Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
drawal from the Kyoto Protocol. What is interesting is that the EU then realized it could
not cut its own emissions the traditional way and thus set up the European Emissions
Trading Scheme (ETS) for all facilities above 20 megawatts in electricity, ferrous metals,
cement, refineries, pulp and paper, and glass industries, which together represent over 40
per cent of the EU total emissions.
Nation verses sector approach
. The UNFCCC approach has another problem, which is
embedded in the concept of the nation-state and is a major issue in a global capitalist
world with supposedly free trade. For example, if the USA through the Copenhagen Ac-
cord wants to reduce carbon emissions from heavy industry, it could impose a carbon tax
on steel and concrete production. However, if other countries in the world do not have this
restriction, their products become cheaper, even including the cost of transportation by
ship, air, or road to the USA, all of which would lead to the emission of more carbon di-
oxide overall. So global economics can undermine any national attempts to do the right
thing and reduce their emissions. An alternative approach would be for global agreements
to be made at a sector level. For example, there could be a global agreement on how much
carbon can be emitted per ton of steel or concrete produced. All countries could then
agree only to buy steel or concrete produced in this low emission way, which would make
for a fairer trading scheme, with countries not losing out as a result of changes within their
industries to lower GHG emissions. The problems are, of course, how to police such a
scheme across so many different industrial sectors.
