Hot air and high ground at Gleneagles

Pointing to their own much lower carbon emissions per capita and the West’s relative wealth, they cry: “You created the problem, you fix it”.

But if we were rationing water in a drought we’d want everyone to save water, though we might choose to compensate the poor. We should do the same with greenhouse.

Actually, we already have. When Kyoto was negotiated, Russia was in the midst of a depression produced by its botched transition to capitalism. So the richer countries gave it a very generous entitlement to emit. Indeed Russia was permitted to emit more carbon than it was then emitting - so called “hot air”.

Why? To reward it for signing up. Whether you call this “compensation” or an “incentive”, (I call it a bribe) Russia now sells its excess emission entitlements to the highest bidder. Get it? In addition to compensating Russia, trading emissions permits make Russia keen to cut its emissions further - so it can sell more permits. So it joins the global effort to reduce emissions.

The West should offer developing countries a similarly generous deal. But breaking through their intransigence would also require a credible threat to impose trade sanctions if they kept stalling. But so far a hard-headed, soft-hearted offer like this isn’t even on the table.

Why? Because the Europeans’ soft-heartedness is also soft-headed. They seem incapable of walking away from the table in the face of the developing country intransigence. American hard-headedness could be the antidote.

But so far developing country intransigence has just been a fig leaf for the Americans’ refusal to ratify Kyoto. The real motive is hard-heartedness. George Bush wants to protect the American “way of life” from the costs of its existing emissions target. So he’s not about to accept an even smaller target, which he’d be forced to, if the developing countries were brought into Kyoto - like Russia, with a generous emissions entitlement.

While I wait for progress out of this mess I’ll think of that Puritan saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'll be hoping that America’s walking away from Kyoto might just end up doing some good - that here on earth the road to heaven might be paved with a few bad intentions.

Economists have been unable to sell their “hard heads, soft hearts” recipe ready-made. But the contest between Left and Right might eventually deliver it.