At times we have complained about the lack of a formal mechanism to introduce new and innovative policy options into the climate debate resulting in a Manichean battle over Kyoto. In a short essay for Foreign Policy in Focus, William D. Nordhaus, of Yale University and one of the leading authorities on the economics of climate change, would seem to agree with this perspective in the context of mitigation. Here is an excerpt:

After more than a decade of negotiations and planning under the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), the first binding international agreement to control the emissions of greenhouse gases has come into effect in the Kyoto Protocol. The first budget period of 2008-2012 is at hand. Moreover, the scientific evidence on greenhouse warming strengthens steadily as observational evidence of warming accumulates. The institutional framework of the Protocol has taken hold solidly in the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which covers almost half of Europe’s CO2 emissions.

Notwithstanding this apparent success, the Kyoto Protocol is widely seen as somewhere between troubled and terminal. Early troubles came with the failure to include the major developing countries along with lack of an agreed-upon mechanism to include new countries and extend the agreement to new periods. The major blow came when the United States withdrew from the Treaty in 2001. By 2002, the Protocol covered only 30% of global emissions, while the hard enforcement mechanism in the ETS accounts for about 8% of global emissions. Even if the current Protocol is extended, models indicate that it will have little impact on global temperature change. Unless there is a dramatic breakthrough or a new design, the Protocol threatens to be seen as a monument to institutional overreach.

Nations are now beginning to consider the structure of climate-change policies for the period after 2008-2012. Some countries, states, cities, companies, and even universities are adopting their own climate-change policies. Are there in fact alternatives to the scheme of tradable emissions permit embodied in the Protocol? The fact is that alterative approaches have not had a serious hearing among natural scientists or among policymakers.[emphases added]

What, according to Nordhaus, is wrong with Kyoto?

The fundamental defect of the Kyoto Protocol lies in its objective of reducing emissions relative to a baseline of 1990 emissions for high-income countries. This policy lacks any connection to ultimate economic or environmental policy objectives. The approach of freezing emissions at a given historical level for a group of countries is not related to any identifiable goal for concentrations, temperature, costs, damages, or “dangerous interferences.” It is not inevitable that quantity-type arrangements are inefficient. The target might be set to ensure that global temperature increase does not exceed 2 or 3 degrees C or for some other well-defined and well-designed economic and environmental objectives.

I discussed practical problems of implementation associated with the notion of “dangerous interference” in this paper (PDF). And Richard Tol took issue with the justification behind the 2 degree stabilization target of the EU in a post for us here. The key point in Nordhaus’ comment seems to be the need for “well-defined and well-designed economic and environmental objectives.”

Nordhaus points our attention away from Kyoto and toward internationally harmonized carbon taxes. Whether or not such policies represent a practical, realistic, or worthwhile alternative to Kyoto (and Nordhaus makes a strong case that they do), Nordhaus correctly points our attention to the critically important need for options to the current gridlock to be presented and evaluated. To be most effective as input to the policy process, discussion of such options should take place not only among individual scholars but also more formally through authoritative institutions of climate science and policy. The alternative, as Norhaus warns, is that we are left with a “monment to institutional overreach.”