The struggle to forge a successor to the Kyoto Protocol
“Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible,” warned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a 2007 report. This dire prophecy concerns the whole world; while developing nations are perhaps most at risk due to their limited adaptive capacities, all countries could suffer a lowered GDP, increased disease proliferation, and massive environmental refugee crises resulting from sudden climate shifts. Recognizing the threat to the United States and the rest of the world, the Obama Administration has called for domestic greenhouse gas reductions of 80 percent by 2050. To achieve this goal, however, developed and developing nations will have to collaborate to form a comprehensive successor to the Kyoto Protocol at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen this December. Thus far, despite the inherently international nature of climate change, developed and developing countries continue to look at the problem from nationalistic perspectives when determining who should be responsible for emissions cuts. In order to achieve any progress in combating climate change, the United States and other industrialized nations will have to lead with binding reduction targets and accept that participation from developing countries, while essential, will come on a dramatically smaller scale.
The international community must begin by learning from the failures of the Kyoto Protocol. This agreement failed to gain ratification by the U.S. Senate, exempted primary greenhouse gas emitters such as China and India, and essentially relied on voluntary targets. Due to these critical weaknesses, the Kyoto Protocol has thus far failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As John Ashton, the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change, told the HPR, Kyoto’s approach was “like trying to have voluntary speed limits on roads… they don’t work.” Many experts believe that, for a new agreement to achieve its determined targets, it must mandate some form of binding emissions cuts for all major emitters by implementing an economically sustainable global carbon market and encouraging technological advancement and transfer.
Impossible to Bind All?
As Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, commented to the HPR, “we must enlist the entire world to do more, and no country, not America and not China, can be exempt.” Yet binding emissions cuts in the near future for developing countries may not even be an option on the table at the U.N. climate conference this December. Jeffery Frankel, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, told the HPR, “It’s unreasonable to expect developing countries to make substantial cuts in the near term, given that these are poor countries growing rapidly… They will not want to talk about quantitative targets.” This aversion to immediate reduction also stems from the fact that, according to the World Research Institute, industrialized countries are responsible for about 80 percent of the man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Regardless of fairness, however, maintaining the status quo in developing countries for the next few years could push the earth’s climate past a critical tipping point.
The Reality of Compromise
According to Kerry’s frank appraisal, “The simple reality is: the Senate won’t ratify a treaty unless it includes meaningful pledges from India and China… The votes won’t be there for an unfair or one-sided deal.” Frankel agreed that without China’s involvement, the U.S. will not support an international treaty “for fear of leakage and lost competitiveness,” especially in the current economic climate. It may be that the international community needs to adopt a more nuanced approach whereby China and others “agree to emissions targets that are at ‘business as usual’ rates of growth right now,” focus on adopting new technology, and “agree to a framework where they would cut emissions in the future,” Frankel suggested.
James McCarthy, Harvard professor and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, identified to the HPR a “narrow window” for progress, during which Obama must take advantage of his political capital and his exceptional scientific advisors. As McCarthy insisted, there are “no winners or losers” in the current predicament. The Copenhagen climate change negotiations may be the last chance to prevent irreparable damage to the planet and its inhabitants. Developing nations must commit to future cuts and the industrialized world must lead by example.