Kyoto is dead

'The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge', said UK Prime Minister Tony Blair recently. He’s right, and some of us have been working on practical alternatives to the absurd Kyoto Protocol.

For people whose priority is dealing with climate change, rather than merely demonstrating their concern for humanity without actually doing anything, I suggest Climate Stability Bonds. These would be backed by governments or the private sector, and auctioned to the highest bidders. They would be redeemable for a fixed sum only when some meaningful climate stability target had been achieved and sustained. Bondholders would have incentives to do whatever is most cost-effective. They might opt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they might well find that sending mirrors into Earth orbit, or developing new species of cyanobacteria (that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide and convert it into a raw material for biodegradable plastic), or researching into many other possibilities would be far more efficient. Click here for a short published article on Climate Stability Bonds .