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Replacing Kyoto with an Universally Acceptable Treaty

By Klaus H Hemsath

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 12Jan2010 Word count: 820 Viewed: 388 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

The Copenhagen Climate Conference of 2009 was doomed to failure before it ever began. The division between the major polluters and the rest of the world was just too wide. Even the two largest polluters, the USA and China, could not agree with each other.

In hindsight, it is good news that the meeting failed. The concept that is underlying the Kyoto Protocol is fatally flawed. It is not suited to deal with the conflicting concerns of industrialized nations and their large historical greenhouse gas emissions, the self-serving interests of the newly emerging, atmosphere polluting states like China and India, and it cannot relieve the apprehensions of many underdeveloped nations that are trying desperately to make increasing amounts of energy available to their struggling economies.

Eventually, they all need to agree on one inescapable, unified approach to preserve Earth for future generations. World governments must unite in declaring unanimously that they are committed to finding a permanent, sustainable solution to restoring Earth to its historic, pre-industrial conditions. This is not an idle fantasy. This can become a realistic goal that can be achieved by a united world community.

The world must find a workable approach to saving Earth. Such an agreement must treat all countries fairly and must distribute past and future responsibilities realistically. Ideally, a new concept for saving our Earth should strengthen all world economies.

Recent proposals of imposing taxes on energy consumption are very dangerous because they will lead to a wide range of unintended consequences. Highly industrialized nations like the USA, the European Union, Japan and even newly emerging economic world powers like China, India, Russia, and Brazil will have to export manufacturing processes with high energy consumption and related jobs to countries without prior experience in commodity industries. Such dislocations are without economic benefits for the world economy.

Taxation, rationing, and interference with energy consumption will result unfailingly in the distortion of markets. Rationing of energy utilization will inescapably create unwieldy and expensive bureaucracies. Manipulation of markets by government entities always begets higher costs for the consumer. Distortion of natural economic processes always leads to corruption. Governments must create the rules for assuring fair play in natural markets. Governments must referee when necessary, but must never influence market outcomes.

World economies are facing two unstoppable and immutable developments. Populations are growing and energy consumption must increase to give lesser developed economies the means to grow and provide food and increasing wealth to their citizens. Demanding a reduction in energy consumption from any countries will slow all world economies and will sentence many lesser developed countries to continuing poverty. There must be a better way.

In fact, there is a better way. The world, its citizens, and its governments must decide to make four major changes to world energy supplies.

1. Plentiful and affordable energy must be made available to every country on Earth.

2. All emissions from fossil fuel combustion must be outlawed during the next fifty years.

3. All fossil fuels must be replaced by renewable and sustainable energy supplies.

4. Each country must commit itself to retrieve all its historic carbon dioxide emissions.

None of these changes can be implemented quickly. Some are not even technologically feasible, yet. Nevertheless, the nations of the world have to agree to execute these changes during the next fifty years. During this agreed upon period, all countries must stop their carbon dioxide emissions completely and permanently.

During the same fifty years, the world has to continue its growth at a healthy rate. Only growing economies can take care of growing populations. Only prospering economies can make the unavoidable and inevitable changes to their energy supply structures.

There is only one way to realize these demanding goals; the world must join and combine the best available energy technologies into an entirely new industry that is capable of supplying clean energy for several centuries. Most importantly, technologists have to find ways for retrieving carbon dioxide, which has accumulated over one century, from the atmosphere.

World economies can continue their economic growth by advancing and developing a short list of critical energy technologies. Because there is not much time left, these technologies cannot be created by private industry or the capitalistic market place. Instead, the world must find the will and the funds for establishing a politically independent, global agency that is capable to plan, explore, develop, and demonstrate these critical technologies within the next ten years.

The world needs to develop an entirely new approach for supplying unlimited amounts of clean, affordable energy. The world needs leaders that have the vision and have the will to create advanced world economies that can confidently rely on ample supplies of clean energy for centuries.

Barely any papers, articles, or books have been published that deal with this topic. Hopefully, the failure in Copenhagen will lead to more publications that introduce, investigate, and explain the most important energy technologies, which the world needs in the near future.

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