Notes for Wednesday March 13
Guest Lecturer Professor Ed Miles

Professor Miles first became interested in the issue of global climate change in the late 1980s, when he wrote a paper describing why climate change was a formidable policy challenge:

  * considerable complexity and uncertainty
  * long delays between policies (e.g., to reduce emissions) and results
  * large variation in benefits and costs among countries and economic sectors

Although scientists had clearly said to international policymakers in the 1980s that climate change was a serious threat that should be addressed, institutional forces for delay were considerable.  Miles stated that only obvious crises or savvy governments would result in any motion on this issue.  One example of savvy government was that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain understood climate change and held an all-day meeting for her cabinet in 1989 to bring them up to speed.  She initiated both national and international policies.

The US had a history of foot-dragging.  It called for the creation of the IPCC in 1988 with a view to delaying real action.  Internal conflicts within the Bush Sr. administration further prevented action: Secretary of State James Baker said that "action should not be delayed by scientific uncertainty" and that strategies should be sought that made sense for other reasons [e.g., improving urban air quality].  But Baker was overruled by others in the Bush administration.

Miles outlined two main alternative strategies for tackling the climate change problem.

1.  (The "hard" way) - set targets and timetables for reducing CO₂ emissions.  Negotiate quotas among countries.  Establish monitoring and enforcement.

2.  (The "soft" way) - a series of protocols (international agreements) in which countries took common actions.  The emphasis is on what you do: implement carbon taxes, production quotas, and tradeable permits.

The "hard" way was what the world chose, largely because it was a successful approach to solving the ozone problem (though CFCs are vastly different from CO₂ - produced by a few companies).  The hard way has proven so hard that international negotiations on the details have now occupied ten years - and greenhouse gas emissions are still rising.

The Kyoto Protocol set emissions reduction targets (-7% for USA) relative to 1990 emissions levels.  But because emissions have continued to rise (USA now 18% above 1990 levels), the practical effect of Kyoto and its complexities has been to delay any real action: precisely the sort of thing Miles feared.

Epilogue: Miles was hopeful that Bush's rejection of the Kyoto protocol would pave the way for real progress using the "soft" way.  But Bush's strategy of focusing on energy "intensity" (that is, the amount of CO₂emitted per unit economic activity) specifically, hoping for an 18% reduction using voluntary measures over the next decade) - is very similar to what happened during the 1990s.  Energy intensity dropped by almost 18%, but emissions rose.