the cites, I’d love to really go over them, but I’m already in a chronic work deficit so let me restrain myself to a few comments:
Behind “A Small Price to Pay” is a great deal of advocacy. I’m all for advocating but looking at their assumptions, I get prickly. Like I said, I can’t afford to go into depth, but a few comments. For example, take a look at the “Other Factors Relevant to Modeling” section. Note their discussion of the “variety of barriers to full market penetration of cost-effective clean technology.” Their move to dismiss these concerns rests on some very strong and in my opinion not fully supportable assumptions. First, I think they abstract away from the problematic of achieving adoption of many of the proposed actions. Second, in re the issue of institutional barriers, they’re fairly naive, IMHO, in re overcoming. Capital depreciation is a further major barrier, and I don’t believe that I am prepared to expect sufficient increase in capital equipment turnover through policy pressures sufficient to recommend the fairly substantial changes they have to expect. That is not to say that much good can not be done, I am only talking about meeting Kyoto deadlines and targets from our present position.
How hard are things now? Well, ironically we find a quickly accessible picture of that in the Executive Summary of Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future. I’m going to skip over the detials for the scenarios “Moderate” and “Advanced” — noting only that I find the “Advanced” scenario highly unlikely in real world terms, e.g. large scale replacement of coal fired plants — we see from E.S p6-7 that the Moderate scenario leaves the US at something like 80% above Kyoto target levels (looking roughly like 1250 on their chart, with 2010 being around1650) by Kyoto’s 2010 deadline for 7% below 1990 levels while the Advanced Scenario places the US somewhat above 1990 levels, and only meeting Kyoto targets 10 years later.
The document blandly notes, "In the context of the U.S. Kyoto protocol goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by 2010, the CEF policies would need to be supplemented by other means such as international carbon trading [rejected by other participants], reductions in other greenhouse gases, and/or stronger domestic policies.
If I had my article file some several thousand miles closer to me than it is, I might trot out some analyses by other economists — not the Cato kind — who take an equally dim view of Kyoto achievability.
So, let me state for the last time, I think the question is not whether reductions are good economically, they can indeed be so, but whether Kyoto provided a good framework for it. I think the answer there is fairly unambiguously no.