“GAME OVER” - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 107

deliver because they're more tightly within their control. h ey're also
easier to verify: it's more straightforward to check whether tax policy
has changed than to determine whether emissions have fallen by some
promised quantity. Many argue that such an approach would provide
less certainty than one based on emissions targets, but this is largely
because they give too much credit to the supposed certainty that targets
deliver.
And one needn't conclude an international treaty to have ef ective
international cooperation. Less formal mechanisms—for example,
national action combined with international transparency—have ot en
done just as well. 49 h e intuition is straightforward even if the examples
can be complex: the basic purpose of a climate treaty (as opposed to
changes in energy systems that might curb climate change) is to help
involved parties gain more coni dence in each other's actions and inten-
tions, and arrangements other than treaties that promote these same
ends can thus serve the same goals. By removing the fear of a bind-
ing treaty from the minds of policymakers, more informal approaches
can occasionally liberate leaders to pursue bigger goals. 50 To be cer-
tain, everything else being equal, a hard international agreement usu-
ally works best. But the potential to leverage U.S. action exists even if
a treaty remains remote.

T he ability of the United States to deliver strong emissions cuts is

being enhanced by abundant shale gas. Gas is cut ing greenhouse
gas emissions right now, deterring construction of high-emissions
coal-i red power plants that might remain in service for decades, and
making emissions-cut ing policies cheaper than they otherwise would
be. But abundant natural gas, however valuable, isn't going to come
close to solving the climate problem alone—indeed, in the long run,
burning natural gas as we do today is incompatible with seriously con-
fronting climate change. In contrast with natural gas, there is no way
to claim that gains in U.S. oil output are good news for climate change.
U.S. oil production, though, will have at most a small impact on global
emissions, even if production grows strongly, so long as it isn't heav-
ily subsidized. Conversely, restricting U.S. oil production deliberately