Posts tagged…Policy
The Garnaut Climate Review Interim Report—I’m not convinced
Fri, Feb 22 2008
My difficulty with the Interim report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review is that it is headed toward a recommendation that looks disproportionate to the climate risk.
Publicly available data on climate change does not seem to call for extreme measures such as a 70% to 90% cut in Australia's carbon emissions. This data has not been examined by the Garnaut team because it's not their business to…
Read more…The cost of the IPCC carbon target
Fri, Feb 15 2008
Italian energy economists report on the means of achieving the IPCC’s target of 550 ppm of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere by the second half of the 21st century. It implies a different world, poorer than we currently imagine, and visibly different too.
Click the image to see a larger version.
The full paper can be found here
“Given projected world population dynamics, this objective requires…
Stern is mistaken to think binding targets will work
Sun, Dec 02 2007
Sir Nicholas Stern argues, ahead of the Bali meeting of the UNFCCC, for binding, differentiated emission targets and international trading. I think his own address betrays the fundamental problem with this approach to a collaborative regime for climate change mitigation.
Experience alone should make any student of history or economics deeply skeptical of a negotiated assignment of effective…
Carbon ‘compensation’ tariffs—a real prospect?
Wed, Nov 28 2007Lacking trade policy autonomy, the French cannot do this without Brussels’ consent. So far, they do not have it. But will they win in the end? Possibly.
“Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, on Tuesday warned China that the European Union could penalise cheap imports from high carbon-emitting countries in order to defend EU companies obliged to meet strict environmental standards.”(“FT.com / In…
What the collapse of the Doha talks means for agreement on climate
Tue, Jun 26 2007
The news that the WTO talks had collapsed again probably deserves the familiar gripes and even the bored yawns that greeted it. But behind this story is a worrying lesson about the potential for agreement on other global challenges, like climate change.
Ignoring the WTO jargon, the collapse of the talks is a story about how the world has changed in the past half century or so since the WTO rules…
Design of a multilateral regime for emissions trading
Sat, Mar 10 2007
The most difficult questions about the management of climate change are not about taxes or trading but about the weakness of multilateral regimes. Their recent history should worry anyone who wants a global answer to a problem of managing a global commons.
In my submission to the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Emissions Trading I draw some lessons from the history of multilateral trade and…
International impact on food regulations
Sat, Feb 10 2007
Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission engaged Inquit to survey the costs that obligations under international agreements and the requirements of trading partners impose on food producers, processors and wholesalers in the state of Victoria. More than two-thirds of Victorian food production is for the export market.
We found that the regulations that impose costs are Australian…
Global Trade Advocate
Sat, Feb 10 2007download a copy of Global Trade Advocate (pdf:2.2mb)”
Global Trade Advocate is Inquit’s guide to advocacy on behalf of the global trading interests of your business or industry association. It shows you how to go about defining your interests in the trading system, how to analyze the opportunities, how to build support for your goals in the trading system and—most important—how to identify and…
