Patrick J. Buchanan points out the similarity of the current COP26 talks, supposedly aimed at addressing climate change, to the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928:
On Aug. 27, 1928, 15 High Contracting Parties signed on to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. The signatories that day were the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, France, Poland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and India. Within 15 years, all 15 nations, Ireland alone excepted, were ensnared in the greatest war in history. Like the pledges at the climate summit, the Kellogg-Briand Pact provided for no means of enforcement or sanctions against nations that failed to live up to their commitment.
'No means of enforcement' - true - and no incentives either. It is unfortunate to some degree that money is such a critical driver of behaviour but, if we recognise that climate change and other environmental problems are largely caused by financial incentives, then we can make efforts to withdraw those incentives or, if that's too difficult, offer countervailing incentives that would help offset our environmental depredations. We can do this only when there is an over-arching, inextricable link between the financial incentives we offer and the outcomes we wish to see. It is not simply a case of rewarding behaviour that directly improves the environment. Environmental Policy Bonds, globally backed, would reward such indirect approaches as lobbying governments or paying bad actors to cease their destructive activities. Just as big corporations can manipulate regulations to achieve their ends (including stifling competition), so could bondholders encourage government to strengthen environmental legislation. The alternative - the current approach, frankly - is to say nice things in the full knowledge that our destruction of the environment will continue unimpeded.
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