Earth Equity News

Replace Kyoto Protocol With Global Carbon Tax, Says Yale Economist. By Oliver Tickell, Guardian (UK), March 12, 2009. "The world should dump the 'inefficient and ineffective' Kyoto protocol and replace it with a global carbon tax, leading economist William Nordhaus said. 'To bet the world's climate system on the Kyoto approach is a reckless gamble,' he told the International Scientific Congress on Climate Changein Copenhagen... This week's meeting of more than 2,000 scientists and policy-makers is intended to lay the groundwork for a major UN summit in Copenhagen in December that hopes to negotiate a new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto protocol. Nordhaus, professor of economics at Yale university... also attacked the Kyoto protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), which allows industrialised countries that are not meeting their Kyoto targets to comply by 'buying in' carbon credits from projects in developing countries. 'The CDM produces highly opaque instruments which are the climate equivalent of mortgage-backed securities and structured credit derivatives,' he said. He proposed that a carbon tax, levied on fossil fuels and transport, would be simple and effective. It would create a reliable carbon price which would create the incentive we need to shift towards a low-carbon economy. Initially a carbon tax would affect producers, but as the price signal was passed through the economy it would drive the transformation to low-carbon technologies and efficient use of energy at every level.'"