The Kyoto Protocol is an important symbol to express concern about climate change. But it has failed to achieve emissions reductions or even anticipated emission reductions. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change. The UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in December — to decide international policy after 2012 — needs to radically rethink climate policy.

Kyoto’s supporters often blame the United States and Australia, for not signing but it was always the wrong tool for the job. Climate change is far more complex than previous treaties dealing with ozone depletion, acid rain from sulphur emissions and nuclear weapons.

One problem is that it has stifled discussion of alternative policy approaches that could both combat climate change and adapt to its unavoidable consequences. As Kyoto became a litmus test of political correctness, those who were concerned about climate change, but sceptical of the top-down approach adopted by the protocol were sternly admonished that “Kyoto is the only game in town”. We are anxious that the same mistake is not repeated in the current round of negotiations. Economic theory recognizes the futility of throwing good money after bad. In politics this is seldom the case and egos are seriously invested into political positions. But the rational thing to do in the face of a bad investment is to cut your losses and try something different.

A global carbon market is not going to be the sole solution. We need to encourage innovation and completely new ways to do things. We also need to encourage much greater participation by the small to medium business sector because although each of them has a relatively small impact, this is the major sector of our business community and collectively their impact is very important.

Technorati Tags: ISO 14001, Kyoto, International Carbon Action Partnership, ICAP, Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, United States, Australia

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Global Warming, Climate Change & Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.