Depending on whose measurements you go by China either overtook the US as the leading producer of GHGs in July, or China will overtake the US as late as 2010. Neither of these countries have proven particularly receptive to emissions controls in the past. The US did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, purportedly regulating emissions through 2012, and China announced in June that despite perhaps being the world's largest emitter of GHGs it should still be allowed differentiated responsibility as a developingnation. Emerging from this is the question of whether the US is obligated by law to curb its own emissions and how to go about curbing emissions.
Over at Scientific American, Jeffrey Sachs has an article, "Climate Change and the Law", which discusses US obligations to combat climate in change in the context of an article at Financial Times by Eric Posner and Cass Sunstein, "Pay China to reduccut emissions". Mr. Sachs writes a fine description of the legal context, but he misses the point of Posner and Sunstein's article which is that the US should forget about compensation and should focus on compensating China, and Posner and Sunstein miss the point of the solution which is that CERs can serve as a valuable compensation tool and need not be cloaked in polarizing language such as payoffs to get member nations to abide by emissions controls.
The US has been in the business of taking unilateral action for a while now. When Bill Clinton passed the White House to George W. Bush, he suggested that Bush sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. The US would have been obligated to reduce emissions to 5% below the 1990 emission levels. The argument goes, the US did not sign Kyoto, thus it is under no obligation to reduce emission levels. This is simply not true. In 1992, the Senate ratified a treaty proposed by UNFCCC and signed by George H.W. Bush, which calls on developed countries to adopt national policies consistent with the objective of stabilizing GHGs at levels that prevent dangerous interference with the climate system. This binds the US to this goal through international law. International law can be difficult to enforce in and against the US, but domestic law is working against climate change, too.
California is the only state that can be granted a waiver by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to make and enforce emissions laws that are stricter than those regulations set by the EPA. Once California has been granted a waiver, other states are allowed to amend their laws to be in line with California's laws. Recently, California was denied a waiver for the first time and several lawsuits by several states have been filed every which way against the EPA, against the states, against the Automotive Industry, all trying to figure out whether the EPA is obligated to regulate the emission of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. On April 2, 2007, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that the EPA is obligated to regulate carbon dioxide as a deleterious pollutant, and in dicta suggested that the EPA should try to mitigate the effects of climate change. This is a strong argument that the US is obligated by domestic law to take at least administrative action with respect to GHGs.
With a strong case for an international obligation and a domestic obligation under the law to deal with GHGs and climate change, the question is how to proceed. California, under the Global Warming Solutions Act signed by governor Schwarzenegger, is working on a cap and trade system similar to that adopted by most of the EU. Congress is also working on a cap and trade system that should preempt California's system under the Supremacy Clause. In cap and trade, a cap on carbon emissions is set and participants in an industry are not allowed to emit above that level. Those who are below the cap are allowed to sell the difference between the amount of carbon they emitted and the amount of carbon they are allowed to emit. Those who are above their level must purchase carbon offsets from those below the alloted level and/or purchase emissions rights in the form of permits from the government. Problems in the EU with the pricing and number of permits should probably result in an auction scheme for the purchase of permits which will make permits more costly and more in line with their market value under a system that is striving to reduce emissions.
Though there are flaws in this system, this is the most politically convenient solution and it has been somewhat proven as effective in the EU. The only other solution even on the table is a Carbon Tax, but no serious politician is backing this new tax. The way it would work is that emitters of carbon from power plants to individuals filling up their cars would be assessed a fee for their use of carbon. This would then be returned to taxpayers as a flat rebate. So, for example, if you spend $100 in tax for gasoline over the year and your neighbor spends $1000, then you'd each get $400 back at the end of the year resulting in a net loss for your neighbor of $600 in tax, and a net gain of $300 for you in the form of a rebate.
Later in the week we will see how China plays a role in cap and trade systems around the globe, and why neither China nor the US need worry about suffering financially from reducing global emissions because of help from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and CERs.
0 comments:
Post a Comment