Malawi for You

by William Yeatman on October 17, 2007

In a very short item at the bottom of page 6 (print edition), the Financial Times reports that, wedded to rationing, the European Parliament on Monday will endorse its next move in the chess game that is negotiations over a "post-2012" global warming pact.  It will be a per capita quota scheme, allocated at the national level.

 

The level they will suggest remains unspoken, but past negotiations make clear it will be set well below the US emission level, but well above likely all of the developing world, with a global trading scheme (which still hasn't found its way forward under the 1997 Kyoto).  This is in order to peel away Third World support from joining with President Bush's obvious momentum [China now being firmly in the US camp after the EU…joined by some Ds here…aggressively rattled the trade sanctions/border-adjustments saber].

 

This desperate effort to find something that the EU can still point to as theirs, if adopted, would ensure that Kyoto remains the most direct form of wealth transfer and off-shoring proposal, as opposed to a more growth-oriented, technology transfer type agreement Bush is pushing to set the table with as his term winds down.

 

As always, this twist on the "Brazil plan" allows us to identify what standard of living is associated with their quota, and tell everyone that Kyoto means, e.g., Malawi for you.

 

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