The Global Warming Tragedy and the Dangerous Illusion of the Kyoto Protocol

Ethics and International Affairs

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 23-39

  Gardiner, Stephen M ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 4544309189     PISSN: 08926794     EISSN: 17477093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7093.2004.tb00448.x     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Quoted in Paul Brown, “World Deal on Climate Isolates US,” Guardian, July 24, 2001, p. 1.
2. Matthew Paterson, “Principles of Justice in the Context of Global Climate Change,” in Urs Luterbacher and Detlef F. Sprinz, eds., International Relations and Global Climate Change (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), p. 122.
3. Quoted in Brown,“World Deal on Climate Isolates US.”
4. World Deal on Climate Isolates US.
5. Andrew Revkin, “Deals Break Impasse on Global Warming Treaty,” New York Times, November 11, 2001, p. A8. Others were more circumspect, but still positive. Olivier Deleuze, Belgium's energy and sustainability minister, said that he would rather have “an imperfect agreement that is living than a perfect agreement that doesn't exist.”
6. Quoted in Andrew Revkin, “178 Nations Reach a Climate Accord; U.S. Only Looks On,” New York Times, July 24, 2001, p. A1.
7. Quoted in Brown, “World Deal on Climate Isolates US.”
8. At this point, ratification by Russia is not a foregone conclusion. President Putin promised in 2002 to have the process under way by the beginning of 2003, but by October 2003 this had still not occurred. Many commentators had initially assumed that Russia would be eager to ratify, since the economic collapse following the end of Communism had reduced its own emissions and therefore appeared to give it a large surplus of permits to sell once the Kyoto targets were in place. More recently, however, some have expressed doubts about this scenario. For example, in October 2003, Andrei Illarionov, an advisor to President Putin on economic policy, was widely reported to oppose Russian participation, saying that it would “doom Russia to poverty, weakness and backwardness.” See Tim Hirsch, “Climate Talks End Without Result,” BBC News, October 3, 2003; available at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3163030.stm
9. Paul Brown, “EU Presses Moscow to Save Kyoto,” Guardian, February 26, 2003, p. 13.
10. In game theory, such a situation can be described as a many-person Battle-of-the-Sexes game. Global warming is described in these terms in Jeremy Waldron, “Who Is to Stop Polluting? Different Kinds of Free-Rider Problem” (Cornell University, 1990, unpublished).
11. See also Nick Mabey, Stephen Hall, Claire Smith, and Sujata Gupta, Argument in the Greenhouse: The International Economics of Controlling Global Warming (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 356–59, 409–10
12. Barrett, “Political Economy of the Kyoto Protocol,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 14 (1998), pp. 36–37.
13. Sometimes this is based on analysis. See, e.g., Robert O. Mendelsohn, ed., Global Warming and the American Economy (London: Edward Elgar, 2001), which argues that the economic benefits of global warming will marginally outweigh the costs in the United States. Sometimes, however, it seems simply to be inferred from the U.S. stance in negotiations.
14. See, e.g., Mabey et al., Argument in the Greenhouse, p. 408
15. W. A. Nitze, “A Failure of Presidential Leadership,” in Irving Mintzer and J. Amber Leonard, Negotiating Climate Change: The Inside Story of the Rio Convention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 189–190.
16. In both cases, there is a serious problem in coming up with realistic assessments of possible costs. For a much more complex analysis, see National Assessment Synthesis Team, Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); available at www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/nacc/default.htm.
17. Scott Barrett, Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-Making (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 371–372.
18. See Marvin S. Soroos, The Endangered Atmosphere: Preserving a Global Commons (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 260–61
19. Peter Danielson, “Personal Responsibility,” in Harold Coward and Thomas Hurka, eds., Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Press, 1993), pp. 95–96
20. Barrett, Environment and Statecraft, p. 368.
21. See Donald Brown, American Heat: Ethical Problems with the United States' Response to Global Warming (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002)
22. Peter Singer, “One Atmosphere,” in One World: The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
23. See Hugh Ward, “Game Theory and the Politics of Global Warming: The State of Play and Beyond,” Political Studies 44, no. 5 (1996), pp. 850–871.
24. I am setting aside the possibility of abrupt threshold effects. There has been significant work on such effects recently, and they pose a real ethical challenge. Since climate change in the next few decades will be caused largely by past emissions, even the possibility of abrupt change in the next couple of decades does not undermine my general argument about the incentives in play for current emissions by the present generation. See U.S. National Research Council, Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2002), p. 1.
25. Avner de-Shalit, Why Posterity Matters: Environmental Policies and Future Generations (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 138.
26. Although there might be certain goods of respect, or continuation of traditions and projects that might matter to earlier generations and are within the power of future people, I doubt that these would be sufficient to deter current people from overpollution where that is perceived to be strongly in their interest on other grounds, at least so long as the relevance of the pollution-based goods is couched solely or primarily in terms of their contribution to the well-being of the current generation. See also John O'Neill, “Future Generations: Present Harms,” Philosophy 68, no. 263 (1993), pp. 35–51.
27. Andrew C. Revkin, “Despite Opposition in Party, Bush to Seek Emissions Cuts,” New York Times, March 10, 2001, p. A1
28. Douglas Jehl with Andrew C. Revkin, “Bush, in Reversal,Won't Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide,” New York Times, March 14, 2001, p. A1.
29. Estimates of the value of these side effects vary enormously. For the EU, estimates range from 2 to 80 percent. See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 397–439
30. cited in Barrett, Environmental Statecraft, p. 383 n. 22.
31. See, e.g., Bill McKibben, “Some Like it Hot,” New York Review of Books, July 5, 2001, p. 38, where former U.S. vice president Al Gore is quoted as saying, early in his term, “The minimum that is scientifically necessary [to combat global warming] far exceeds the maximum that is politically feasible.” For a different view, see www.worldviews.org/detailreports/usreport/html/ ch4s5.html.
32. The United Kingdom is an exception here. In early 2003, it released a white paper promising deep reductions in emissions by 2050. Yet, even at this early stage, the House of Commons's Science and Technology Committee was reported as concluding that the white paper “contained few practical policy proposals that gave any confidence that its targets and aspirations could be met,” and that, of the specific targets of 10 percent renewable power generation by 2010 and 20 percent by 2020, the former was said to have “no prospect,” and the latter to be doubtful. Staff and Agencies, “‘No Chance’ of UK Meeting Greenhouse Targets,” Guardian, April 3, 2003; available at politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,9061,929046,00.html.
33. Michael Grubb, Christiaan Vrolijk, and Duncan Brack, The Kyoto Protocol: A Guide and Assessment (London: Earthscan, 1999), p. 155.
34. The Kyoto Protocol: A Guide and Assessment., pp. 161–162.
35. Some claim that the Canadian ratification has more to do with the current prime minister's wish to pose a difficult problem for his successor, a political rival, than any policy conviction. See Anne McIlroy, “Gas-guzzling Canada Divided over Rush to Kyoto,” Guardian Weekly, November 7, 2002; available at www. guardian.co.uk/GWeekly/Story/0,3939,835242,00.html.
36. See Grubb, Vrolijk, and Brack, The Kyoto Protocol, p. 156. A recent UN report anticipates that developed-country emissions will increase by 8 percent from 2000 to 2010.
37. See U.S. Department of State, “U.N. Report Calls for Stronger Policies to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” June 3, 2003; available at usinfo. state.gov/gi/Archive/2003/Jun/22–438415.html.
38. Mustapha H. Babiker, Henry D. Jacoby, John M. Reilly, and David M. Reiner, “The Evolution of a Climate Regime: Kyoto to Marrakesh and Beyond,” Environmental Science & Policy 5 (2002), pp. 195–206.
39. “The Evolution of a Climate Regime., p. 202. They also claim that most of any reductions that might occur will be in non-carbon dioxide gases.
40. Soroos, The Endangered Atmosphere, p. 226.
41. The Endangered Atmosphere.
42. See Marrakesh Accords (Advance unedited version), Accord L, Sec. XV, 5; available at unfccc.int/cop7/ documents/accords_draft.pdf.
43. See C. Bohringer, “Climate Politics from Kyoto to Bonn: From Little to Nothing?” Energy Journal 23, no. 2 (April 2001), pp. 51–71
44. Babiker et al., “The Evolution of a Climate Regime,” p. 197.
45. See Barrett, Environment and Statecraft, p. 384.
46. For a more detailed discussion, see Stephen M. Gardiner, “Ethics and Global Climate Change” (forthcoming).
47. See, e.g., Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 259
48. Brown, American Heat, ch. 6.
49. See Brown, American Heat.