There is a big regional difference in climate change/climate variability and its direct and indirect impacts on natural and human systems. Each of the countries is facing different risks from global warming and also different costs to cope with it. This, combined with the highly politicization of climate change issue, may have greatly contributed to the extreme difficulty in reaching an agreement for an international-level action.

This issue was ever discussed in three decades ago:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259564595_Regional_difference_of_global_climate_change_and_its_implications

Good day Guoyu, thanks for writing.

After 1987 WCED "Our Common Future" we knew that social unsustainability (social pollution) and environmental unsustainability (environmental pollution) were clear signs the traditional market development model had not worked as expected so the WCED commission asked the world to go beyond business as usual to solve these pollution problems/internalize them once and for all.

In 1997 the world tried to deal with the environmental pollution part by addressing pollution emission issue, by not by setting up environmental pollution reduction markets(green markets) to transition the environmentally dirty economy to the clean economy, a full or dominant renewable energy based economy, but by dealing with emissions in a way that allows the dirty economy criticized by the WCED in 1987 to continue running..... When you deal with emission in a way to keep the dirty economy running you are not fixing the environmental pollution issue embedded in the traditional market pricing mechanism, you are just PATCHING the problem....

Because I saw the Kyoto protocol as a patching mechanism, not as an environmental fix to the traditional market way of thinking, I was expecting it to fail in the long term regardless as the environmental sustainability gaps created by the patch are delinked from the global warming goals/targets and you can have the situation that YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING yet the emission levels may still increase regardless, which is what happened here....

Emissions increasing despite the protocol can be explained by the fact that patching the emission problem while the dirty economy is still polluting is a good business opportunity for businesses as they can make money without taking full responsibility for the full environmental cost associated with their business activities….As long as they can pass the patching cost to consumers they are fine….and they were fine with the protocol until it failed…

Guoyu, as you may know the 1997 Kyoto agreement was reached, signed and failed.

So the question is “Looking back, why did the 1997 Kyoto protocol actually failed?”

Do you think that you can solve the pollution emission problem from inside the dirty economy while the pollution generation mechanism is still active?

Respectfully yours;

Lucio

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According to Dieter Helm, the reasons for the Kyoto Protocol's ineffectiveness are in its architecture. It is based on carbon production, not carbon consumption. It has a mainly European focus. It does nothing to address the immediate problem of global coal burning. It is wide open to free-riding, allowing nations to avoid cutting emissions while others do, and has few enforcement mechanisms. These deep flaws render the protocol incapable of slowing emissions, let alone reversing them. Fortunately, other, better, bottom-up approaches hold hope for progress.

Dear Jorge, thank you for taking the time to comment.

There are two angles to look at the failure of the Kyoto protocol, an inside the box view and an outside the box view. The inside the box view can not see or it is not comfortable with seeing how the problem can be fixed, they can for sure see how the problem can be mitigated or managed, specially when the polluters finance the box.... When the WCED said in 1987 that we needed to go beyond business as usual to fix the pollution problem they meant to think outside the box, BUT the world that loves the dirty economy continued to see solutions inside the box like the Kyoto protocol...

Why they did not see green markets, actual pollution reduction markets, in 1997 to deal with the environmental pollution problem head on and have a market to transition towards the clean economy, a full or dominant renewable energy based economy?

From this point of view, the idea of Helm you mention above is an inside the box view, the kyoto protocol was the way to go, but it was implemented wrongly in his view, however since he is not in the discussion I will leave it here.

Now what is your own view Jorge, the question is: Looking back, why did the 1997 Kyoto protocol actually failed?

Respectfully yours;

Lucio

Looking back, you can see that it was easier said than done, and actions speak louder than words. The thing is, the failure was partly due to the economic implications of adhering to protocols, and also, the 38 richest countries that were bound to support adaptation projects in less developed countries excluded some countries of high emission potential (for example, China which was undergoing massive industrial revolution was left out). Pressure on industrial giants within these 38 rich countries was inevitable, particularly in the US. It has more to do with competition, economic power, and industrial downturn. Although the science seems to be clear about climate change, the climate myth is also hovering around, which means there will be a hindrance to any policy that seeks to adhere to the Kyoto protocol. The polluter pays principle sounds reasonable but are we to say that the countries on the receiving side of the sound are not polluting or emitting a considerable amount of carbon dioxide? Another thing is these protocols are mostly not legally binding, which means it is highly based on voluntary support. Such a protocol was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Dear Derrick, thank you for commenting.

I agree, the protocol was doomed to fail not just because all those issues you are mentioning, but also because the WCED asked us in 1987 to fix the environmental issue associated with markets as usual in this case emissions, not just patch that environmental issue with a protocol....

In my view, even if the kyoto protocol would have been implemented properly including all polluters, big and small and legally binding EMISSIONS would still have increased as the markets under the kyoto protocol are not based on the notion of making pollution reduction a profitable task or opportunity to give producers an incentive to produce at the lowest green market price possible(lowest environmental cost possible), which would lead to closing the renewable energy technology gap by increasingly and permanently replacing non-renewable sources of energy for renewable ones so as to transition towards a full or dominant renewable energy based economy....

Of course polluters will go with pollution limits or pollution management while still polluting as they can still make money while polluting, but they would not easily go with SLOWLY MOVING AWAY FROM POLLUTING(Environmentally dirty economy) and towards no pollution(Environmentally clean economy) through a transition process that starts with first setting up green markets.

I appreciate your comment.

Respectfully yours;

Lucio

I think the main reason why the 1997 Kyoto Protocol failed was because it was not binding across the board. The protocol was voluntary, allowing countries to choose their own emission reduction targets and decide how they would meet those targets. This lack of enforceability meant that countries had little incentive to take action, especially if they felt that their contributions would be insignificant. Additionally, the protocol had too many loopholes, such as the use of carbon offsets, which allowed countries to avoid reducing their emissions at all. Finally, the United States was a major contributor to global emissions, yet did not sign the protocol, so the reductions achieved by other countries were not enough to offset the lack of action from the United States. All of these factors combined led to the failure of the Kyoto Protocol.

Peter, all you say is right, as it was said in the comments above, the protocol was doomed to fail from the beginning for those reasons.

However, I believe that even if all those issues you listed would no have been there, like if the protocol would have been binding protocol, singed by the USA, and so on, it still it would have failed because it was not a fix to the dirty economy problem they were dealing with, the protocol was a patch to keep the dirty economy running....

Why was the protocol not based on i) pollution reduction markets like green markets; and ii) with a plan to transition the green economy to the environmentally clean economy through closing the renewable energy technology gap to leave the dirty economy behind once and for all? This is for me the cause for failure, even if it would have been binding.

Thank you for commenting

Lucio