What is wrong with traditional climate policies? Negotiations past and present focus on regulating consumers or emitters, whether through quotas, carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems – such as the EU scheme its parliament yesterday voted to prop up. The problem is that whenever some countries opt out of a global climate coalition such as the Kyoto protocol, the result is “carbon leakage”. If co-operating countries decide to cut back fossil fuel consumption, the world price declines and other nations can afford to buy more. Estimates of the magnitude of such leakage vary from 20 per cent to 25 per cent.
傳統的氣候政策有什麼弊病？從過去到現在，氣候談判的主要思路均致在於監管消費者或排放者，無論是通過配額、碳排放稅還是「限額與交易」(cap-and-trade)機制——比如幾天前歐洲議會投票支持的歐盟(EU)項目。問題在於，只要有些國家選擇不加入《京都議定書》(Kyoto Protocol)等全球氣候聯盟，結果都會造成「碳洩漏」。如果合作國家決定減少化石燃料消費，那麼全世界的化石燃料價格就會下跌，其他國家就可以買得起更多的化石燃料。據估計，碳洩露的比例從20%到25%不等。