Customer Reviews

The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming (Council on Foreign Relations Book)

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For many who favor taking action to control global warming, a book which points out the fatal flaws in the Kyoto Protocol is going to be somewhat unwelcome. However, David Victor makes a very compelling case that the Protocol is unworkable as negotiated. By creating an immensely valuable new financial asset (emissions permits) and a trading system, it opens up problems related to enforcement and monitoring, the protection of property rights under international law, the inclusion of "illiberal" governments with weak legal systems in the regime, and large politically unpalatable (and essentially unearned) transfers of wealth to Russia and Ukraine.

How does the system deal with a government, for example, which pockets its payments for selling emission permits, then pulls out of the regime when it ceases to be profitable? How are additional countries to be brought into the regime without giving them the incentive of very high "worst case" emissions targets? How do you create an asset which is allocated based on statistical data which may be imperfect?

[If anything, Victor is too *optimistic* about the ability to accurately monitor CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. As an example of this one needs only to look at Chinese coal consumption data, which has fallen by a rather implausible amount in the last half-decade, for reasons internal to China having nothing to do with Kyoto. Questionable official data (and the possibility of intentionally skewed data) for developing countries is a real impediment to their future inclusion in any regime.]

Certainly many will criticize Victor's proposed "hybrid" system, which combines elements of emissions trading and taxation, for being even more complex than Kyoto's "cap and trade" system, and for setting an absolute ceiling for permit prices rather than for emissions, but he does make a set of powerful arguments in favor of such a system.

Hopefully, this book will help produce a more informed debate about a very complex, and immensely important, set of issues. This book is clearly a "must read" for anyone interested in global climate change.

David Victor presents an interesting story with one major omission which tends to disqualify the book completely.

Blithely assuming that emissions controls can reverse a modest climate change without as much as an attempt to understand the nature of the present climate trend, especially in a perspective giving at least some comprehension of why climate change constantly occurs, the book cooks up a lot or reasoning about nothing.

The cart is solidly before the horse and I suggest other transportation for those interested in the Kyoto conundrum.