Has Kyoto Really Been Successful?

It has been nearly 15 years since the governments gathered in a stuffy assembly hall on a December evening and decided to enact the Kyoto Protocol. It legally came into effect in 2005 and during this Green Week, we have decided to see if it has really made any difference.

According to the official Kyoto Protocol website: “The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”

The main idea behind setting up the Protocol was that the UN Convention was not committing enough. Putting in legal obligations, requirements and fixed numerical targets aimed to encourage each of the 37 countries that signed up to visibly reducing their impact on the environment. As well as meeting predetermined “allowed emission targets” to reduce emissions (which placed heavier burden on the “more developed” countries which historically polluted more), countries were also able to:

• Buy ‘emission credits’ from countries that were below their allowed pollution, or sell credits to countries that were over theirs.

• Install emission-reducing or emission-limiting projects (which would reduce targets by a certain about of tonnes of CO2)

Since the targets have been enforced, most industrialised countries aimed to cut their emissions by 5% of the measured 1990 levels, though every signatory set their own personal target. Britain, and the rest of the EU, set their targets at 8%.

Though off to a seemingly good start, with measured reductions close to 3% for industrialised countries, a BBC article from 2005 expressed doubt that the targets would be met: “The UN says industrialised countries are now well off target for the end of the decade and predicts emissions 10% above 1990 levels by 2010.” A Guardian news article published in 2010, however, had mixed views. The European Environment Agency were quoted saying that a “large drop in emissions seen in 2008 and 2009 gives EU-15 a head start to reach its 8% reduction target”. Another source, the Policy Exchange, measured emissions stemming from the consumption of goods and services to have increased by over 40%.

Measuring and regulating this data would not have been easy; there was a lot of reliance on each committing party generating an annual emissions report and the registry system set up in Germany was directed to “track and record transactions”, meaning that parties could not go overboard trading credits and there would be an authority in place to control it.

Nevertheless, not everyone has taken kindly to the policy. Some key players have pulled out of the agreement, such as the US in 2001, with the then President George Bush saying that making the

If we taxed the consumption of Carbon Dioxide, would we still be nearing the 400ppm mark, regarded as the tipping point?

required changes and implementing the strategies required would damage the US economy. Canada have also pulled out; with their estimated costs at $13.6bn (£8.7bn), the government felt that this was unreasonable to pursue and was the result of “an incompetent Liberal government”. The Russian government supported this decision and pulled out shortly after.

More recently, climate change has been a driving force in almost every economy, whether for or against. The Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009 sought to bring countries together, on a larger scale than Kyoto, in order to address the issues and create an effective accordance. However, it was ill fated and many governments, including China’s, refused to ratify it, or simply walked out.

Other talks include the Bonn Climate Change Conference held in May of this year. Dubbed Kyoto 2, it had hopes of extending the targets initially penned in 1997, though it ended in similar disappointment, with a split occurring between the more actively involved parties (such as the group of Least Developed Countries and Alliance for Small Island States) while other governments were more sluggish and still resistant to change. New Zealand joined the list of countries refusing to sign, despite Australia and many others committing to stay on course.

What else is possible? Clearly these climate talks are not as effective as many hoped they could be so what else can we do? Perhaps one of the failures of the Kyoto Protocol was that it placed emphasis on reducing carbon production, without mentioning anything about carbon consumption. A recent Guardian article posed the question of carbon taxing, which would strike the problem at its root. Rather than paying for producing so much carbon dioxide, if we taxed the consumption of it, which includes importing carbon from external sources, would we still be nearing the 400ppm mark (400 part per million of CO2 in the atmosphere), which is regarded as the tipping point?

The main resistance to adopt any sort of climate change reduction project is primarily the cost. Whether governments or consumers, everyone tries to find the cheapest alternative. Therefore carbon pricing could be effective – raising the cost of producing carbon, so people feel that it is no longer the best option. However, this relies on governments accepting it and honestly, even taxing will not necessarily solve the problem.

Now that Kyoto has ended, it is time to once again time for the governments to get together and discuss the future. Despite all the failures, many highly developing countries including India, China and Brazil will push for an extension of the Protocol. India’s Chief Climate Negotiator, R. R. Rashmi said in the Wall Street Journal: “If ways are not found to extend the Kyoto Protocol, there could be a period of eight years without any global climate pact in place, as a new agreement is due to come into effect only after 2020.” The talks will be held in Doha, starting on 26th November 2012.

It seems we have made some progress, but while many governments still cannot commit to these talks, then is there really any point in having them? At least the countries that have realised the threat are taking it seriously and acting to prevent or mitigate future disasters, while the rest stand resolutely opposed.