Copenhagen as a monumental tragedy of the Commons

Global warming is attributable to so many different sources of carbon emissions that narrowing the range of disputes may be impossible. Enforcement costs for any effective agreement will in fact be large, if for no other reason than that it is still difficult to accurately measure carbon emissions.

So what might an effective global warming agreement look like? Generally there are only two categories of solutions for collective action problems: regulation and property rights (or in the case of nations, territorial sovereignty). Voluntary agreements feel good but are unworkable if the economic benefits from cheating are large, and the economic benefits of ignoring voluntary limits on carbon emissions while others adhere to them are enormous.

What the world learned from the 2005 COP 11 in Montreal was that voluntary goals are the preferred instrument of states least willing to do their part in solving the problem. The probability that COP 15 will give birth to an international administrative entity with the authority and resources to enforce carbon emission reductions is extremely unlikely, leaving only property rights and territorial sovereignty as options.

How property rights and territorial sovereignty could be used to negotiate a solution can be seen in the history of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. One of the more daunting problems dealt with in that international agreement was the collective action problem of over-fishing. Although that problem is far from solved, provisions in the treaty allowing nations to extend their authority 200 nautical miles from their coasts by claiming Exclusive Economic Zones and the granting of Individual Transferable Quotas to fishermen by some nations have at least achieved the sort of reductions necessary for sustainable fishing.

That quasi-sovereignty and quasi-property rights like these may be the only way forward is also indicated by the initial success of the European Union’s Emission Trading Scheme. This cap and trade program has given European Union members states experience with a carbon emission market and the introduction of mandatory ceilings in 2008.

Climate change scientist James Hanson inveighs against national carbon cap and trade deals for moral and practical reasons. He’s right that national carbon markets tend to reward the wrong people, encourage the wrong behaviour, and fail to encompass the carbon emissions of the rest of the planet. But while dividing the existing carbon footprint among states in a planetary cap and trade by specifying national shares of global carbon emissions as quasi-sovereignty rights is obviously distasteful, it could possibly be our only way to get some purchase on the problem.

And if the problem is as severe as the consensus climate science indicates, then we cannot afford to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Indeed, we can’t even allow the good to be the enemy of barely enough. Even with a planetary cap and trade that sets national ceilings that can be agreed upon the world will still need an enforcement mechanism with enough teeth to make carbon emission limits real.

But in the end, the primary obstacle to an effective global cap and trade structure is still the self-interested resistance to mandatory carbon emission ceilings that we see so much in evidence at COP 15. For all the pretty rhetoric, there is no minimum sense of common identity among the states represented. There is no sense that we are all in this together. Unless and until the negative effects of global warming frighten the major powers into action, expect another failure in Copenhagen.