Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Emily, thanks for that link to Eshelman's article. So if the CDM dies,
what is left of the carbon market that at least until recently has
been quite robust in Europe? Would REDD keep it alive? Are there other
mechanisms that would keep it going? Would California's attempts to
join in be stymied?
  

    
This has been great reading, Emily and all. Thanks!
  

    
Indeed. I really appreciate your time and posts here, Emily. 
  

    
Same here. But I stil don't understand. If the earth is warming, why
is it so damn cold here in New England this winter. Should I just go
outside and start emptying spray bottles into the air to speed things
along?
  

    
We've turned our attention to another discussion (Bruce Sterling's State of
the World), but I just wanted to thank Emily again for joining us and for
providing us all with incredible insight into the Climate Talks.

Of course, this topic will continue as long as you'd all like.
  

    

Thanks, Lisa!

Thank you all for coming by to ask questions and discuss the conference.

Jacques, at the moment I have a hard time imagining that the current Kyoto
signatories will let CDM and the European carbon market just wither and
die.  Keeping that from happening is a big incentive to get a new deal
worked out, it would seem.

I do not know if there would be enough activity under REDD to sustain the
whole market, since it's limited to forest preservation.  That's a huge
arena, but the current CDM also allows for things like, say, Germany
funding a low-carbon development project in Poland, that is to say, richest
industrialized nations funding / getting credits for projects in poorest
industrialized nations (pretty much the former Eastern Bloc).

But just because I don't imagine it right now doesn't mean it can't or
won't happen.  COP15 really laid bare some unfortunate (for the climate)
truths about global superpower shifts, since China and India are probably a
lot more resilient against outside pressures to conform to a good climate
deal than other major economies.

And it also revealed that the current form and format of negotiating this
deal may not be robust enough to create the next treaty.

I don't know if there are other mechanisms to keep CDM going.  Perhaps it
could be split off into a project under other parts of the UN, like REDD.

On the topic of California, or American states in general, joining the
European carbon market: pretty fascinating possibility.  Over the past
decade, it's been the states that have led in taking action on global
warming.  They essentially side-stepped the intransigence of the Bush
administration.  That can only be a limited response in the end, but it's
led to some "real-world" trials of things like US carbon markets, and shown
that they've got potential to work in this country.

The biggest hurdle right now is probably that the US is not a party to the
Kyoto Accord.  Wouldn't it be delicious if cities and states could
independently join the accord?  Many already have signed on in principle.
  

    
Thanks, Emily, for all your enlightening, judicious responses— they've
made for a terrific discussion. I hope you'll continue to cover
climate change, probably the most single most important international
issue.