What international policies have been established to deal with climate change and where do we currently stand on this issue?
Interactive Study Guide
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Guiding Question 31.5
What international policies have been established to deal with climate change and where do we currently stand on this issue?
Why You Should Care
Climate change has been recognized as an international issue since the late 1970s, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that global consensus agreed that humans were releasing levels of greenhouse gases that were causing the climate to shift. Once the problem was identified, the next step was to set policy to limit release of those gases. The first attempt to set up a framework policy was the Kyoto Protocol, which set reduction goals for developed but not developing countries, beginning in 2005. The rationale was that developed countries had not only higher per capita emissions, but also the budget to fund incentive programs to minimize release. Developing countries had lower per capita emissions but even for the higher emitting developing countries, they didn’t have the budget to fund programs to lower emissions.
This impasse lasted until 2003, when the Clean Development Mechanism set up policies to shift money from developed countries to developing countries. The mechanism has a clever core: Developed countries need to lower emissions, but if they are still over their national goal, they can purchase credits from developing countries that are below their national goals. The profits from the purchase would be spent to transition away from emission-producing toward renewable or more efficient programs.
Since 2005, there have been a number of improvements and clarifications of the goal of limiting warming to 2°C, regardless of the gas emissions it will take to keep warming below that level. Most recently, the meetings have set out the goal of the next level of emission limitations that will replace Kyoto’s goals. These new targets will be negotiated by 2015 and will start in 2020.
The slow, back-and-forth pattern here shows us the nature of international negotiation and policy. It has taken decades but at the end of it, the majority of world is working towards goals and is bound by specific programs and policies that support that goal.
Test Your Vocabulary
Choose the correct term for each of the following definitions:
Term
Definition
A 1997 amendment to the UNFCCC that set legally binding specific goals for greenhouse gas emission reductions for certain nations that ratified the treaty.
An U.N. program that allows a country with a GHG reduction commitment to implement emission reduction projects in developing countries.
A target of the mini¬mum fuel efficiency (MPH) that manufacturers must meet; evaluated as a weighted average of all the cars and light trucks each manufacturer produces.
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1.
When did an international group first call for a limit on greenhouse gas emission?
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When is the Kyoto Protocol set to expire?
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When were developing countries first forced to adopt CO2 targets?
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According to the Durban Platform, when will the Kyoto Protocol targets now expire?
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Why was the 2010 Cancun Agreement’s 2°C target significant for future climate change treaties?
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Which country or region showed the greatest increase in CO2 emission between 1990 and 2009?
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Which country or region showed the greatest decrease in CO2 emission between 1990 and 2009?
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The Kyoto Protocol set a goal for the Annex 1 nations to reduce their emissions by 4.7%. Why were their results considered to be such a great outcome compared to their goal?
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The United States did not sign the Kyoto Protocol because China and India were classified as developing nations and did not have to set CO2 limits. Based on these results, would you agree with the United States’ position?
Since China increased their emissions by over 200%, it does make sense that the United States would seek to force at least the largest developing countries to set CO2 targets. It is important to note that these data are percentage changes, not per capita changes. China’s population is four times as large, so while its total emissions have just matched those of the United States, its per capita emissions are just one-quarter of those of the average U.S. citizen.
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Why were HFC offsets the largest portion of the CDM payouts?
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Most nitrous oxide release today (>70%) comes tropical soils and ocean sources. Nitrous oxide reduction by industries is tied with renewable energy as the second largest payout of the CDM—would those payouts make a big difference in nitrous oxide production?
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Why was switching away from fossil fuels and creating renewable energy sources the original focus of the CDM?
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How does adaptive management allow the CDM to close the HFC loophole?
Adaptive management allows changes to policy as new information comes in. In this case, it was information about how businesses were exploiting a loophole in the CDM to make more money while not actually making climate change any better. Closing the loophole by banning HFC production/destruction should change behavior and lower overall greenhouse gas production.
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Short-Answer Questions
It is not well known, but there is already a functioning cap-and-trade system in the United States. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is an agreement among nine Northeastern states to reduce their CO2 emissions from electrical generation by 10% by 2018. Each state would have a quota of CO2 based on its population and that quota would be divided among large electrical plants based on output.
The idea was that some of the large CO2 releasers (primarily fossil fuel generating plants) would be forced to either buy other releasers’ leftover CO2 or spend that money to make themselves more efficient. A quarter of the money raised at auction would be taken by the states and used to fund incentive programs to increase efficiency or renewable energy generation, both of which lower the amount of CO2 released.
From an environmental policy point of view, RGGI is a combination of command and control (setting a hard cap for state-wide emissions) and incentives, as the auction system creates a green tax on emissions over their allotment. As time goes on, the price-of-auction price of CO2 would change to reflect the scarcity of CO2 emissions left over by some emission sources.
1) Since the first CO2 auction in 2009, ratio of the number of bidders to the number of suppliers of CO2 allotments has gone from 4.1 to 0.6. What does this tell us about the effect of the CO2 auction on creating CO2 offsets?
2) The goal of 10% reduction in CO2 generation is half of the Kyoto Protocol’s 20% goal for the same time period. Why would RGGI have set lower goals?
3) In 2009, the states participating in RGGI agreed in principle to extend CO2 auctions to cars, trucks, and buses. Rather than dealing with large corporations, this would involve vehicles and the individuals responsible for them. What new challenges would the states face with this expanded environmental policy?
1) When the ratio of buyers to sellers is greater than 1, there are more buyers than sellers. In 2009, the market had just begun and there were few suppliers of extra CO2 as the penalty for inefficient CO2 release were just starting. As the ratio of buyers to suppliers drops below 1, there are suppliers with leftover CO2 to sell because they are more efficient and release less. This is the hoped-for outcome of the market!
2) It is good to remember that the United States didn’t sign the Kyoto Protocol because it was believed that the solutions were unfairly balanced, not that they were overly expensive. But without a national policy like the Kyoto Protocol to follow, lobbying at the state level has a stronger slowing effect on any new policies. RGGI set modest standards for the auction system, hoping to revisit goals in 2018 and potentially set them lower after demonstrating that the market works and is not overly harsh.
3) Expanding the policy to the level of the individual vehicle would make the CO2 auction much more difficult for the average driver to manage. Markets would work if the driver could purchase from a portfolio of different markets—each could buy from the market directly and then the driver could pick amongst them based on price and how the offset worked (much like private auto insurance is regulated already).
