The Washington Post Tells Readers that a Climate Deal with no Binding Caps is Catching Up With Reality

That's right, if you thought there was some urgency to do something about climate change the Post is now telling you the opposite. It told readers that the agreement that came out of the Durban talks, which includes no binding commitments:

"shows that the byzantine negotiations which have steered global policymaking on climate for two decades are now catching up with reality."

The agreement does propose a plan that will eventually impose limits on emissions by fast growing developing countries, most importantly India and China, however these restrictions are not included in this agreement.

benefits accrue mostly to the poorer folks too
written by pete, December 12, 2011 10:45 AM

Since the threat of climate change will most greatly impact those least able to hedge, they will benefit the most from reduced emissions. There is no reason to subsidize there transition to solar or nuclear, the benefits will be more direct for them.

In the u.s. and europe, it will be relatively trivial to build covered cities, desalinate water, and move inland and so forth.

But my main issue is that apparently the warming began like a century ago, and yet the proposals are all to lower emissions to like 1990 or something, and in the next 20 years. This seems like far too little too late.

The economic solution would be to tax the hell out of BTUs and drop marginal income and corporate taxes to zero. Not likely to happen...so the alternative is to make the best preparations for the coming changes. Buy land in Greenland and Northern Canada!

And always remember, warming is far superior to cooling.

Not sure about that cost analysis
written by Taylor, December 12, 2011 10:10 PM

Also, there is no clear commitment that rich countries would pay poorer countries for the cost of restricting their emissions. This would almost certainly be a part of any reality based agreement since the rich countries are asking poor countries to incur large costs to address a problem created by the rich countries.

This logic misses the whole point of trying to stop climate change because it assumes developing countries would have to create more emissions in order to develop. Instead, ALL countries should now be developing in ways that are emissions-free.

Plus, this silly argument assumes that ALL developing nations will continue to develop past their current point, rather than decline, which seems to be the more likely trend for all countries in the near future.

If developing nations' economies were already based on emissions, like ours, THEN it would make sense to pay them for restricting their development by cutting emissions.

The Washington Post Tells Readers that a Climate Deal with no Binding Caps is Catching Up With Reality

About Beat the Press