The Age of Global Warming: A History (29 page)

Kyoto’s only rationale was as a proof of concept in which the developed countries in Annex I took the first step in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, with the rest of the world following at some unspecified point in an unspecified manner. The numbers tell their own story. In 1998, Tom Wigley, a leading climate scientist, published a paper which attempted to estimate the implications of the Protocol for the climate at the end of the twenty-first century. The analysis used the IPCC’s value for climate sensitivity of carbon dioxide of 2.5
o
C in its Second Assessment Report. Adhering to Kyoto would, Wigley estimated, lead to a reduction in global mean temperatures of 0.08–0.28
o
C, depending on what happened to emissions after 2010.
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This reduction compares to a projected 2
o
C rise by 2100 according to the IPCC’s IS92a scenario. If fully implemented, Kyoto was estimated to delay global warming by between four and fourteen years over the course of the twenty-first century. The impact of the Kyoto reductions accrued even more slowly on sea level rise. ‘The prospects for stabilising sea level over coming centuries are remote, so it is not surprising that the Protocol has such minor effects,’ Wigley wrote.
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At one level, Kyoto could be counted a success. In 2008, reported Annex I emissions of the Protocol’s six greenhouse gases were 9.6 per cent below their level in 1990.
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However, including methane and four other greenhouse gases, as required by the Protocol, leads to a distorted picture because different gases remain in the atmosphere for different lengths of time. Wigley found that there was no single scaling factor to convert between carbon dioxide and methane emissions.
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A further distortion is that reported emissions also include estimates from changes in land use and forestry. In his February 1998 testimony, Eizenstat explained that changes in accounting rules meant that for the US, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by seven per cent ‘is quite close to the President’s original proposal to return emissions to 1990 levels by 2008–12’.
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Stripping out reductions from land use changes and emissions of other greenhouse gases to focus on core carbon dioxide emissions results in a quite different picture. The 9.6 per cent Annex I reduction shrinks to 2.2 per cent. If the US is excluded, reported carbon dioxide emissions fell by 1,142.7 million tonnes, or 11.6 per cent. But this reduction masks two opposing trends. The 1,142.7million-tonne reduction comprises a fall of 1,590.1 million tonnes from the former Communist economies of Central and Eastern Europe (Economies in Transition, or EIT parties, in Protocol parlance) partially offset by a 447.4 million-tonne rise in carbon dioxide emissions from the other Annex I countries.  Other than the US, the largest absolute increases came from Turkey, Australia and Canada, which all increased their emissions at a faster rate than the US (110.1 per cent, 44.1 per cent and 25.9 per cent respectively compared to 16.1 per cent for the US). Japan notched up a 6.2 per cent increase. Even Norway, which in 2008 announced its intention to become carbon neutral by 2030, increased its reported emissions by 27.0 per cent.
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Disaggregating the numbers produces a similar picture for the EU. The reunified Germany reported a 203.6 million-tonne fall in carbon dioxide emissions, but ninety-nine per cent of this fall was offset by increases from the four EU members that increased emissions the most: Spain, despite its colossal investments in wind and solar farms (up 109.3 million tonnes, or 47.9 per cent); Italy (up 32.3 million tonnes, 7.4 per cent); Greece (up 26.9 million tonnes, 32.4 per cent) and the Netherlands (up 16.4m tonnes, 10.3 per cent).

Sweden, Denmark and France recorded small reductions (11.0 per cent, 3.9 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively, amounting to 10.9 million tonnes in all). Overall, the 42.3 million-tonne reduction by the non-EIT members of the EU, including Germany, was more than accounted for by the UK’s 54.4 million-tonne fall, stemming principally from its dash-to-gas.
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The EU’s reputation had been saved by UK electricity privatisation.

Overall, the collapse of communism has been by far and away the single biggest factor in delivering the Kyoto emissions reductions – a truly one-off, epochal event. But these reductions have been swamped by the dramatic economic growth of the developing world. Wigley’s study indicated that Kyoto would shave 0.08–0.28
o
C off a two-degree rise over the current century. A joint IEA / OECD 2009 study found that global carbon dioxide emissions were rising much faster than Wigley had assumed. Such an emissions growth trend would be in line with the IPCC’s worst case scenario in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, which projects average world temperatures rising by between 2.4
o
C to 6.4
o
C by 2100.
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Taking the midpoint of this rise would imply Kyoto delaying global warming by between twenty-two months and a little over six years over the course of this century. 

Not that miracles don’t happen. COP7 at Marrakesh agreed to permit Kazakhstan to become an Annex I party to the Protocol, but not to the convention. Because it had made no declaration when the Protocol was adopted, Kazakhstan does not have an emissions target listed – and no hot air to sell.
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Like the soul of an unbaptised infant in Catholic theology, Kazakhstan exists in a special state of climate change limbo all on its own.

*  In 2004, the General Accounting Office analysed the factors that led to these dramatically different cost ranges. It found the Council of Economic Advisers used a model that generally assumed that the economy adjusts smoothly to new policies over the longer-term. By contrast, the Energy Information Agency model used a more comprehensive cost measure and was thus able to capture certain costs that the Council of Economic Advisers’ model did not. Other differences included assumptions about international trading and the proportion of reductions that would be achieved domestically. General Accounting Office, ‘Estimated Costs of the Kyoto Protocol’ GAO-04-144R, 30
th
January 2004, p. 3.