NEWS

Debate Over Climate Change at Columbia

10/10/2008

Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute (top), and Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, sparred over the best way to address the planet’s problems. (Photos: Agence France-Presse)

In a wide-ranging debate at Columbia University on Thursday morning, Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, faced off over how best to address climate change.

Mr. Sachs criticized current international measures as inadequate, and called for a global fund to finance new technology to help poor countries battle the problem.

“I don’t see the European trading system as changing the game in technology,” Mr. Sachs said. “We’re going to need a significant pool of international resources.” He applauded a recent Swiss proposal to impose an international levy of $2 a ton on carbon dioxide emissions.

Of the Clean Development Mechanism, a United Nations program that helps poor countries battle global warming, he said, “Things like the CDM are unfortunately very small, marginal tools.”

Mr. de Boer defended the program, saying it was a useful tool for engaging poor countries in climate change issues, while acknowledging that current gains were incremental.

“Yes, the Kyoto Protocol is insignificant in terms of what it has delivered in emissions reductions,” Mr. de Boer said. He argued, however, that current measures were a success because they represented necessary first steps to “building confidence” in the system, and had brought substantial private-sector involvement.

Mr. Sachs called for poor countries — particularly China — to set emissions targets. “I think it’s a nonstarter, for example, for China not to have bound commitments in the next round,” he said, adding that it was unrealistic to expect the United States and Europe to “spend huge amounts of money” to aid a transition in China.

The next big round of global climate talks are scheduled for Copenhagen in late 2009.

Mr. Sachs argued that the perennial debate over whether to apply a carbon tax, or a cap-and-trade system with auctioned-off permits, was “about of the 10th order importance,” though he did say he thought taxation was simpler. He also supported what economists would call an “upstream” tax — one that would tax carbon at the source, like coal mines or oil wells, rather than taxing or capping carbon on hundreds of thousands of smaller enterprises.

Mr. de Boer argued that such a tax, while efficient, would be a “hard political sell,” and called the idea that it would be onerous to tax smaller downstream enterprises “nonsense.”

Intriguingly, Mr. Sachs argued that the budget deficits created by the recent financial bailout might actually make a carbon tax more feasible, since the country would be forced to “grow up a bit and start talking about taxes again.”

Many climate experts fear the opposite: That the financial crisis will make it more difficult to get a carbon cap (or tax) passed, since businesses and consumers would complain furiously at the extra costs.