Will the Developing World Risk Growth for Green?

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Will the Developing World Risk Growth for Green?
By JEFFREY BALL
September 22, 2007; Page A2

(snip)

Many industrialized countries that have promised emission reductions under the Kyoto Protocol, the existing climate-change treaty, are likely to miss their pledges. Even in ostensibly "green" Europe and Japan, politicians tend to flinch from rules their domestic industry protests are too onerous. Meanwhile, the U.S., which refused to ratify Kyoto, is about to be eclipsed by China as the world's biggest greenhouse-gas emitter. The upshot: Even if, say, Spain met its target, and the U.S. signed up for one, the atmosphere wouldn't feel much benefit unless China and other developing nations followed suit. Developing economies have made clear they aren't about to subject themselves to emission caps. The West enjoyed its fossil-fueled century of economic growth, they point out. Now it is their turn.

(snip)

More than a decade ago, when the Kyoto treaty was negotiated, diplomats tried to do this by creating an international "carbon market." It lets industrialized countries earn credits toward their Kyoto obligations by bankrolling emission-reducing projects in the developing world, where they're cheaper. That market -- essentially a capital shift from West to East -- is worth billions of dollars a year. Yet it still isn't significantly slowing emissions growth in developing nations. China continues to build new coal-fired power plants at a feverish pace. Now, new ideas for green financial carrots are popping up. One involves trees.

Trees matter to the atmosphere because, through photosynthesis, they take in and store carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that's emitted when fossil fuels are burned. But cutting down trees is big business in many developing nations. The Kyoto treaty tries to encourage tree-planting in the developing world by letting companies that do it peddle carbon credits -- an additional revenue stream. Some forest-rich developing nations want to be able to sell such credits not just for planting new trees, but for preserving existing ones that otherwise might be logged.

Kyoto's negotiators rejected that idea as too vulnerable to abuse. How, for example, to ensure that protecting one stand of forest wouldn't push loggers to another tract? But developing countries, backed by some environmental groups, now say forest-monitoring technology has improved to the point where the rules should be loosened. In-the-weeds financial debates like this tree fight are likely to prove at least as telling an indicator of progress in addressing global warming as more rhetoric about carbon caps.


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119042443529535897.html

[fenriswolf]

1. china, 'nuff said

[XemaSab]

2. Is this a rhetorical question?

:shrug:

[skids]

3. China is a problem that will eventually fix itself...

...considering the population there is already prone to the occasional violent riot over pollution. The government may be totalitarian and corrupt, but they know a volatile situation when they see one.

[depakid]

4. China is the poster child for overshoot and collapse

It's happened before- and it'll happen again, only on a much grander scale.

[razzleberry]

5. balance your carbon books, with phoney carbon offsets

my expectation is, The EU will do exactly that.

fur a fee, certain ex-politicians and otherwise celebrities will
give you permission to pollute.

[pscot]

6. But, but, but

that won't really solve the problem, will it?