WaPo "Quacking About Climate"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301501.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

Quacking About Climate

Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A28
THERE'S BEEN talk of President Bush's lame-duck status, and much of it's been premature. But the recent global negotiations on climate change in Montreal left the Bush team quacking on the sidelines. The administration started out opposing the whole idea of the meeting, but the rest of the world went ahead anyway, inviting former president Bill Clinton to speak in Montreal as a sort of ersatz head of state. While the Bush representatives refused to agree to anything but vague discussions about voluntary measures, local government officials and business representatives made it clear that the Bush administration does not speak for them. "Even though the U.S. at the moment isn't being very constructive in the negotiations, this might change over time," Denmark's negotiator observed.

The administration refused to engage in the Montreal talks because it dislikes the firm numerical commitments to emissions reduction that were part of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and that will also be part of the successor agreement discussed in outline last week. The Bush team argues that mandatory targets are inflexible and burdensome, while voluntary arrangements between governments and business can cut emissions adequately. But the implied dichotomy between supposedly rigid command-and-control regulation and the administration's supple voluntarism is illusory.

The Kyoto agreement, like the deal that hopefully will succeed it when Kyoto expires in 2012, stipulates firm emissions targets but allows flexibility as to how to get there. Countries can either control their emissions or, if this proves unacceptably expensive, buy carbon credits from others who find emissions control cheaper. In Montreal last week, various enhancements to this flexibility were considered: For example, countries might control carbon emissions by preserving forests, then sell the resulting carbon credits to countries that need or want to emit more climate-warming fumes. The aim of this regime is not to tell countries, still less individual companies, how much they can pollute. It is to set targets for environmental sustainability and then create flexible mechanisms for getting there.

Paradoxically, the administration's voluntarism is rather less supple. If governments don't create tradable credits or other market incentives to reduce pollution, the only way they can get firms to cut emissions is by "persuading" them: This may not count as command-and-control, but it smacks a bit of arm-twist-and-bribe. Moreover, a supposedly pro-business administration ought to understand that the worst thing for firms is regulatory uncertainty. The Bush policy of refusing to take part in talks on emissions caps creates uncertainty aplenty, because the rest of the world regards this stance as unsustainable. Companies don't know what to expect from a future U.S. administration when the current one leaves office, so how can they make intelligent, voluntary decisions about their carbon emissions?

Any notion that "voluntary" reductions will work is laughable on the face of it. If companies were voluntarily willing to cut their emissions, then they would already have done it. How can anybody possibly fail to see this?