CNSNews.com - Dump Cap-And-Trade, Experts Advise World Leaders

CNSNews.com - Dump Cap-And-Trade, Experts Advise World Leaders

(CNSNews.com) – The Kyoto Protocol has failed, and the focus on reducing carbon emissions through cap-and-trade schemes like the one currently before the U.S. Congress should be replaced by efforts to improve energy efficiency and “decarbonize” the energy supply, according to an international group of academics.

Their appeal came in a report released as Group of Eight leaders meeting in Italy wrestle over climate policy.



President Obama on Thursday chairs a meeting of the eight leading industrialized countries plus China, India, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil, in a bid to narrow differences over what leading and emerging economies are expected to do in the years ahead to counter what U.N. scientists say is a dangerous increase in the earth’s temperature.

Earlier, the U.S. joined its G8 partners in agreeing to a goal of limiting any average global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (C), or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Global warming” proponents argue that a rise of more than two degrees C from pre-industrial period average temperatures could have a potentially catastrophic effect on the planet, saying they are already 0.8 degrees C warmer.

The Kyoto Protocol requires leading economies, by 2012, to cut by specified amounts carbon dioxide (CO2) and other “greenhouse gases” blamed for climate change. It allows for trading in carbon “credits” among lighter and heavier emitters.

A conference in Copenhagen late this year aims to deliver a global agreement for action after 2012, the end of the Kyoto-applicable period. Activists are pushing for much bigger emission-reduction targets and more stringent timetables than those set by Kyoto.

But the new report says Kyoto and its underlying approach have had no meaningful impact at all. To the contrary, cap-and-trade schemes – which set a limit on emissions and allow trading in emissions permits or carbon offsets – had seen emissions continue rising.

The report comes from a consortium of research institutes in Europe, North America and Asia, led by the London School of Economics’ (LSE) Mackinder Program and the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford.

It says the only policies that will work are those focusing directly on improving energy efficiency (reducing the amount of energy needed to provide the same service) and decarbonizing the energy supply (finding ways to reduce the amount of carbon released per unit of energy consumed), through developing and deploying technology.

“Policy should focus directly on decarbonization rather than on emissions; on causes instead of consequences,” the authors say.

“Worthwhile policy builds upon what we know works and upon what is feasible rather than trying to deploy never-before implemented policies through complex institutions requiring a hitherto unprecedented and never achieved degree of global political alignment,” lead author Gwyn Prins of the LSE Mackinder Program said in a statement.

Under Kyoto, “the world has been recarbonizing, not decarbonizing,” he said.

Prins and his co-authors find fault with initiatives like the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation – passed by the House of Representatives late last month – as well as the European Union’s emission trading scheme and Britain’s Climate Change Act.

Instead, they point to Japan’s climate strategy – setting a realistic, concrete target, “to be met by real-world efficiency gains and decarbonization through deployment of efficient and low-carbon technologies.”

“The Japanese target does not depend on the froth of purchased offsets,” they add.

The report notes that Japan, ironically, was slammed by environmentalists and the U.N. climate panel for what were seen as unambitious targets, even though its policy is actually working.

“Evidence from the best studied and most efficient example, namely the Japanese iron and steel industry, shows a 19 percent reduction in CO2 1991-2008 as a result of direct efficiency gains.”

‘Don’t put dogmatism ahead of pragmatism’

Despite the experts’ appeals, carbon trading looks set to stay – and to expand.

Obama met with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt at the G8 gathering Wednesday and, according to Reinfeldt, expressed interest in linking a U.S. carbon trading market with one run by the E.U. and, possibly, Australia. Sweden holds the rotating E.U. presidency.

Writing on a Nature magazine Web site, Jeff Tollefson voiced doubt that the idea of reversing course put forward by Prins and his co-authors would garner much enthusiasm.

“Like it or not, given the amount of time and political capital that has been invested in the current negotiations, there’s little appetite for radical new ideas,” he said.

The authors of the LSE-Oxford University report advise against such thinking.

“One must not let dogmatism and the argument that there are sunk costs – financial and, even more importantly, political and psychological – drive policy to the exclusion of pragmatism,” they say.

The House of Representatives voted 219-212 to pass the Waxman-Markey legislation on June 26. The American Clean Energy and Security Act is now before the Senate, where it had its second reading on Tuesday.

The bill requires companies to buy emission permits, and will allow them to avoid reducing their own emissions by buying offsets.