An earlier post, Treaty Foo, discussed the difference between international treaties that work and those that don't, in particular contrasting the Montreal CFC protocol with Kyoto.

The treaty worked because the big players, such as the US, would benefit in excess of their costs from their own efforts even if no one else cooperated, and alternatives to CFCs were available. All the treaty did was add international legitimacy to what the US and other developed nations wanted. It allowed them to bully smaller nations and so gain even more than they would have on their own.

None of the other environmental treaties are like this and so they fail, just as all other types of treaties during the whole of history have failed when impacts are disproportionate. Any entity that suffers losses or forgoes gains will sooner or later break their treaties. They must or the stakeholders will change the management team, replacing them with more sensible members.

Now there is another treaty that may work.

The United States and 13 other countries signed an agreement on Tuesday to work together to capture emissions of methane, a gas that contributes to global warming and, as the main component of natural gas, is a relatively clean-burning fuel.

It makes up 16 percent of the heat-trapping emissions that nearly all climate scientists have linked to global warming, a distant second only to carbon dioxide at 74 percent.

The United States is underwriting some of the costs of the nonbinding methane agreement, $53 million over five years. It calls on the participating industrialized countries to help poorer countries capture and market methane leaking from countries to use American expertise to develop methods of capturing the gas from landfills, coal mines and oil and gas operations.

The gas would then be sold for energy...

Frank Maisano, an energy industry lobbyist, praised the administration effort because developing countries like India and China were included. "One of the big arguments about climate change is that developing nations never want to participate," Mr. Maisano said. "The fact that they are signing on is significant."

Why wouldn't they sign since they get aid to implement systems that will yield energy that they can use? It is in their interests to cooperate. And it is in the interests of the developed nations to give the aid since they will benefit above the costs of the aid. Methane capture is already advanced in developed countries and getting better all the time. The costs of further reductions in developed countries exceed those of developing countries by a wide margin.

This treaty has the same positive factors as Montreal: everyone expects to benefit in excess of their costs by spending relatively small amounts of money to implement systems known to be effective. The benefits are somewhat speculative as they were with Montreal since the predicted harms from ozone depletion were not well known though they did have significant empirical support. Reducing methane to delay predicted climate change is speculative too, but by focusing on the more powerful climate driver, methane rather than co2, the benefits are multiplied 20 to 30 times, and by focusing on developing countries the costs are lower for equal benefits.

Recognizing the pattern of treaties that work and targeting problems that can be solved yet yield high returns is appropriate while we develop technologies to solve larger and more difficult problems.

» Scientific Good Sense from Crumb Trail
OK, the "good sense" series is getting old but this last one is too important to break the link to the series. Hansen and Sato point out that if methane and other trace gases are reduced, climate could be stabilized, with warming less than 1°C, at car......[read more]
Tracked: November 18, 2004 03:24 PM