I’m not all that up to speed on global environmental policy but I know there was a huge uproar when Bush walked away from the table regarding participating in the accord over two years ago. I’m assuming the US had good reasons, other than pure selfishness or venality, for doing this. Why did we do this? Was it the right thing to do?
The reasons named by the Bush administration were that
a)the science was not solid and
b)the economic costs were prohibitive.
The first is simply a matter of pointing at a handful of dissenters who felt their pet projects were not paid enough attention to by the IPCC, which drafted the Kyoto protocol, most notably dissenters in the US. It needs to be pointed out that the number of dissenters is tiny compared to the overall scientific community, and that the NAS has criticised for quite a while that US climatology is lagging behind the global state of the art. There is constant publication of new findings in the field.
The second is a twofold problem: In one part, it ignores the costs of inaction, which are a major concern to insurance companies worldwide. The Re-insurance company Munich Re, one of the largest re-insurers of natural disasters, is one of the most ardent supporters of the Kyoto protocol, fearing they will have to foot the bill for the projected increase in storm damage. One needs to keep in mind that cities like New Orleans can potentially be wiped off the map when hit straight on by a major storm. The effect on the national economy for such a disaster would obviously be drastic. Houston already got a taste of it a few years ago when hit by hurricane Allison. Damage from storms, floodings and other natural disasters has been increasing over the past decades, although the evidence is not quite solid yet on whether that so far is an effect more of more buildings in at risk areas rather than the small warming that has already happened. However, state-of-the-art climate predictions models suggest that storms will increase in severity and be more frequent if the climate change is allowed to proceed unchecked. Not the least, it needs to be kept in mind that while at the moment, climate change is gradual, there are threshold values which, when reached, lead to massive, sudden switches through the collapse of ocean currents, which are major mediators of climate.
The other part is a miscalculation of the actual costs of compliance through listening to horror tales of lobbyists, especially within the US oil industry. It needs to be pointed out again that we’re talking about the US oil industry only. Non-US oil companies are well aware of the problem and tackling it. Proving that the tales of economic costs are inaccurate, British Petroleum, third largest oil company on the planet, has already become compliant with what their duties would be under Kyoto, within a fraction of the time they originally expected to need, and at a net cost of zero for the company. ( http://www.bp.com/environ_social/environment/clim_change/index.asp ) BP is, in fact, an active lobbyist for the Kyoto protocols.
As such, the Bush administration’s walking away from Kyoto is similar to the introduction of steel tarriffs: An industry branch to slothful to reform in the light of changing times is being artificially kept alive in its slothfulness and prevented from having to adapt and change.
The US Senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto, so laying this all on GW is stupid.
This guy says the Kyoto Protocol is worthless.
Have a look at this page for some explanations from the BBC.
Of course the US was acting out of pure selfishness. I think the EU was acting out of pure selfishness too when it went to all that effort to save the protocol, it was just looking a little more long term.
As OliverH states below, it is generally accepted that human induced climate change is happening. Have a look at this page for some stories and analysis about Kyoto and climate change.
The only debate really is about the relative costs of doing nothing compared with the costs of trying to stop climate change. I believe Russia is now saying it may not ratify Kyoto because it believes global warming would benefit it as a country!
Wary of making promise they wouldn’t keep?
As a retired reinsurance executive, I can confirm that the German reinsurance companies in particular were very concerned about global warming and storms. OTOH American reinsurance companies were not.
Keep in mind that it’s good for reinsurance companies to emphasize the possibility of disasters. Reinsurance companies sell disaster protection to primary insurance companies – the ones we deal with. The risk of disasters encourages insurance companies to buy more reinsurance and to pay more for it.
It logical to think that warmer seas will cause more energy to go into storm systems, causing more large hurricanes. However, I have seen a study indicating that global warming is taking place, but that it is not worsening hurricanes. I don’t know who’s right. OTOH I have seen another study claiming to show that global warming causes more earthquakes. (I consider that one preposterous.)
Right. The cost of hurricanes has risen dramatically in the last 15 years. I believe the rise can be entirely explained by more buildings in risk areas, more insurance purchased, more expansive definitions. In particular, insurance on a home used to be limited to a fixed amount. Then, it tended to move to replacement cost. As a result, hurricane Andrew was incredibly costly, as was the Northridge earthquake.
Some models do; others don’t. But, it’s certainly a worry
I suppose this is conceivable.
I think compliance might be impossible, when one considers increasing population and increasing energy usage.
What proponents of Kyoto ignore is the minimal benefits of compliance. The global warming models used by Kyoto propopents show that even if it were fully implemented (which it won’t be) it would merely delay the 100-year global warming by just a few years. In short, Kyoto won’t work.
If global warming really is a major threat, our scientists need to find something better than Kyoto – something more focused against warming. Otherwise, the world needs to plan how to cope with the effects of global warming, which will be a disaster for low-lying areas and islands.
I think about investing in land in Greenland…
Maybe I’m mistaken, but I thought that the Kyoto treaty was written by politicians not scientists.
Scientifically, I’ve also heard the Kyoto was basically the “drop in the bucket”. And that in a hundred years the Accords would have reduced our output by about 1-5 percent at most.
It’s important to note that federally the US rejected the Kyoto Protocol; municipal and state level governments did not. They are perfectly able to begin enacting controls within their own domains. Once sufficient numbers do that there should be a drive to standardize the approaches at a federal level. It might actually allow a large enough number of approaches to be tested before settling on a final method.
Didn’t a recent president just leave it sitting in a drawer for 8 years…
Aren’t storms “Acts of God” and therefore not covered anyway? It seems that through FEMA and other disaster relief the Goverment supplies, they would have more to lose then a reinsurer.
“I think about investing in land in Greenland…”
Pssst! Hey, December!, a tip for you; that would be a REALLY bad investment; global warming would probably trigger a new Ice Age in the northern hemisphere. Ironical, isn´t it?
Wind damage is covered by insurance. The insured loss due to Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1991 was a bit under $20 billion. You are correct that FEMA also provides disaster relief.
Wind damage is covered by insurance. The insured loss due to Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1991 was a bit under $20 billion. You are correct that FEMA also provides disaster relief.
This is a deceptive argument. For one, the Kyoto Accords mandate emission values for 2012. What happens after that has yet to be negotiated. So, clearly, those who make claims about the difference that Kyoto will make have to be making some assumptions about what happens after 2012. Since they are generally critics of Kyoto, you can bet their assumptions are such that Kyoto is put in the worst possible light (e.g., that emissions then go back to previous levels or at least start raising at the same rate as they were before).
The whole point of Kyoto is to try to get us on a new path by telling our market economies that there is a cost to throwing all of these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Then, markets will do what the proponents of markets love to say that they do … They will help come up with technological solutions in the form of better efficiency, renewable energy sources, sequestration of greenhouse gases, etc. But, in order to do this, the market has stop believing that greenhouse gases have no costs associated with them. That is what Kyoto will help to do.
Well, most of the nations (at least those who have commitments under Kyoto) didn’t start ratifying Kyoto until the last couple of years. The reason is that, while a framework was agreed to several years ago, the final details were not fleshed out until recently. (The final details made enough compromises to concerns about economic effects by incorporating international emissions trading, credits for carbon sinks, and the like that some environmentalists dubbed the final product “Kyoto Lite”, while still agreeing that it was far better than nothing.)
The Senate never voted on Kyoto. What you are talking about is some sort of “sense of the Senate” resolution that was voted on in the mid 1990s before Kyoto was agreed upon that stated essentially what the U.S. negotiating position ought to be. Since it stated that the treaty ought to set limits on all nations, including developing nations, and the final treaty does not yet set limits on developing nations (although it says that future agreements will) then some argue that this was a vote against Kyoto before-the-fact.
However, this claim is deceptive for a number of reasons. First, some senators no doubt understand that when the U.S. enters into treaties with other nations, we won’t necessarily get everything we want; we will have to make compromises. Second, both the political climate and state of the science were quite a bit different back in the mid 1990s. For example, at that time, British Petroleum was a member of the Global Climate Coalition fighting against the emerging consensus on global warming. Now, they support Kyoto and have in fact implemented a somewhat more aggressive reduction than Kyoto company-wide, 8 years ahead of schedule, and claim to be saving money in net as a result (due to energy efficiency savings).
By the way, here is a list of some previous threads on this subject, with the last being the most recent:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=104877
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=134552
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=136373
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=183320
Here is a list of the current status of the ratification process. Note that it is the countries with astericks next to their names, so-called “Annex I” countries that have emissions limits set on them by Kyoto.
By the way, the complaints against Bush for walking away from Kyoto would not be nearly so great if he actually had proposed a credible alternative, as Senators McCain and Lieberman now have: http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/030107.asp
It’s true that the costs of global warming could be very large, though there is sufficient uncertainty in our models that it is difficult to predict what the exact results will be. However, adapting the Kyoto protocol would not reduce global warming enough to significantly alleviate these costs. To say that adopting Kyoto would make further steps easier is disingenuous, for making additional cuts in emissions would only be more difficult. The first cuts to be made would be the easy ones; future proposals can only cost more for even lesser gain.
Perhaps all that can be done for now is to adapt our lifestyles to climate change as best we can. Hopefully future technological advances will allow us to solve these problems in a cost-effective fashion.
It is note disingenius at all. Yes, further cuts may be difficult but if we have time to make them so that technologies become ready, they won’t be nearly as hard to make as if we just continue on the path we are on now. To stabilize the CO2 levels at a certain level (such as 500 ppm) may still be obtainable now but will soon become almost impossible if we just let emissions continue to rise unchecked and if we don’t develop the necessary technology.
What is disingenius is to talk of “future technological advances” when you aren’t actually doing anything to spur these advances. Market-based economies don’t spontaneously solve “problems” that aren’t problems as far as the market is concerned because the market doesn’t have any cost mechanism to know that they exist!
Both sides need to make such assumptions. Kyoto supporters don’t dispute the agreement’s minimal benefit; they just don’t talk about it.
ISTM that this sort of international agreement generally underachieves its goal. As jshore wrote, “when the U.S. enters into treaties with other nations, we won’t necessarily get everything we want; we will have to make compromises.” Similarly the Kyoto proponents have to make compromises. It was always to be anticipated that not all of Kyoto would be achieved.