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Kyoto Conference on Global Climate Change

© Kenneth Friedman

1. Setting up such a system internationally would be an administrative headache. As it is, nations are unable to agree on much, let alone follow through on much they do finally agree on. One reason for inability to follow through is the political corruption that is a way of life in many countries, which is not likely to change any time soon.
2. Follow-through on an emissions trading program also is affected by the following: lack of money, expertise, workers, education and other components of social infrastructure required to "make things happen."

3. How would anybody ensure that companies were adhering to the rules? No one seriously believes that companies could be trusted to self-report do they? Self-reporting may work reasonably well (some people would disagree) in the United States, but it sure won't work in a lot of other countries. And another thing. People have different opinions about
   • what constitutes emissions and what do not,
   • how much there are,
   • how to measure them,
   • who will measure them, and
   • what would be done if an undesirable measurement turned up.

4. The U.S. is the world's biggest and richest polluter. Look at a graph on this sometime (like one I found on a hyperlink image at CNN). Since U.S. companies can afford to pay big for certificates to allow emissions, companies could gobble up emission rights. So could industries in a country whose government provided economic incentives for its industries that made them more competitive in the emissions marketplace.This advantage-buying power could leave developing countries, which often need cheap solutions to development that include less-than-perfect industrial production, without those "develop while polluting" opportunities. In a way, this would be like selling development rights — somehow this sounds like a variation on imperialism to me. How long does anyone think the "have nots" would go along with a scheme that holds them back? Pretty soon you'll be hearing things like "You can't make me!"

5. What will stop a rapidly industrializing country like China from opting out of the game? The volume of its emissions alone could make reductions by others futile. India might not want to play either.

Confused as I am about what to do, I'm sure of two things:

1. we're not getting out of this issue easily or soon, and
2. people (nations) are going to have to do a lot of compromising.

You can be sure we'll be reading a lot more about GCC for a while.

For another view on Kyoto, see the article by Suite 101's "Politics-Liberalism" editor, Steve Kangas.