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August 18, 2006
The March to a Warmer World: Where You Sit Is Where You Stand
Today's Washington Post has an excellent editorial by Cass Sunstein that drives home a point I have been trying to make for years to friends exasperated by the failure of the United States to do more to curb her emissions: countries like the US have little incentive to join international agreements such as the Kyoto Treaty because they gain little by curbing emissions in the face of potentially high abatement costs.* Sunstein correctly observes that what is true of the US is doubly so for China (and the list of nations that would lose by joining, for instance, the Kyoto Treaty is not limited to the US and China).
Unfortunately, Sunstein's only suggestions for remedying the situation rest on global moral suasion, which is unlikely to work. (When has that ever convinced a nation to act against its own strategic or economic interest?) Moreover, Sunstein mentions the possibility that global warming could lead to large and catastrophic discrete climactic events, but fails to mention one of the most feared (because the mechanisms that would drive it seem relatively straightforward) possibilities: that global warming will shut down certain ocean-based thermal conveyor belts (such as the Gulf Stream). My understanding is that it is Europe that would be most vulnerable to such a development. (Can we say Ice Age, anyone?)
These two considerations of course suggest a third possibility for breaking the global abatement negotiations logjam: explicit concessions or transfers from Europe that might make doing something about the problem worthwhile to the US and China. And this seems only fair (in the sense of fairness that actually does have meaning between sovereign nations that really cannot be compelled to anything against their will): Europe should bear some of the costs of adjustments on the part of the US that benefit Europe far more than they do the US.
Many of the activists agitating for greater US (and, soon, Chinese) commitment to global emissions abatement have taken an incredibly naive approach to both nations: George Bush was not elected by, and ultimately is not bound to answer to, the "global community". He is the President of the US and must answer to its voters.
And it should seem clear that bypassing Bush to appeal directly to the US public is unlikely to work either: despite the effective loss of New Orleans (which should have served politically as a symbol of the hazards of global warming, even if there is some reason to doubt scientifically that its fate really was determined by global warming), there has been little effective change in voter commitment to act on this issue. In fact, in light of the fate of New Orleans, it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that the broad base of American voters are pretty calculating on this issue. Indeed, the lack of greater outrage over the slow pace of re-construction perhaps reveals just how calculating: I think that many Americans, reasoning that there is no reason to re-build low lying areas that are vulnerable to major storms and anyway will likley be claimed by rising seas in a warming world, have effectively written off greater New Orleans. It's just a matter of cost-benefit analysis. So too with the Kyoto Treaty.
If you want real movement by the US on this issue, offer us a deal.
*Two other problems in terms of genuine commitment not mentioned in Sunstein's article are nations that signed the Kyoto treay because poor macroeconomic performance made it relatively easy to meet its demands for now (Japan might be an example) and hence have not really faced a meaningful test of their true commitment and position and, second, nations that signed in conciously bad faith (maybe Russia) or are unlikely to show the willpower to meet their commitments (perhaps Spain).
Posted by dag at August 18, 2006 10:36 AM