[lbo-talk] Nicolas Stern's What Is To Be Done on climate change

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sat Jul 12 15:06:11 PDT 2008


On Sat, 12 Jul 2008, martin wrote:


>> So how is it possible to ensure the same price for carbon everywhere,
>> while imposing the costs on rich countries? One answer is by paying for
>> reductions in emissions in developing countries, while not penalising
>> them for failure to meet targets.
>
> Another would be to develop the 'developing' countries with new energy
> technologies, as developmental models for a larger scale system in the
> larger energy consuming regions.

That's pretty much what paying for reduction in emissions in developing countries is supposed to mean -- paying for the introduction of new lower polluting technologies.

The real problem comes with "additionality" and individually purchased offsets (although Stern/Wolf's idea that we should shift from a project based to sector based transfer mechanism might address that, I'm not sure).

For a very good discussion of this point, see Doug's most recent interview with Patrick McCully of the International Rivers Network who is extremely lucid on this confusing mess (and on how most of what we are now doing, both in and out of Kyoto, is a sham):

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#080703

Michael



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