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The Developing Debate Over GG Controls

The Developing Debate Over GG Controls. The President-Elect, Nov. 18, 2008, video address to meetings on climate change. “Delay is no longer an option. … Denial is no longer an acceptable response.” “Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all.”. What the campaign promised:.

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The Developing Debate Over GG Controls

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  1. The Developing Debate Over GG Controls

  2. The President-Elect, Nov. 18, 2008, video address to meetings on climate change • “Delay is no longer an option. … Denial is no longer an acceptable response.” • “Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all.”

  3. What the campaign promised: • Reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions 80 Percent by 2050 • Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. • The Obama-Biden cap-and-trade policy will require all pollution credits to be auctioned, and proceeds will go to investments in a clean energy future, habitat protections, and rebates and other transition relief for families. • Make the U.S. a Leader on Climate Change. • Obama and Biden will re-engage with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) -- the main international forum dedicated to addressing the climate problem. They will also create a Global Energy Forum of the world’s largest emitters to focus exclusively on global energy and environmental issues.

  4. From the Envlawprofs listserv, 11-08

  5. John Bonine, University of Oregon • “If cap-and-trade means mostly planting trees, in exchange [for] exceeding the caps, we are toast.” • “[In addition to a global cap, we should enact] a US cap that allows no purchasing of credits outside the US” • “I just don’t trust that reductions claimed elsewhere will materialize in a world with insufficient enforcement” • That would force the US to develop technologies and strategies to control GG

  6. Wil Burns • “A carbon tax is a far superior mechanism to cap and trade … but it probably remains one of the third rails of politics” • Cap-and-trade has “very little capability of controlling distributional outcomes” • “We need to develop stringent standards, e.g., no credit for tree planting in non-tropical regions”

  7. Prof. Lesley McAllister, San Diego • “[C]aps in existing cap-and-trade programs have been ‘over-allocated,’ with caps set at levels that require few if any reductions from business-as-usual emissions.” • Caps should require reductions “at least as great as those that would be achieved by mandating the use of feasible emissions control technologies.”

  8. Prof. David Hodas, Widener • “[A]bandon the Kyoto model for a global cap. Then forestry can be a real, verifiable form of sequestration, not a counterfactual game of baseline poker.” • “[T]o be enticing hosts for projects, developing nations will need to improve their rule of law generally, so that they have a stable set of rules and institutions to support significant investment.”

  9. Emmanuel Kisimbazi, Maryland • “My concern is that different developing countries are at different levels of development. … South Africa is not at the same level of development as Uganda my country. How do you develop a legal regime to address the two countries?” • “[M]ost countries, especially in Africa, have recently developed environmental laws that can deal with forestry management issues but the most crucial challenge is their implementation.”

  10. A stakeholder view on capping, trading, sequestering

  11. TNC experience with forest carbon under the Kyoto Protocol

  12. Allow regulated sources to use international forest carbon credits for compliance • Could generate billions of dollars for protecting endangered forests in the tropics and elsewhere

  13. Forest carbon legislation has to address three issues • Additionality—make sure the emissions offset/reduction is not something that would have happened anyway • Leakage—make sure you aren’t just shifting GG-emitting activities such as deforestation to another site • Permanence—are restored/protected forests likely to remain intact indefinitely?

  14. Dimensions of the problem • More than 37 million acres of tropical forest—an area larger than New York State—are lost each year. • In many developing countries, deforestation is the largest source of emissions. • The IPCC projects that 30% of Earth’s plants and animals will be at increasing risk of extinction by century’s end with “business as usual” • Globally, about 20% of GG emissions are associated with forest losses.

  15. There are good arguments for including Forest Carbon—can we solve the legal and institutional problems?

  16. For the holidays: Give your friends and loved ones Carbon Offsets—the gift that keeps on giving (~100 years)

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