A global super-fund?
In an op-ed article in today’s FT, Columbia University Professor Jagdish Bhagwati argues that the Kyoto Protocol was rightfully rejected by the USA because it made insufficient demands of India and China. Because the protocol mainly penalized countries with high historical carbon emissions, these two newly-industrialising countries escaped penalties, even though are now major greenhouse gas emitters. Bhagwati argues that the USA could be persuaded to agree to a revised Kyoto Protocol by creating a global warming super-fund into which both past and current emitters would pay based on past and current annual CO2 emissions. These funds could be used for:
“researching a variety of CO2-saving technologies, such as wind and solar energy, and to subsidising the purchase of environment-friendly technologies by the developing countries, including India and China. Such subsidies would rebound to the benefit of the rich countries paying into the superfund, since their companies typically produce these technologies. So, aside from the global warming superfund being palatable to the rich countries because it reflects a principle already in domestic practice, business support for it can be expected as well.”
Per Kurowski said:
Forget the global warming fund and help instead the US to overcome its addiction.
Sir, Jagdish Bhagwati proposes that “A global warming fund could succeed where Kyoto failed”, August 16, and argues that “it is hard to imagine the US objecting to making nations pay for their total pollutions . . . [as] Such as tax is only way of creating a missing market”. Where has he been?
The US is a country that has gone berserk consuming petrol and therefore a tax to put some break on that would be a perfectly natural thing to do, and not only for environmental reasons. Nonetheless, such is the depth of its problem that even their high priest Al Gore does not even dare to mention a tax, not even as a possibility.
Since a fund, in order to function, needs that all its partners share in its objectives, and values, Mr. Bhagwati should instead join us in telling the US, as friends tell each other the truth, that it is really not worthy of sitting down to discuss global warming, until they have reduced their per capita consumption of petrol, at least 20%. Besides, if successful in helping the biggest oil addict to fight his habit one would, in environmental terms, have accomplished more than any ambitious global warming fund could ever dream of achieving, in more than a decade, or two.