Call to Action for Governments

The United Nations Sept 2023 Stocktake report shows that the 2015 Paris Agreement Climate Change Goals has been significantly slower than expected. Clearly, governments are responsible for this slow progress.  The failure of governments to keep commitments on greenhouse gas reductions means that either plans are not made that could meet the committed reductions or if they are made, they are not enforced.  How can this happen, given the dire consequences of lack of action? The answer is that powerful corporations are able to slow down and divert government actions as discussed earlier in the current situation section of our website.

 

How do we get their cooperation?  It is not by blaming them or by creating legislation that reduces their profit margins significantly. Nor by believing that governments can do their job better than they do and try to replace them. Instead, we need to find a way to work with the ones among them that are interested in helping our world become sustainable and thereby assure the future of their companies as well.

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Governments need to do their job of controlling the release of greenhouse gases, but they will not succeed if the regulations are unrealistic or opposed by large industrial segments. We believe that success requires a framework agreement with just four industrial sectors, electric utilities, oil and gas suppliers, waste management companies and agricultural associations with clear year-by-year targets. Once these targets are set, incentives must be provided to offset the cost of the changes. Finally progress by participants must be monitored and penalties or disincentives must be applied if progress is too slow.  All too often today, governments take too long to develop regulations and in addition they require a lot of bureaucracy to interpret the regulations which in turn adds more time and complicates investment decisions.

 

Furthermore, meeting the regulations for industry is costly but lobbying for delays is usually a much lower cost. If we really want progress, regulations must be simple, and enforcement must be rigorous with delays allowed only in truly exceptional circumstances. If in addition, incentives make transition costs affordable, then significant progress will be made. There is however, one more important requirement for success. Governments must not allow a few not in my backyard (NIMBY) individuals the use of environmental laws to tie up important projects for many years. Environmental issues should be considered on all projects but there needs to be a much quicker way to decide on environmental impacts are and there should be no appeal once a project is allowed to proceed.  Today many environmentally critical projects are tied up sometimes for decades through appeal after appeal and eventually investors give up and projects die. We must not allow this to climate change related projects.  

 

In summary, our Call for Action for Individual Governments is as follows:

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1. Set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the context of the global responsibility of the governed region.

2. Develop laws and ultimately regulations and incentives for changes that are effective and simple to administer.

3. Monitor and enforce the regulations as needed without allowing delays.

4. Develop governmental support for companies with promising technologies for combatting climate change.

5. Accelerate permitting of new Climate Change related projects.

Once individual governments resolve to go forward with climate change programs, they still must answer citizens who wonder why their country should move ahead with costly climate change programs while other countries increase their emissions and get away with it. While those countries who are moving ahead with significant climate change related programs by and large have not suffered, there is still the issue of fairness. As such, we need to find a way that countries are penalized if they do not carry their fair share of greenhouse gas abatement. In our view, the best way to create fairness here, is to have an agreement among the larger emitters of greenhouse gases for proportionate reductions and then have these countries apply an environmental tax on the import of goods from all  nonconforming countries. The sums collected this way could be subsequently distributed to the taxed countries should they offer proper greenhouse gas emissions programs. If this sounds complicated, it is. Nonetheless we must find a way to make abatement a universal requirement for participating in the world economy, and those countries who refuse to do their share must experience consequences otherwise we will continue to fail.