Intense pretence
The US scripted the Kyoto Protocol so that it could combat global warming without hurting its economy. But, on hindsight, it realised that even the modest target it committed itself to put too much burden on its citizens’ lifestyles. So it started insisting on developing countries’ ‘meaningful participation’ for meeting its targets. Failing to achieve its designs within the framework of the protocol, it junked the protocol together with the emission cap approach. And early this year, it came up with its new energy policy, which throws away the concept of absolute emissions targets and introduces a new ropetrick called greenhouse gas (ghg) intensity, which is simply a measure of carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product.

According to Harlan Watson, USA’s senior climate negotiator, the new strategy will help the US reduce its ghg intensity by 18 per cent over the period 2002-2012. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently estimated that under the most likely business-as-usual (BAU) scenario for the US, ghg intensity would decline by 14 per cent over the next 10 years. Bush is therefore aiming for a 4 per cent improvement over BAU. This, claims Watson, translates into a 4.5 percent GHG emissions reduction from BAU.

Watson offers the following logic in support of the new idea: when the annual decline in emission intensity equals the economic growth rate (currently about 3 per cent per year), emissions growth will have stopped. When the annual decline in intensity exceeds the economic growth rate, emissions growth will take a U-turn. Reversing emission growth will eventually stabilise atmospheric concentrations as emissions decline.

But an evaluation of Bush’s new energy policy by the Dutch institute RIVM calls the emission intensity targets very modest when compared to historical trends and projected baseline developments. It says it will not prevent the US emissions from rising; indeed in 2012 they would be 32 per cent above the 1990 levels.

Scholars have also blown serious holes in the concept’s fabric. First, let’s give the devil its due. Intensity

targets admittedly can impose a cap on permitted emissions during the commitment period in question, but the size of these cuts depends on economic growth during the commitment period, and is thus apparent only after, as it were, the water’s flown under the bridge. Second, argues Oxford University’s Benito Müller who’s critiqued the idea in the journal Climate Strategies, "intensity targets are obviously more flexible in the way they affect economic growth than emission caps, even if this flexibility is bought at the price of potentially increased emission levels in high-growth situations." Finally, he concedes, there are situations in which "such a trade-off between the risk of dampening growth and the risk of diminished mitigation are morally justifiable."

Now for the twist in the devil’s tail. Firstly, critics believe it is almost impossible to guarantee the environmental effectiveness of the regime, considering that the exact amount of emission cuts will become apparent only after the commitment period. This also makes the problem of compliance even more difficult. Second, emission intensity growth rates are highly sensitive to the measuring tape of economic output (exchange rate or purchasing power parity measures). Given the protean nature of an increasingly globalised economy, putting a price tag on a unit of carbon emission would become an economist’s nightmare.

Finally, even though it may not be right to stifle the much-needed economic growth of poor countries, critics like Müller, however, contend that the trade-off between risks to economic growth and mitigation risks can only be morally justified in terms of poverty eradication. If applied uniformly across countries, he believes, "they would almost inevitably be regressive in the North-South context and also could lead to considerable inequities between developing countries."

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