On Jul 3, 1:11 am, Zeke Hausfather <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Here in > India, where I am spending the summer researching climate policy and > CDM markets, no one is even willing to entertain the concept that > India itself might be subject to some sort of restrictions on carbon > emissions in the future
India has quite explicitly told the G8 countries that they will only entertain "cap and converge" solutions, as I noted <a href="http://hot- topic.co.nz/2007/06/14/india-to-g8-the-partys-over/">here</a> a while ago. This implies that the US, Europe and the rest of the developed world will have to make steep cuts sooner, while allowing India and China "room" to grow. Since cap and converge means agreeing on an acceptable global level of emissions at some point in the future (typically 2050), everyone has an incentive to agree to a large cap. Big slices of a big pie being cheaper and less painful than small slices of a small pie. The art of the possible trumps good science. > Also, I doubt the U.S. or any country will ever be willing to put > resources on par with a war mobilization to combat climate change. > There is no Pearl Harbor of climate change, no ozone hole to shock us > into action. I suspect that a dramatic climate change event* is probably the only way we'll ever get aggressive action on emissions reductions. The irony, of course, is that the built-in lag in the system virtually guarantees that when we get one it'll be too late to avoid much, much more. * What could that be? I don't agree with your characterisation of the US, Europe and Japan as being more likely to benefit with modest warming. Repeated 2003-style summer heatwaves in Europe, a marked intensification in rainfall leading to damaging flooding (anywhere), (even more) rapid reductions in summer sea ice in the Arctic or more ice-shelf disintegration in the Antarctic, another bad hurricane season, or a typhoon scoring a direct hit on Shanghai - all of these things could be enough to stiffen the geopolitical sinews enough to get serious action. Gradual change might be better for us all in the short term, but dramatic change might be necessary to get action that prevents the worst long term impacts. It remains to be seen what that might mean in human terms. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
