Totally disagree, why follow a known cul-de-sac?.

As for “taxing carbon as it leaves the ground” and boycotting China – who’s going to allow their politicians to sign up for national economic suicide?.
Why only China, many other countries currently have similar positions.

China will sell their very competitive products to all those Australasian, Pacific, Brazil, Russia, African, and Asian countries from whom they are purchasing industrial raw materials – including carbon, minerals, labour – it’s called global trade, and China and like-minded nations are major players.

Other participants in those global markets would lose out. You want to start a war?, easy, try to constrain the economic development of other nations by imposing punitive tariffs.

Taxes go to politicians and their favoured solutions, not to best or effective solutions. Anyone proposing taxation as a solution hasn’t looked at history.

CFCs were not taxed into oblivion, as they were a key industrial product – from cleaning sensitive and expensive electronic components to cheap, safe ( compared to previous flammable and toxic ) refrigerants.

Industry and governments invested serious money into research into viable alternatives, manufactured them, and their industries remained viable and globally-competitive. We still allowed the developing world much more time to phase CFCs out because their atmospheric contribution was relatively small and their growth was far exceeded by shrinkage in developed countries, rather than provide additional capital for them to adopt new technologies.

There are other ways for mitigation of climate change ( including investing in local and regional mitigation by increased efficiency of our use of carbon ). Hopefully it’s not going to be the developed world donning sackcloth and/or starting a trade war. Everybody loses.

“1. We’ve got a major global issue that needs sorting. It’s not the first time, it happens.
2. Existing political models do not cope with the changes the world has experienced in communications and the transparency now required.
3. Interest groups are way ahead in the use of this communication revolution (hence I’m here and so are you) but as of yet unskilled in turning the communication into action, either by leverage or directly. (and look out when they do…)
4. Behaving as normal the political system heads off to protect the interests of the masses (just their’s though). After all it’s their job to wait for midnight on the last day and dramatically impose the “Big View” on the rest of us.
5. But wait… Eyes wide in the glare of the communication spotlight there is no deal to cut without the complete ridicule of the waiting world, so they don’t cut one. No deal is no failure for a negotiator, just proves you’re good at your job.

More interesting is what happens next:
1. Interest groups get even better at communicating. Ultimately this leads to new ways to express the public’s viewpoints. Where’s Bono after all? (And that’s at the “soft” end of what’s likely to happen)
2. Political systems evolve new methods of conflict resolution. This is a given but who knows how long will it take. My thoughts are though that it’ll be fairly quick given point 1.
3. “No more than 2 degrees Celcius” goes flying past equally quickly.
4. “Cap and Trade” goes shortly thereafter in light of 1-3.
5. We seriously tax carbon as it leaves the ground and the market establishes a new paradigm for valuing alternate energy sources.
6. We accept that our kids will think we were idiots. But don’t worry, there won’t be as many of them.”

I think you’re getting around to my point(s) of view. If there’s going to be major change it’s going to require a “Another Way”. There are lots of them and all they require is “communicating”. Why not start by not buying anything made in China, how long do you think it would take to find out who’s the latest super-power?

China isn’t a villian, much as people wish to paint is as one. China’s delegates, and those of many other countries, negotiated on behalf of their nation – that’s what they are paid to do.

Trying to embarrass countries into sensible positions hasn’t worked, ocean fishing, whaling, and climate change suggest that the efforts of citizens’ movements great exceed the desired outcomes.

Perhaps looking at a carrot process that worked ( eg phase out of CFCs ), shows that targetted solutions that offer benefits are more effective that multiple people waving sticks.

It’s far better to start the “minimize harm” process, develop and implement economically-rational viable solutions that don’t require punitive taxes. Now is the hour of opportunity for novel solutions, not despair.

Geoffrey Sachs is very critical of what he sees as the abandonment of the UN approach: http://bit.ly/78BEsc. I think we should listen carefully to his concerns. It seems to me that we are being extremely hasty in, literally overnight, turning our fortunes over to the leaders of a couple of big nations. I was always taught that continuing concern for the poorest ultimately leads to better outcomes for all. I have my doubts about any forward strategy that begins with an assumption that small island nations cant be listened to because we dont have the time or inclination. Such an approach would quickly degenerate into unprincipled calculations about who will be saved and who will drown. The interstate agreements that might emerge under such a scenario would be ugly.

The Lynas article is getting incredible play. If correct, the report that China would not even allow developed nations to state their 2050 goals is astonishing and very very hard to understand on any principled basis. Although it has to be noted that, in the pages of the Guardian in which Lynas writes, prior to Copenhagen, China clearly sent the message that it simply could not meet an overall 2 degree global limit. See http://bit.ly/ypkQJ and in particular http://bit.ly/PTOb8. That was a fundamental issue that should have been front and centre on day one at Copenhagen. It made any statements other nations intended to make about emissions reductions pretty much irrelevant.

My concern is that in coming days we might see a readiness to displace concern about climate change onto China. Hopefully 350.org and others, who are scrambling to develop a new strategy, will see the sense in continuing to build a worldwide movement, but now with redoubled efforts on building a citizens movement within China. We have to do better, they have to do better, for all our sakes.

Tom
stopflying.org