ABSTRACT
In November 1998, delegates from 160 nations met in Buenos Aires to negotiate implementation of the global climate treaty signed in Kyoto in 1997. This chapter seeks to clarify the economic and moral issues raised by pollution trading approach, and then to recommend an alternative strategy to be pursued in future negotiations with the developing world. The point of pollution trading, or any control strategy, is to maximize economic production while curtailing threats to the stability of the atmosphere. It is reasonable to hope that developing nations will sign on to a protocol that requires wealthy countries to subsidize their progress toward greater efficiency and productivity—so long as that protocol does not impose emissions limits inimical to economic growth. It is true that by seeking to improve GDP/emissions ratios, the world may not achieve the goal, envisioned at Kyoto, of stabilizing global greenhouse loadings at or below 1990 levels.
