Those worried about the future of the earth’s climate are hoping that this year’s climate change convention in Lima, Peru, December 2014, will yield progress toward specific national commitments, looking ahead to an international agreement at the make-or-break Paris meeting to take place in December 2015.
Markets can fail. But market mechanisms are often the best way for governments to address such failures. This has been demonstrated in areas from air pollution to traffic congestion to spectrum allocation to cigarette consumption. Markets for emission allowances – in which those firms that can cheaply cut pollution trade with those that cannot – achieve desired environmental goals at relatively low economic costs. As of a decade ago, that long-standing economic proposition had become widely recognized and put into action. Yet the political tide on both sides of the Atlantic has been against “cap and trade” over the last five years.
An amazing thing has happened over the last five years. Against all expectations, American emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, since peaking in 2007, have fallen by 12%, back to 1995 levels. (As of 2012. US Energy Information Agency). How can this be? The United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol to cut emissions of greenhouse gases below 1997 levels by 2012, as Europe did.
Was the achievement a side-effect of reduced economic activity? It is true that the US economy peaked in late 2007, the same time as emissions. But the US recession ended in June 2009 and GDP growth since then, though inadequate, has been substantially higher than Europe’s. Yet US emissions continued to fall, while EU emissions began to rise again after 2009 (EU). Something else is going on.