The Kyoto Protocol; why it’s important
Posted in General by steve
I believe that international efforts, like the Kyoto Protocol, to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions are key to dampening the effects of global warming. The Kyoto Protocol is not just a voluntary agreement, there are costs and benefits involved to try and keep nations honest to their promises. Here is a brief history of how the protocol developed and reasons why efforts like the protocol are crucial to our fight against global warming.
In 1992 the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was held. They basically decided that global warming was a problem and that nations should try to do something about it. They also decided to meet on a regular basis to have a Conference of Parties (COP meetings) to discuss their progress. The third COP meeting was in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. This is the meeting where the Kyoto Protocol had its beginnings. They set greenhouse emission reduction targets for each country. In addition to this they made an emissions trading program and had further meetings to establish penalties for failure of the nations meeting their targets for cutting greenhouse emissions. Bush refused to sign the protocol when he was elected in 2000. The Kyoto Protocol had a hard time making any progress without the US involved, but finally came into force in February of 2005… of course, it’s not nearly as strong without the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter.
So why can’t each country have their own individual plans for cutting emissions? During the COP meetings a major division between less developed nations and more developed nations became apparent. Developed nations involved in the Kyoto Protocol (the EU) have been pushing for developing nations (China and India) to do more to cut their greenhouse emissions. The developoing nations have refused to make such committments unless they receive financial aid and special consideration of these policies on their economies. These are legitimate concerns, since these countries are trying to make it economically in a world where more developed nations dominate the economy. It is crucial that these developing nations make efforts to cut their emissions, but it can only be done with international cooperation… not through individual nations’ plans to cut their own emissions.
The Kyoto Protocol provides this structure of cooperation, and makes cutting emissions more than simply a voluntary thing to do. Emissions trading is one incentive given to the participating nations. If Canada, for example, goes over its emissions target for a year, while Norway falls under its target, Canada may buy Norway’s unused emission credits to meet its target. If a nation falls short of its target they will be required to make up their shortfall plus 30% in the next target year. There will also be a suspension of eligibility to sell emissions credits. There would be incentives for helping developing nations cut down on their greenhouse emissions.
There needs to be some international accountability and unity on this issue. Global warming will affect the entire globe in one way or another. This system is what is available right now and is the only way I know of right now to give developing nations the opportunity to help the environment. As for the US, we cited effects on our economy for withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. Guess what, eventually the effects from global warming will have a greater impact on our economy than the sacrifices we would need to make now to cut down on greenhouse emissions. We do have our own national plan to cut down on greenhouse emissions, but there is something more to be said for international cooperation on this issue. And for that reason, I think it’s shameful that we withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol.
April 27th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Bravo!
I’d like to add that allowing countries to create their own emissions reductions basically begs for free-riding. Forcing ALL countries to reduce emissions is the key! The Kyoto protocol provides healthy incentives for emissions reduction, and I agree that it is pretty shameful that we withdrew.
April 28th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Come on, someone has to hate the Kyoto Protocol! Disagree with me!!
April 28th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
There’s not much to hate about the premise if you’re firing at least a few neurons — but it goes a lot deeper than that and you’ve got a few paragraphs that match the crux of the argument — and the point is — drumroll please — no one wants to lose a competitive advantage even if the immediate advantage is to long-term detriment. Look around America and you’ll see that we live in the “now” — overeating, overspending, etc — vs. living in both the now and the future. We’ve made it very acceptable to justify greed and selfishness both on a moral and scientific(?) sense. If you consider political economy to be science I suppose.
You can’t argue many of these items without coming back to a basic argument that people are tired of arguing over: Is capitalism a zero sum game?
And consider this no one wants to lose a competitive advantage even if the immediate advantage is to long-term detriment? Why? Because the really smart among us will make the future work, no matter how bad it turns out in a general sense. Case in point: The economy today. Recent poll indicates that 80% of Americans think the economy is sh*t,while 20% believe it’s booming. Some made the future work for them while others didn’t.
April 28th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Shaniqua, well said. It’s sad, but it’s true.
April 28th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Just saw this last night: Too Hot Not to Handle
Check it out… watch it if you can…
April 28th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
And more tips from the Too Hot Not to Handle Website:
25 Things You Can Do To Save the Environment
1. Reduce your driving (walk, bike, ride mass transit, carpool).
2. Choose a more fuel efficient car.
3. Choose more energy-efficient appliances, especially major ones like refrigerators and water heaters.
4. Buy “green power” like wind energy from your electric utility - many offer this option now.
5. Reduce discretionary air travel and purchase carbon dioxide offsets for any air travel you can’t avoid.
6. Recycle everything you can: newspapers, cans, glass bottles and jars, aluminum foil, motor oil, scrap metal, etc.
7. Don’t use electrical appliances for things you can easily do by hand, such as opening cans.
8. Use cold water in the washer whenever possible.
9. Re-use brown paper bags to line your trash can instead of plastic bags. Re-use bread bags and the bags you bring your produce home in.
10. Store food in re-usable containers, instead of plastic wrap or aluminum foil.
11. Save wire coat hangers and return them to the dry cleaners.
12. Take unwanted, re-usable items to a charitable organization or thrift shop.
13. Don’t leave water running needlessly.
14. Turn your heat down, and wear a sweater.
15. Turn off the lights, TV, or other electrical appliances when you are out of a room. 16. Flush the toilet less often. (If you cut flushing in half, you’ll save up to 16.5 gallons a day.)
17. Turn down the heat and turn off the water heater before you leave for vacation.
18. Recycle your Christmas Tree. (Read all the things you can do.)
19. Recycle office and computer paper, cardboard, etc. whenever possible.
20. Use scrap paper for informal notes to yourself and others.
21. Print or copy on both sides of the paper.
22. Use smaller paper for smaller memos.
23. Re-use manila envelopes and file folders.
24. Hide the throw-away cups, and train people to use their washable coffee mugs. Use washable mugs for meetings too.
25. Avoid buying food or products in plastic or styrofoam containers whenever possible. (They cannot be recycled and do not break down in the environment.)
April 28th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
hm… i know this is just a product of a long week and a fried brain, but it seems like the recommendations here are all about “denial” and why it is probably not going to work, and why some people are more self righteous about it than others.
Hear me out on this, and this probably just a waste of typing, but…
It might have been some kind of freshman philosophy thing, but some religions are based on a overseeing figure and the members all live somewhat in fear (don’t kill me on this, you get the point) of the all knowing, all powerful being. So they deny themselves things, like premarital sex, drugs, alcohol, other immoral type stuff. They have a certain set of rules, which they accept as group norms. As a result, we have people, committed to a certain way of thinking. Those who go through the same upbringing, and have similar values join together, but what ends up happening is that they really look down on those who don’t believe their exact same version. In contrast, there are people who have no need for their rules, and live without the restrictions of religion.
So on to the environmentalists, probably a virtuous group, but they also are looking to “deny” themselves certain goods. They say it is for the greater future good, i’ll go along with it, sure. Again, you have the same people who group together to follow the restrictions of buying hybrids, conserving gas, and taking shorter showers. So they all suffer through this denial of goods, and band together to ridicule those who don’t follow. (reference south park episode about “smug”)
However, as mike put it, there will always be free loaders. And this is why conservation will not save the day. My example is in more of a micro version than what mike was talking about, but what incentive is there for a guy in his house, with no one looking to take a shorter shower? If he can afford it, is he going to flush his toilet less? He’ll only do it if he has the “fear” of the environment causing him to be paranoid. If he views conservation as a chore, then he won’t really want to do it.
April 28th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
damn…once again, typo…i meant to credit george for the free riders, not mike…
April 29th, 2006 at 3:04 am
I don’t think that conservation will save the day, but it certainly will help. Maybe it will buy us some more time to make a transition to an environmentally healthier culture and economy.
April 29th, 2006 at 10:09 am
So on to the environmentalists, probably a virtuous group, but they also are looking to “deny” themselves certain goods. They say it is for the greater future good, i’ll go along with it, sure. Again, you have the same people who group together to follow the restrictions of buying hybrids, conserving gas, and taking shorter showers. So they all suffer through this denial of goods, and band together to ridicule those who don’t follow. (reference south park episode about “smug”)
Smug is probably a good word although words are commonly invented to ridicule those that you don’t agree with. Passive-aggressive is one of my favorites in this category because it implies that being Active-agressive is prefered. And it can mean so many things that anyone can fall into the category. It’s a crap word just like many used in a similar manner.
Consider that your life has a limited number of seconds in it. Of all the things that we possess, time is the most precious because we can’t get it back and badly used time eats away at some preset number. Religious nuts go on about living infinitely in some idealized state, but considering how easily bored we get in this world, I’m not sure that’s going to turn out well for them.
Many of us do chores willingly; and those chores consume time. We brush our teeth a couple, maybe three times a day. Deoderize. Shower. Groom. Maybe we work out. Maybe we clean the house. Take the trash out. Cut the grass. Clean the pool. Paint the house. Wash the car, and so on. Generally this can be viewed as tedium because you’re wasting the most precious commodity you have — time — and most of these things return to the condition of decay shortly. Probably screwing the cheerleader is a better use of time than cutting grass…
So why do we do these things? Because we want to be smug about it? There may be some, but I don’t think that’s the reason. Even though we have a limited number of ticks, we want to do some chores because those chores and acts improve our quality of life as seen holistically or the state of our investments. Save ourselves pain later and have more equilibrium in our lives. The peaks and valleys shouldn’t be too extreme.
In American society, we have a healthy population bell curve, and many people in that bellcurve want to screw the cheerleader every moment of every day. A smaller number of people see the pleasure in screwing the cheerleader but also like to get out a bit and check out other things so that mr. johnson doesn’t rub bloody. We have media and business (same thing really) that questions anyone that doesn’t want to spend their life in bed with the cheerleader as effeminate or French. And a huge number of people buy into that view because when you screw the cheerleader you can passively have the TV set to the all-news channel or CNBC and it doesn’t take much effort for that crap to become the soundtrack of your life between thrusts.
When I brush my teeth I don’t feel that I’m denying myself the 60 seconds of gratification that I could be having instead. But I do feel smug later in the day when I run into the foul smelling redneck that rolled out of bed still encrusted. Probably an elitist view, but that’s just another word that disparages positive values.
(Note: Professionally, when I get into the wrestling match, I do prefer to go in with bad breath and greasy hair. But I think there’s a solid reason for being crusty; it psyches the competition.)
May 1st, 2006 at 7:48 pm
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/05/doomsday_...
May 1st, 2006 at 9:07 pm
Yeah, that’s a good one. I like this one on the maleable nature of truth:
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/04/the_seed_...
Laurie David: I want to start with an obvious question: Does the truth matter? How are we going to educate the public if they’re not told the truth about the science from our scientists? Obviously, what I’m talking about is what happened recently with James Hansen and NASA.
Stephen Schneider: My students are always saying, “Aren’t you frustrated to death? Nothing you do makes any immediate difference.” What I keep trying to tell them is, the truth matters, but it’s on a generational time frame. In the short run, it’s all political spin: media, chicanery and who buys the airwaves. But in the long run, being right and having events occur the way you said they would builds credibility, and then some phenomena comes along and becomes a tipping point. In 1988 it was the super heat waves, which tipped the global warming problem—as I like to say—from the left brain of 100 of us to the right brain of the society. And that of course set up the Global Climate Coalition—the coalition of liars and spin doctors and others who then spent tens of millions of dollars a year repositioning the debate. And for a decade they were successful.
Now we have another tipping phenomena in Katrina. Nature is cooperating with theory. We continue to break warming records and hurricane intensities are increasing in correlation with warming oceans, exactly as predicted by theory 15 to 20 years ago. Slowly, that works its way through—although in fits and starts from these media-worthy events—so that after a generation or two, when problems become pretty widely understood, the truth matters. But in the short-run it is going to be all spin.
In the long run, he’ll be dead and New Orleans under 7 meters of water. I’ll go paddling by in my oarboat saying, “OOOOO, Stephen Schneider was right… Is that his carcass floating by?”
No one will care because spin is “now” and real truth will always be revealed in the future. When the future becomes “now”, spin will still rule the day — it will just be spin de jour.
May 1st, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Yes, there is spin. However, it brings up a good point (well, that I inferred from it).
It’s clear that we have some serious environmental problems. It’s clear that we are part of our environmental problems. It’s not clear how long it will be before this will become such a serious problem that it will change our standard of life.
Is it worth gambling our future to see how long we can go before there is a problem?