Friday, November 17, 2006

Greenhouse Development Rights (An Update)


Paul Baer of EcoEquity has recently contributed to a new report for the Institute of Public Policy Research.  Entitled, "High Stakes--Designing emissions pathways to reduce the risk of climate change" the report looks at the levels of emissions cuts required to avoid the worst possibilities of climate change. Some of you might remember how impressed I was by Pauls work when i first encountered it last year. If 'contraction and convergence' is the only framework you have read about that takes human rights seriously then you may be interested in Greenhouse Develoment Rights. Whilst C&C is extremely simple--a huge bonus in terms of opporationalisation it also leaves out some important issues.

We don't have a right to emmit, do we? We have a right to a certain level of development...equity in living standards is the important factor. In currently wealthy nations the ability to move towards a low carbon can be argued to create an onus to do so. This is the argument that Paul makes, in a very convincing manner, GDR's suggest an even more dramatic challenge for the developed world and the requirement for a large flow of capital to support the global "South".

A futher report written for Nairobi can be found here.


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2 Comments:

At 4:41 AM, Blogger HL said...

Scientists say pollution may be helpful

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 1 hour, 10 minutes ago

NAIROBI, Kenya - If the sun warms the Earth too dangerously, the time may come to draw the shade. The "shade" would be a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere to help cool the planet. This over-the-top idea comes from prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061117/ap_on_sc/saved_by_haze

 
At 4:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

People who throw stones in Greenhouses should expect a few panes of glass to get broken.

While Paul Baer writes this for IPPR: -

"The consequences for the UK of the global adoption of an emissions trajectory like those described above depend on at least two factors – the specific global emissions reduction target and the allocation of the global budget between countries. We explore this question by selecting two of the six emissions scenarios shown in Table 4.1 and considering variants on the well-known ‘Contraction and Convergence’ (C&C) formula for the allocation of tradable emissions permits developed by the Global Commons Institute (see www.gci.org.uk). Under C&C, total global emissions contract from today’s level to a level consistent with a global precautionary target, while the per capita emissions of every country converge to equality over a fixed timeframe (30 to 50 years in most examples)."
http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=501

He writes this for EcoEquity et al itself 'in' Nairobi: -

"Contraction and Convergence, of course, is the famous attempt to construct an equitable and adequate global climate regime, with equity defined in terms of equal per-capita emissions rights.

Many of the authors of this essay were once partisans of C&C, and all of us are still friendly to it and its core concerns. That said, we now believe that it cannot work, and would not be fair, in a world where the developed countries have already consumed the bulk of the total global carbon budget.

Simply put, Contraction and Convergence would not allow adequate developmental space for the South. Moreover, it cannot be extended to account for national circumstances, and it has nothing to say about the developed world’s responsibilities in terms of adaptation.

It is important, however, to note that the outcome of the GDRs approach would be a world in which global emissions contracted while rich- and poor-world per-capita emissions moved towards convergence.

Of course this is true for the trivial reason that this sort of contraction and convergence is an inherent property of any system that could actually work."

http://www.ecoequity.org/GDRs/GDRs_Nairobi.pdf

. . . . and then asks for money promising to "use it well."

Saying, "it won't be hard" as they are about to 'educate' Americans on why US ghg emissions must be zero by 2028: - [vide Greenhouse Development Rights]. The paper does say that "it may seem reckless" - I think 'feckless' was the word they were looking for.

Actually I've just noticed that this paper changes their "Gordian Knot" position yet again; [more changes in seven years than I have kept count of now].

"EcoEquity is now a project of the Earth Island Institute. Which means, among much else, that you can now donate money to us on-line. If you do, we promise to use it well. It won't be hard. In fact we have some very interesting new projects in the works; including an educational campaign we call Global Climate Justice for Americans. All we need is a bit of cash."

Guess IPPR had more money to offer Baer at the time of its request.

 

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