Kyoto - a lot of hot air

With the signatories of the Kyoto protocol now getting down to the serious business of trying to work out targets for the next round of cuts emissions, the activists are out in force pushing for extremely deep cuts. The most frequent suggestion is for a 20 per cent reduction on 2000 emission levels by 2012, but there have been suggestions of cuts of up to 30 per cent on 1990 levels.

Deep or shallow, these figures are fantasy. They were unlikely before the financial crisis, but they are impossible now and, in any case, the Kyoto process has never had, and probably never will have, the slightest effect on global industrial emissions. At best, the whole Kyoto process is a form of theatre in which the national actors, with varying degrees of sincerity, are playing to their electorates. The process gives them a chance to be seen to be doing something.

Since the financial crisis, the overseas media has been busy noting the objections of Poland and Italy in particular to any serious cuts, with several other small players also grumbling.

Again these countries may simply be playing to their electorates - reassuring them that their interests are being safeguarded - but this does not bode well for any agreement on serious cuts which the parties might actually observe. Another problem for activists is that global temperatures have been declining in recent years, and it’s been unseasonably cold in Europe recently - all of which takes the edge of the urgency of agreeing to cuts.

When confronted with the unpleasant truth that an agreement on deep cuts is unlikely - or, at least, a truth that is unpleasant to them - activists respond that countries must agree on cuts because they “have to”. More realistically, they can also point to the financial crisis as general economic downturn as likely to put a crimp in industrial emissions, and in that they may be right. A lot of people will be put out of work by the downturn, if not impoverished, but at least one result will be to reduce the rate of growth in emissions. Activists should be happy.

Similarly, the possibility of severe economic problems in China - there have been reports of substantial factory closures - and consequent severe civil unrest, should bring smiles to their faces. Unemployed, rioting Chinese are not likely to be adding to industrial emissions.

Another point they make is that US President elect Barack Obama is about to be sworn in, which they believe indicates that America may do something about Kyoto. All this shows is that activists live in a different world. We will return to America in a moment. First, let us review the Kyoto scorecard.

The news agency Bloomberg recently counted up individual reports by nations to estimate that 20 of the 37 nations who originally signed the Kyoto Protocol agreed to in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, had failed to meet their commitments on emission cuts. The November 14 report notes that the non-complying countries include Japan, Italy and Australia. Earlier this year Canada also declared that it would not meet its commitments under Kyoto.

In other words a majority of signatories to this agreement have not met targets, and they were relatively easy targets. These were mostly 8 to 12 per cent of 1990 level emissions, depending on the country, but other circumstances meant that this generally worked out to many of the countries involved not having to do very much.

Germany and the Eastern European countries have been renovating their economies after the collapse of communism, so cuts were not difficult to find. Britain was switching its electricity industry to natural gas from the North Sea, and France’s electricity industry is mostly nuclear anyway. Russia, whose signature on the Protocol in late 2004 triggered its provisions, did not have to do anything at all. Those countries failing to meet their Kyoto requirements are meant to buy sufficient carbon credits to make up the shortfall, but it is not clear that they are doing so.

The two countries that would have been required to do something about emissions were the two that initially refused to sign - Australia and the US - on the ostensibly reasonable grounds that because it excluded developing countries, notably India and China, the protocol would have no effect apart from making the countries that signed it feel good. As has been pointed out time and again, before the financial crisis China was building coal-fired electricity plants equivalent to far more than the total Australian generating capacity, each year.

Perhaps we should get China onside? China’s chief contribution to the Kyoto debate so far, has been to demand money in return for cutting their emissions. If they can be lured to the negotiating table with the promise of umpteen billion dollars - the sum would have to be huge - the Chinese would negotiate hard before striking some sort of deal. (Let’s put the question of who will pay this money into the too hard basket.)

The resulting agreement would be hailed in the media and by activists but would mean precisely nothing. Perhaps the Chinese central government would make an effort to meet those targets - they would have just taken umpteen billion dollars of the west’s money so they should be seen to be doing something - but there is nothing in the country’s record to suggest that there would be any useful result. In China, for example, a written, signed contract is not seen as binding, but merely what the parties think will happen at that stage of the negotiating process.

At best, party officials, under pressure from the central government, may fudge the books to make it look as if something has been done. Worse, those figures may be taken at face value, as have the figures on economic growth. China may melt down - as noted there have been mass factory closures - so the cuts in emissions may be temporarily met, but once the crisis is over the Chinese will be back at work with cheerful disregard for the Western fetish about carbon.

Then there is America. Ernest, young activists say that they expect the Obama presidency to count for something and point to the fact that the president-elect has promised major cuts in emissions.

Reality check. Say that the new President decreed that to meet targeted emissions cuts, he would raise taxes on petrol by $1 a gallon? This would still not bring taxes on American petrol to anywhere near the levels of tax motorists in Australia and Europe have been paying for years, but the new President would be lucky to avoid impeachment. Although in one sense a powerful position, the American presidency is strongly constrained by numerous domestic checks and balances. Apart from any other considerations, presidents also want to get re-elected, and will not get re-elected by raising taxes or throwing voters out of work to meet emission targets.

In response to that uncomfortable truth activists may burble that emissions cuts will not cost all that much and, in the same breath, say that there will be plenty of jobs in building alternative energy power plants. Right! I will believe both those assertions when I see them happening, but as there is no real chance of significant emissions cuts we are unlikely to be in a position to test those assertions.

The Kyoto signatories are supposed to sign off on Kyoto Round II at a meeting in Copenhagen late next year. The talks in Poznan in Poland, to which Australia’s climate minister Penny Wong has jetted off, is a part of the process. The eventual result may make an agreement on cuts which will make the various governments concerned look good to the electorates back home, but they will not be met. After all, they did not meet the much easier cuts required under round one. More likely they may not agree on anything at all. Whatever the agreement, the result will be a lot of hot air.