"Saving Tomorrow Today"

I am going start off with a conversation I had with my friend;

• My friend was complaining to me about her failures of organizing a dinner for around 10 friends; largely due to the differences in budget and preferences on the type cuisine. 
• Later, she was able to get hold of a few of them and started planning for the dinner…however this discussion took place at a station platform and they stood there talking for around 40 minutes. The conclusion from it was a lunch meeting in the following week to plan for the dinner. 
• In essence, they planned for ‘a plan’.  Disagreements with the cuisine and prices raged on during and after the lunch meeting. They finally had their dinner only after few weeks.

Does that remind you of something? Well….to me it sounded like the series of UN climate change conference failures.  Let me explain, just like my friend who ‘planned for a plan’, the same can be said. For example (From Roger Fouguet's book):

• the failure of 2009 UN COP15 in Copenhagen; a last minute PLEDGE was made by HANDFUL of countries 
• which led to 2010 UN COP16 in Cancun , also a failure in term of policy making which led to a consensus on the continuation of negotiation in...
• ... the 2011 UN COP17 in Durbun, which drew up plans for a second period of commitments in 2020 following the Kyoto protocol. This article shows why I think this might be another failure like that of Kyoto.  

Will a second period of global commitment to reduce CO2 emission work?  Looking at the Kyoto Protocol many academics like Prins G & Rayner S, Victor, D and Pielke R have questioned and suggested that it has not been effective at reducing emission. Victor D shows extensively the host of countries which missed their target which includes Japan and the EU. 

Source: OECD (2013), “Emissions of Carbon Dioxide”, in OECD Factbook 2013: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics, OECD Publishing.

I also question the extent to which the Kyoto Protocol had scapegoated developing countries for contributing to climate change. An analogy can be made between developing countries and witches; they were both held responsibility for causing climate change. Is developing countries responsible? well partly but looking back at the history of aggregate emission, you would find developed countries like the OECDs contributed the most. It is also evident from the above graph, where aggregation of the total emission from OECD is more than the total from all other countries. The above also highlights the failure of Kyoto as continued to increased substantially. For example, in 2010 OECD countries and China accounted for 65% of global CO2 emission (by fuel combustion), showing a shift in the composition of emission.

The failures of Kyoto brings into doubt a new global treaty on climate change. Just like my friend, the more parties one would involve, the more disagreements there would be and the harder it would be to come to an final agreement. How much time could we waste before we reach the tipping point? If the Kyoto system was extended and keeping intact its mechanism in 2020 then it is for sure that is doomed to fail,which WIlliam Nordhaus discussed in detailed. WIlliam Nordhaus idea of a Harmonized Carbon taxes system is an alternative system that we should pay more attention and demands greater research. It deals with a host of failures from Kyoto especially dealing with discourse between developing and developed countries! It might be the way forward to avoid mass social unrest as this interact IPCC graph shows the estimated projection of a host of factors that is shows our urgency to reduce emission.