Mark Lynas - Carbon Counter

Kyoto was finalized amid great celebrations in December 1997, and hailed as a triumph for global environmental protection. If it had worked, perhaps this book would not have needed to be written. Unfortunately things went somewhat downhill after all the delegates went home and the ink began to dry. First, no one did anything to cut emissions. Japanese, Canadian and US emissions continued to climb steeply, despite the countries’ Kyoto targets. European emissions were more stable, largely because of the happy accident of economic collapse in post-Communist Eastern Europe, which dramatically curtailed emissions from the old factories and power stations of the Soviet bloc.

Kyoto’s negotiating process continued at annual UN summits after 1997, but each successive meeting introduced new loopholes that served to weaken the treaty. Then in 2001, a further blow came when the second George Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto, arguing that it would be too much of a strain on his country’s economy (though many pointed at his administration’s close links with the oil industry as a deeper reason for the hostility to Kyoto). The US played a further negative role by undermining the negotiations at the UN climate summits, and by trying to organize an alliance of other Kyoto-hostile powers.

It took seven long years before the Kyoto Protocol even came into force. It finally became legally binding in February 2005 when Russia belatedly ratified the treaty. Even so, the US and Australia remain on the outside, and Canada has said that it will not be able to meet its emissions target. Within the EU, Ireland and Spain are also grossly over-budget, and may have to buy ‘emissions credits’ from more thrifty countries.

Many people see rationing as the only verifiable long-term way to get people to change their lifestyles. It’s the ultimate in carbon footprinting: rather than each individual having to work out their footprint using calculations like the ones later in this book, it would all be done automatically, perhaps with an electronic card. Each time you fill up the car, you would have to

Tip: It’s not all bad news on the US front. Following the lead of Seattle’s Mayor Greg Nickels, by September 2006, 295 city mayors, representing fifty million Americans, had pledged to implement the Kyoto agreement in their localities.

swipe your carbon ration card and surrender some units. You would also need enough carbon ration to cover your heating and other domestic needs.

The beauty of carbon rationing, according to its proponents, is that it would be government-enforced – making it much more likely to work than voluntary approaches. Because each person starts off the year with an equal ration, it would also be fair, just as everyone during the Second World War had an equal allocation of food and other necessities in order to jointly share in the war effort. One difference from wartime rations, however, is that carbon rations would be tradeable. This would introduce some flexibility – if you really have to have that power-boat, then you can buy an unused ration from someone who is happy to forgo such luxuries. The financial incentives would therefore reward those who kept their carbon emissions low, because they could sell their unused ration on the open market.

At the moment, things work the other way round – it is often cheaper to be energy-profligate. Budget

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