The emperor's new clothes: redressing the Kyoto Protocol

US President Bush repudiated the Kyoto Protocol because, in his view, it is 'fatally flawed in fundamental ways'. This paper evaluates seven proposals to redress the protocol according to their potential to deal with three key issues that have reinforced US intransigence: hot air, cost uncertainty and developing country participation. It argues that negotiations on intensity targets hold the most promise. Because intensity targets limit hot air, but do not limit economic growth, and a high variance of carbon intensity exists among countries with similar GDP per capita, intensity targets based on best practice levels might be agreeable to developing countries and the US. If a protocol specifying such targets were implemented, less warming would be associated with larger world GDP than would otherwise be the case, and countries' carbon intensity and emissions per capita would tend to converge to best practice levels at every stage of development.

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