RADICAL alternatives to the current programme for limiting greenhouse gas emissions are on the table as negotiations begin on what should follow the Kyoto protocol when it expires in 2012. At the top of the agenda for the talks, the first round of which took place last week in Bonn, Germany, is whether the protocol should be extended with tougher targets and more countries signing up to them, or whether it would be better to tear it up and start afresh.
With the US still refusing to ratify Kyoto, the second option is looking the more attractive to some. Meanwhile, the political landscape is changing. Major developing countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and China no longer regard climate change as a problem only for the rich world.
“Climate change is a new barrier to our economic development,” says Argentinian climate negotiator Vicente Barros. His country has already suffered a 30 per cent decline in electricity production because changing rainfall patterns and melting glaciers are reducing flows in rivers they rely on for hydropower.
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Countries like Argentina are starting to accept that they may have to accept emissions targets themselves. “They are stepping up to the plate, arguing that climate change is a real and growing threat to their development,” says Jennifer Morgan, climate campaigner at environment group WWF. “We have not heard that before.”
Many developing countries already have local climate initiatives. Argentina has the world’s largest fleet of cars powered by natural gas, which produces less carbon per unit of energy than petrol. China is improving its energy efficiency so fast that even its breakneck industrialisation has brought only minimal increases in greenhouse gas emissions in the past decade.
This will not be enough, however. To prevent dangerous climate change, the world will probably have to limit total CO2 emissions to the atmosphere from human activity to less than 600 billion tonnes for the whole of the 21st century, says British climate negotiator David Warrilow. If current trends continue, we will have emitted 400 billion tonnes by 2030, so room for future emissions is rapidly running out.
So what to do when the Kyoto protocol expires? The obvious option is a “son of Kyoto”. This could draw on the protocol’s complex and painfully negotiated rule book while setting tough new targets for industrialised nations and first-time targets for some richer developing nations. The European Union has proposed cuts of 15 to 30 per cent for industrialised countries by 2020, goals that are up to six times tougher than current targets.
But other countries want to tear up Kyoto and start again. This is partly to lure the US back on board, and partly because they believe other formulas could work better.
Of the main alternatives being discussed in the Bonn corridors, one would allocate carbon-emission rights strictly according to population (see “Equal rights for all”) while another would set targets for countries to reduce the emissions per dollar of GDP (see “To those that have…”).
A third option calls for countries to adopt specific carbon-reduction technologies in exchange for similar pledges from other nations. Measures might include generating more electricity from renewables or maintaining natural carbon sinks such as rainforests. Such an approach might encourage innovation, but would not necessarily lead to real reductions in emissions. The world might simply end up heading for the abyss more efficiently.
