GEORGE BUSH is right about one thing: the Kyoto Protocol is a flawed treaty.
But for Europeans looking on in horror as he tries to destroy it, one thing
really sticks in the craw. Most of the flaws were put there by US negotiators
trying to make the treaty palatable to business. Now, having made this rumpled
bed with its mass of complicated 鈥渇lexibility mechanisms鈥�, they refuse to lie in
it.
Bush insists that he is not against action on global warming鈥攐nly the
Kyoto formula. So, putting disbelief and frustration to one side, maybe we can
help him. We wrote here a month ago about a plan called 鈥渃ontraction and
convergence鈥�. It works like this. Initially, the world sets a ceiling on the
maximum acceptable concentration of a greenhouse gas. Then it sets out a
realistic timetable for keeping global emissions below that ceiling. Finally, it
apportions to nations the rights to make those emissions according to their
populations. Over 50 years, we could cut the global entitlement to perhaps half
a tonne of carbon per person per year鈥攁bout half what it is today. If
nations want to emit more than this, they would have to buy permits from
countries with emissions to spare.
Most greens have traditionally rejected this formula as too idealistic. They
preferred the Kyoto process, in which industrialised countries picked a figure
and then haggled. But things are different now. And, oddly enough, contraction
and convergence meets the main criticisms that Bush and fellow critics make
about Kyoto. First, it includes developing countries, which get emissions
entitlements like everyone else. Second, it meets most criteria of economic
efficiency. Countries shopping around for emission permits will make every
dollar count. Third, unlike Kyoto, it is scientifically coherent, as it is aimed
at stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the air.
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Every American is responsible for about 5 tonnes of carbon emissions a year,
so this formula will still cost the US dear. But if Bush is serious about global
warming, he should be thinking along these lines.
