The post title is stolen from John Quiggins post. And his post just about says it all: does this new agreement have any substance? Probably not.
So its time for - ta da - prediction time, since predictions made in advace are always more convincing. I predict: that JQ is right: the Asia-Pacific climate pact will turn out to be empty.
There's a wiki page [[Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate]].
7 comments:
It's one of the main goals of this agreement that there should be no "substance", which means no mandatory caps and similar policies. In other words, one of the goals of this pact is to peacefully bury Kyoto and to make it legitimate for anyone to leave Kyoto and join this new pact.
The agreement is an expression of the fact that those who oppose the caps may also care about the environment, including possible "global" quantities, and they can do so more efficiently, namely by supporting development and sharing of new technologies.
If you really cared about the level of CO2 in the first place, you should be pleased that all these countries are ready to support technologies that could reduce CO2 emissions etc.
I personally find even spending on these technologies - whose goal is to cool the planet - to be wasted money. So maybe you should partially celebrate Bush et al. that he is in between my opinion and yours.
Best
Lubos
Lubos: you say: and they can do so more efficiently, namely by supporting development and sharing of new technologies. Yes indeed, but they could do that just as easily without this agreement. My prediction (that the agreement is substanceless) means that I think it won't lead to any more dev than would have occurred without it (though I assume that they will dig out some collaboration to repackage and hail as a product of the agreement).
...one of the goals of this pact is to peacefully bury Kyoto and to make it legitimate for anyone to leave Kyoto and join this new pact. I agree with you (shock): one of the goals is to try to damage Kyoto. I'm not including that within its substance, and I'm not sure if it will succeed in that. I also don't know if people will leave Kyoto and join this: I suspect not, but thats not part of the prediction either.
I'm curious, but is the recent pledge by the President (yet to be ratified by Congress) for the US to share civilian nuclear technology with India considered to be part of this protocol?
Great, William, that we agree! I also agree with you that technology may be developed without silly international treaties. We also agree that a goal is to damage Kyoto.
We just seem to disagree whether it's a good thing or a bad thing but it's a detail, is not it? :-)
Arun: it may be. They're members and sharing info about new generation of nuclear technology is explicitly cited.
William: I'm a bit off topic again, but I was wondering if you would have any interest in doing a New Technologies/Geo-Engineering (wrt sequestration, emission reductions) type post. I rarely read much Geo-Engineering type talk anymore, and there are some possibly interesting new techs comming along now. Considering it seems that your hits are picking up, it might generate an interesting discussion if you had the time and were inclined. (and since it seems to be out of realclimate's stated bounds)
A couple links that might interest:
http://pepei.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ARTCL&Category=INDUS&PUBLICATION_ID=6&ARTICLE_ID=237916
and:
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/breaking_news.htm (I've never been big on solar PV for 'real' generation, but this tech seems pretty legit [on the surface, anyway])
Geoengineering: I'm going to wimp out of that one for now, though I'll keep it on the far-back stack.
Essentially I think I have little of interest to say on the topic, and I deliberately avoid economics or mitigation stuff, where I don't really know much. I could give my personal opinions, but thats not much use.
I shall try to stick to the climate science, like RC, but rather more informally!
There is something a bit odd going on here... the main page says this post has 6 comments; the comments page shows only 5. So its eaten my reply to CSea. So I'll repeat it. It wasn't worth waiting for, though...
Geoengineering: I'm going to wimp out of that one for now, though I'll keep it on the far-back stack.Essentially I think I have little of interest to say on the topic, and I deliberately avoid economics or mitigation stuff, where I don't really know much. I could give my personal opinions, but thats not much use.I shall try to stick to the climate science, like RC, but rather more informally!
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