Korea may have an opportunity to exercise historic leadership, when it chairs the G-20 meeting in Seoul, November 11-12. This will be the first time that a non-G-7 country has hosted the G-20 since the larger, more inclusive, group supplanted the smaller rich-country group in April of last year as the premier steering committee for the world economy. With large emerging market and developing countries playing such expanded economic roles, the G-7 had lost legitimacy. It was high time to make the membership more representative. But there is also a danger that the G-20 will now prove too unwieldy, in which case decision-making might then revert to the smaller group.
Category Archives: Climate Change
The Copenhagen Accord on Climate Change: Countries Submit 2020 Emission Goals
Most observers judged as a failure the December meeting in Copenhagen of the Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But then the usual way of judging such meetings is to look for a communiqué that voices sweeping aspirations, such as the G-7 “decision” at L’Aquila last summer to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade. In reality, without any evidence of countries agreeing what is each one’s share of the burden, such proclamations are worthless. Better tiny steps on the ground than giant flights of rhetoric.
Border Measures Could Make Climate Policy Better or — More Likely — Worse
The international press reports, “At Climate Talks, Danger to Free Trade Mounts.”
The Copenhagen negotiations have essentially failed to include, among the many topics covered, one that will be critical in the coming years: the question of import tariffs or other trade penalties that individual countries apply against the products of other countries that they deem too carbon-intensive. Such border measures are already in EU and US legislation (the Waxman-Markey bill, not yet passed by the Senate). Properly designed, they could turn out to be the missing instrument needed to get each country to cut emissions without fear of others taking unfair advantage, via leakage. More likely, national politics will turn them into protectionist barriers.