Global warming is a problem where the interests of the individual do not converge with the interests of the community.
This is true at the level of the individual person, the individual corporation and the individual country.
Let me use myself as an example
I am an individual concerned about the global warming problem, and indeed I am a contributor to this problem. Does that mean I should give up any activities which contribute to global warming? No, because the extent to which I contribute to the problem is incomprehensibly small and I know that if I did this I would be at a disadvantage, and that global warming would still happen just as fast minus one second if I e.g stopped driving my car, stopped buying products which required energy intensive manufacturing processes, switched to green energy etc...Changed my habits in such ways as to make my emissions contributions minimal.
But what holds true for me as an individual holds true for pretty much everyone,
One may buy a fuel inefficient vehicle without having any regard for the environmental consequences, knowing that the environmental effects of that vehicle are incomprehensibly small, it is not rational (unless from a moral perspective) to even consider the environmental effects. However, this holds true for all individuals, and the cumulative effect of such activity are potentially disastrous, which naturally elicits the question, would I prefer to have restrictions on my economic activity with regard to its environmental ramifications, and so too everyone else (by the implementation of law) or would I prefer the individual liberty to make economic decisions without environmental restriction? The ratio of people who would prefer the liberty and have the disastrous effects of global warming to the people who would prefer to forgo the liberty so long as everyone else is subject to the same restrictions is undoubtedly small.
What I mean is, it wouldnt be in my interests to reduce my CO2 emissions if it was just me, because it would have little effect (I would be doing it sheerly on a moral basis) but if everyone else in the world agreed to, then yes I would be willing to agree. It would be a more preferential outcome for me if I sacrificed my emissions causing activity and the rest of the world did aswell, than if I did not and the world did not aswell. But here, by an agreement I really mean, by laws. Not everyone would be willing to agree to reduce their emissions, so we would need laws, and we would in majority have to agree to those laws through the democratic system.
But the problem of the interests of the individual not converging with the community is true for countries aswell as individuals. Why would Australia, for example, drastically cut its emissions if there was no such agreement in place as to ensure that other naions did the same? The country would sacrifice economic benefits but would do it to little good effect if it was not joined by other countries. Furthermore, if Australia cut its emissions by e.g placing harsh laws on energy use and the ways in which products can be manufactured, then it would suffer when it came to importing products in the global market in that they would have to be designed specifically to meet very high environmental standards, and the laws of economies of scale would mean that, because those products are being sold to such a small market, those products would be much more expensive than their conventional less environmentally friendly alternatives sold to larger markets like the USA and Europe.
Thus, it is very hard even for an individual country to become environmentally friendly, and few countries would be motivated to do so unless the rest of the world did the same. And because of economies of scale, the cheapest solution to global warming would be where the world undergoes economic transition to environmentally more friendly economies, together.
But because the terms of an agreement which really combatted, and removed global warming as a problem, would likely be impossible to come to in terms of agreeing on what is fair, such an agreement might be destined for failure. The Kyoto Protocol is hardly useful for anything as it excludes developing nations from having to meet standards, and encourages companies to move to those countries where they are not subject to such standards and can therefore produce cheaper. Kyoto is a futile agreement and a much better agreement may be impossible to come to. What then, can be done to combat this complex problem of global warming?
My take is that it doesnt take the whole world agreeing, to implement a solution to global warming. All it takes is for some major industrialized nations to group together and impose laws which force their economies to restructure in an environmentally efficient way, then threaten other nations who don't agree to do the same, with tariffs. If a country does not agree to meet certain environmental standards then that country would get tariff's imposed on them, and the severity of the tarriffs should represent a greater cost than if that country imposed laws to cause its economy to restructure to be environmentally friendly. Thus, the logic of any country not agreeing would be obvious, they would agree to meet the standards set upon them by the major industrialized nations because it would be cheaper for them. If this path was followed by the world, I think we could solve global warming without having to get a global consensus on what is fair in terms of what country has what emissions allowance and how fast should countries restructure.
The justification for the tariffs would be that each nation who emits large amounts of C02 is damaging the property and future viability of the land, and stability of the social institutons of every other nation and the global trading climate. Thus, any nation which contributes to global warming can be seen as attacking every other nation.
And of course, the faster we act, the cheaper it will be.
Just a note that I am using my above post for the basis of an assignment for university, so if someone from Monash is reading this as they have done a google search for verification purposes only to find that my assignment is very similar to this article, it is not because I have plagiarized it, it just so happened that my personal thoughts in this post I wrote back in December were very appropriate for the assignment.
Edited by adapt007, 25 March 2007 - 11:48 AM.
