April 30, 2007
Could Kyoto be counterproductive?
Larry Summers, ex-Treasury secretary, has a typically thoughtful and well argued column in today’s FT, warning of the potential dangers in the Kyoto cap and trade approach to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, some of those dangers highlighted, as he notes, by my colleague Fiona Harvey in her superb recent series on carbon markets.
But for a more positive view of Kyoto, look at last week’s speech at Stanford from Lord Browne, chief executive, for three more months, of BP. It is a striking speech for an oil executive to make. But Lord Browne, of course, is not your standard Big Oil CEO. He was, as he reminded his listeners last week, the first leader in almost any industry, never mind the oil business, to confront the prospect of man-made climate change. That 1997 speech, full text here, is still worth a look today. One line stands out: "we must now focus on what can and what should be done, not because we can be certain climate change is happening, but because the possibility can’t be ignored": controversial then, but as Larry Summers puts in the FT, "that debate is over among the rational."
