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Policy developments in Japan on global warming: the politics of conflict and the producer-oriented policy response

Shizuka Oshitani

in Global Warming Policy in Japan and Britain: Interactions Between Institutions and Issue Characteristics

Carbon dioxide accounts for about 90 per cent of greenhouse emissions in Japan, and about 90 per cent of these carbon dioxide emissions stem from energy-related sources. The historical growth in ... More

Carbon dioxide accounts for about 90 per cent of greenhouse emissions in Japan, and about 90 per cent of these carbon dioxide emissions stem from energy-related sources. The historical growth in these emissions is due largely to the growth in energy demand rather than the pattern of use of fossil fuels. This chapter examines policy developments in Japan on global warming, focusing on the politics of conflict and the producer-oriented policy response. After providing an overview on the emergence of global warming on the Japanese political agenda, the chapter discusses the policy of target-setting in carbon dioxide control, differences in opinion between the Environment Agency and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, progress after the Earth Summit, the Japanese strategy to tackle global warming, Japan's energy efficiency policy, policy frameworks for the promotion of new energy, voluntary action of Japanese industry in the conservation of global environment, and environment taxes.Less

Policy developments in Britain on global warming: in search of political leadership

Shizuka Oshitani

in Global Warming Policy in Japan and Britain: Interactions Between Institutions and Issue Characteristics

About 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Britain are in the form of carbon dioxide, of which about 97 per cent is energy-related. Overall carbon dioxide emissions fell steadily from 1970. ... More

About 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Britain are in the form of carbon dioxide, of which about 97 per cent is energy-related. Overall carbon dioxide emissions fell steadily from 1970. After 1997, however, carbon dioxide emissions from the transport sector consistently exceeded those from the domestic sector and in 2002 they exceeded those from the industrial sector. British emissions of carbon dioxide have been largely determined by the use of coal and their long-term decline is basically explained by the rapid decline in the use of coal. This chapter examines the emergence of global warming on the British political agenda, carbon dioxide reduction targets, national strategy for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, value added tax on domestic fuel and power, increases in fuel duties, the Energy Saving Trust, the encouragement of voluntary action, regulations and labelling schemes, targets for combined heat and power and renewable energy, and the politics of a carbon/energy tax.Less

Why Climate-Change Skeptics Are Wrong

Kristin Shrader-Frechette

in What Will Work: Fighting Climate Change with Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power

Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to ... More

Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to CC. Many scientists and most market proponents agree that renewable energy and energy efficiencies are better options. The chapter also shows that government subsidies for oil and nuclear power are the result of flawed science, poor ethics, short-term thinking, and special-interest influence. The chapter has 7 sections, the first of which surveys four major components of the energy crisis. These are oil addiction, non-CC-related deaths from fossil-fuel pollution, nuclear-weapons proliferation, and catastrophic CC. The second section summarizes some of the powerful evidence for global CC. The third section uses historical, ahistorical, Rawlsian, and utilitarian ethical principles to show how developed nations, especially the US, are most responsible for human-caused CC. The fourth section shows why climate-change skeptics, such as “deniers” who doubt CC is real, and “delayers” who say that it should not yet be addressed, have no valid objections. Instead, they all err scientifically and ethically. The fifth section illustrates that all modern scientific methods—and scientific consensus since at least 1995—confirm the reality of global CC. Essentially all expert-scientific analyses published in refereed, scientific-professional journals confirm the reality of global CC. The sixth section of the chapter shows how fossil-fuel special interests have contributed to the continued CC debate largely by paying non-experts to deny or challenge CC. The seventh section of the chapter provides an outline of each chapter in the book, noting that this book makes use of both scientific and ethical analyses to show why nuclear proponents’ arguments err, why CC deniers are wrong, and how scientific-methodological understanding can advance sound energy policy—including conservation, renewable energy, and energy efficiencies.Less

Green Taxes and Administrative Costs: The Case of Carbon Taxation

Sjak Smulders and Herman R. J. Vollebergh

in Behavioral and Distributional Effects of Environmental Policy

Implementing environmental policies — through standards, tradable permits, or environmental taxes alike — is far from costless. For instance, when implementing an environmental tax, the tax ... More

Implementing environmental policies — through standards, tradable permits, or environmental taxes alike — is far from costless. For instance, when implementing an environmental tax, the tax department has to run a special unit to enforce and collect taxes and to monitor compliance. In practice, the costs of implementing environmental policies play a significant role in the choice between policy options. This chapter investigates the potential trade-off between administrative costs and incentives of environmental regulation, in particular if the government aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It analyzes how the optimal choice of carbon taxes is affected by the administrative costs incurred by the regulator (government). Using a simple model, the chapter determines the optimal rates for emissions and input taxes in the presence of administrative costs and which of these taxes should optimally be introduced. It also explores and interprets the scarce empirical evidence on administrative costs of taxation in the light of optimal carbon taxation. Finally, it evaluates both explicit and implicit carbon taxation in OECD countries in terms of the trade-off and suggests some opportunities for welfare-improving carbon tax policies.Less

Addressing Climate Change with a Comprehensive US Cap-and-trade System

Robert N. Stavins

in The Economics and Politics of Climate Change

This chapter examines how a comprehensive cap-and-trade system implemented in the United States can address climate change. It first considers previous cap-and-trade systems used in the United States ... More

This chapter examines how a comprehensive cap-and-trade system implemented in the United States can address climate change. It first considers previous cap-and-trade systems used in the United States to help comply with the Montreal Protocol and to regulate carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. It then describes a comprehensive carbon dioxide cap-and-trade system in the United States, including its key elements: a gradual trajectory of emissions reductions; tradable allowances; up-stream regulation with economy-wide effects; mechanisms to reduce cost uncertainty; allowance allocations that combine auctions with free distribution; availability of offsets for underground and biological carbon sequestration; supremacy over state and regional systems; and linkage with international emission-reduction credit and cap-and-trade systems and climate policies in other countries. It also analyses the economics of the US cap-and-trade system before concluding with a comparison of the system with alternative approaches to the same policy goal.Less

Energy Transitions in the Twentieth Century

Malanima Paolo, Astrid Kander, and Paul Warde

in Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries

This chapter examines energy transitions in twentieth-century Europe. It begins with a discussion of the rise in energy consumption in the twentieth century and the breakthrough of oil and ... More

This chapter examines energy transitions in twentieth-century Europe. It begins with a discussion of the rise in energy consumption in the twentieth century and the breakthrough of oil and electricity. These developments display similarities and differences with the previous century, that of the first industrial revolution, where coal came to dominate the scene and released the economy from the constraints of the organic economy. As energy carriers, oil and electricity changed the relative positioning of European countries. The chapter proceeds by decomposing the energy consumption into the effects from population increase, income increase, and energy intensity changes. It also considers the new geography of energy supply, nuclear energy and other primary sources for electricity generation, drivers of carbon dioxide emissions, food consumption in the twentieth century, and higher quality of energy and higher efficiency in energy use.Less

Heating Up and Cooling Down the Petrostate: The Norwegian Experience

Helge Ryggvik and Berit Kristoffersen

in Ending the Fossil Fuel Era

In this chapter Helge Ryggvik and Berit Kristoffersen argue that even if Norway avoided the classic symptoms of the oil curse, it nonetheless has been deeply affected, first by the sheer wealth, then ... More

In this chapter Helge Ryggvik and Berit Kristoffersen argue that even if Norway avoided the classic symptoms of the oil curse, it nonetheless has been deeply affected, first by the sheer wealth, then by the power of its own national oil company. Political realism in Norway includes fossil fuel dominance—economic and political. Voices are being heard within Norway questioning the net benefit presumption of continued extraction, let alone expansion. They are saying that enough is enough. Fossil fuels, some are beginning to argue, are no longer legitimate nationally or globally as Norway’s well-being is tied to that of the rest of the planet. What is more, if boom conditions have been difficult to moderate, then bust will be as well; it is time to start stopping.Less

The Environment Moves Centre Stage

Dieter Helm

in Energy, the State, and the Market: British Energy Policy since 1979

In the late 1980s, to most environmentalists' surprise, Margaret Thatcher was converted to the idea that emissions of greenhouse gases caused global warming. Whether it was her chemistry background ... More

In the late 1980s, to most environmentalists' surprise, Margaret Thatcher was converted to the idea that emissions of greenhouse gases caused global warming. Whether it was her chemistry background that convinced her; whether it was a shrewd political move for the Conservatives to capture the green vote; or whether it was the personal persuasiveness of Chris Patten (then Secretary of State for the Environment) and Crispin Tickell (former British Ambassador to the United States), it was to have a considerable effect on policy. This chapter focuses on this impact.Less

Environmental and Natural Resource Impact

in The World Under Pressure: How China and India Are Influencing the Global Economy and Environment

This chapter explores the impact of the rapid economic growth of China and India on the environment and natural resources worldwide, focusing on energy and climate change. It first examines the two ... More

This chapter explores the impact of the rapid economic growth of China and India on the environment and natural resources worldwide, focusing on energy and climate change. It first examines the two countries' endowments in terms of arable land, water, and energy before turning to the global impact of their increased demand for primary goods with respect to commodity prices. It also discusses environmental sustainability and shows that both China and India already have a net deficit of globally available sustainable environmental resources equivalent to 14 and 4 percent, respectively. In addition, the chapter considers the rising energy demand in China and India compared with other major energy consumers and predicts that they will account for 53 percent of the total global increase in energy demand between 2007 and 2035 because of their higher growth rates and lower energy efficiency. Finally, it analyzes historical trends of carbon dioxide emissions and predicts that China and India will account for 91 percent of the increase in global carbon dioxide emissions between 2007 and 2035.Less

Absolute versus Intensity Limits for CO2 Emission Control: Performance under Uncertainty

Ian Sue Wing, A. Denny Ellerman, and Jaemin Song

in The Design of Climate Policy

This chapter compares absolute and intensity limits for carbon dioxide emission control under conditions of uncertainty. It demonstrates the conditions under which an absolute or intensity limit ... More

This chapter compares absolute and intensity limits for carbon dioxide emission control under conditions of uncertainty. It demonstrates the conditions under which an absolute or intensity limit would be preferred. The chapter also explores the policy implications of these conditions using historical time series data and historical forecasts on different countries’ actual carbon dioxide emissions and gross domestic product (GDP).Less

. Spillovers from Climate Policy to Other Pollutants

Stephen P. Holland

in The Design and Implementation of US Climate Policy

This chapter describes spillovers from carbon dioxide emissions regulations to other pollutants. It presents a theoretical description of spillovers resulting from responses to climate policy and ... More

This chapter describes spillovers from carbon dioxide emissions regulations to other pollutants. It presents a theoretical description of spillovers resulting from responses to climate policy and then empirically tests for climate policy spillovers in electric power generation.Less

Making global warming policy

Shizuka Oshitani

in Global Warming Policy in Japan and Britain: Interactions Between Institutions and Issue Characteristics

This chapter gives background information on policy-making to tackle the global warming problem in Japan and Britain. It has already been mentioned that Japan could be considered corporatist and ... More

This chapter gives background information on policy-making to tackle the global warming problem in Japan and Britain. It has already been mentioned that Japan could be considered corporatist and Britain pluralist in terms of government-industry relations, patterns of interest representation, and the norm of decision-making. The chapter explains how these differences are actually reflected in the traditionally dominant environmental policy styles of the two countries. It considers those industrial structural contexts that have important implications for the politics of global warming. It first describes policy styles and environmental politics in Japan, focusing on consensus, concertation, and developmentalism. It then discusses pitfalls in environmental policy in Japan, consultation as well as science and reactivism in Britain, and the main actors who are either very concerned about or very committed to the policy of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.Less

Global Climate Change: A Challenge to Policy

Kenneth J. Arrow

in The Economists' Voice: Top Economists Take On Today's Problems

In fall 2006, the UK issued a major government report on global climate change directed by top-flight economist Sir Nicholas Stern. The Stern report amounts to a call to action: it argues that huge ... More

In fall 2006, the UK issued a major government report on global climate change directed by top-flight economist Sir Nicholas Stern. The Stern report amounts to a call to action: it argues that huge future costs of global warming can be avoided by incurring relatively modest costs today. Critics of the Stern report do not think serious action to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is justified because there remains substantial uncertainty about the extent of the costs of global climate change and because these costs will be incurred far in the future. This chapter argues that Stern report's conclusion is justified: it is much better to act to reduce CO2 emissions substantially than to suffer and risk the consequences of failing to meet this challenge. It explains that this conclusion holds true even if, unlike Stern, one heavily discounts the future.Less

Energy and Society

Peter Rez

in The Simple Physics of Energy Use

The more ‘developed’ the country and the higher the ‘standard of living’, the greater the energy use per person. Energy use can be broken down into three main categories—maintaining a comfortable ... More

The more ‘developed’ the country and the higher the ‘standard of living’, the greater the energy use per person. Energy use can be broken down into three main categories—maintaining a comfortable environment in buildings, transportation of people and things and manufacturing stuff. More energy per person is used in colder countries than in warmer ones. Also, countries where people drive large cars over longer distances every year (United States, Canada and Australia) use more oil per person than European countries. Carbon dioxide emission is related to how much oil is used per person, and how electricity is generated. If a lot of electricity is generated from coal power stations, this will result in higher carbon dioxide emissions. As France has shown, substitution of coal by nuclear power results in a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.Less

Summary—What Should Be Done?

Peter Rez

in The Simple Physics of Energy Use

Energy policy should start with an analysis of what physics and engineering say is possible, followed by an analysis of economics, and not be driven by mandates that favour renewable energy sources. ... More

Energy policy should start with an analysis of what physics and engineering say is possible, followed by an analysis of economics, and not be driven by mandates that favour renewable energy sources. In practice, it is very hard to make renewables such as solar and wind work, owing to their intermittency, and so widespread adoption might not lead to any reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, as demonstrated by the German ‘Energiewende’. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions, all base load electrical demand should be generated by nuclear power, as in France. To cut down on energy requirements, industrial countries should transition from a ‘throwaway society’ to a ‘repair’ society, and people should cut down on travel and meat consumption.Less

Rising Powers

in The World Under Pressure: How China and India Are Influencing the Global Economy and Environment

This book examines the unprecedented economic rise of China and India since the 1980s and its implications for international trade, foreign investment, finance, intellectual property rights, ... More

This book examines the unprecedented economic rise of China and India since the 1980s and its implications for international trade, foreign investment, finance, intellectual property rights, competition for natural resources, security, climate change, global governance, and balance of power. It looks at the limited capacity of the environment to absorb increased carbon dioxide emissions attributed to economic development. Specifically, the book explores how the economic growth of China and India affects the environment and geopolitics. It focuses on what can be learned from the history of global power shifts and considers why China and India have been growing faster than the rest of the world for the last three decades. It analyzes some similarities and differences in the two countries' histories and economic policies to explain their growth rates, as well as their growth prospects over the next twenty years. Finally, the book describes the shifts in power that are taking place and the friction they are generating, arguing that these tensions cannot be addressed by the existing international system.Less

Wisdom Hewn in Ancient Stones

John Ochsendorf and Adolfo Plasencia

in Is the Universe a Hologram?: Scientists Answer the Most Provocative Questions

In this dialogue, the prestigious professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, John Oschendorf, reproaches engineering for abandoning construction techniques that had performed ... More

In this dialogue, the prestigious professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, John Oschendorf, reproaches engineering for abandoning construction techniques that had performed wonderfully for four thousand years. He regrets that digital instruments currently used by engineers and architects are incapable of explaining why amazing buildings such as the Beauvais Cathedral in France, or that of Palma de Mallorca in Spain, or the Pantheon in Rome, are so stable. For John, the history of construction is open and can provide us many ideas from the past which we can use to build new things today. One example of this is Guastavino family, who were capable of building the vaults of a thousand of the most important buildings in the United States by using traditional vault technology dating back to 14th century Valencia and which they continually sought to improve. He also explains in the dialogue why our ideology of progress is misguided.Less

Introduction and Summary

Rebecca M. Henderson and Richard G. Newell

in Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors

Reorienting current energy systems toward a far greater reliance on technologies with low or no carbon dioxide emissions is an immense challenge. This book explores how the U.S. energy innovation ... More

Reorienting current energy systems toward a far greater reliance on technologies with low or no carbon dioxide emissions is an immense challenge. This book explores how the U.S. energy innovation system could be improved using a complementary approach. Instead of focusing on the history of the energy industry to draw lessons for the future of energy innovation, it outlines the history of innovation in several industries that have already seen extraordinary rates of technological progress: agriculture, chemicals, semiconductors, computers, the Internet, and biopharmaceuticals. The chapters examine the complex role that public policy and private markets have played in triggering rapid innovation in the industry and in sustaining it once in motion. In four of the industries discussed in the book—agriculture, semiconductors, computers, and the Internet—the federal government played an important role in funding deployment of the new technology. The book suggests that greatly increasing rates of energy innovation requires creating significant demand for low-carbon technologies, substantially increased federal funding for well-managed research, and support for the initial deployment of new technologies.Less

The Road Runner’s Appetite

Andrew Ross

in Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City

Political and business leaders know that their defects and blunders will be excused if they turn in a respectable growth performance. The quarterly or annual gains in ... More

Political and business leaders know that their defects and blunders will be excused if they turn in a respectable growth performance. The quarterly or annual gains in corporate revenue or GDP are really all that matters. But when and why did these raw metrics come to surpass all other indicators of well-being? Although growth is often seen as integral to any capitalist system of accumulation, its recognition as a society’s only relevant standard of worth is largely a postwar development. For example, four-fifths of U.S. growth has occurred in the last fifty years, some part of it driven by Cold War competition to prove the superiority of a market economy. The consensus mood that developed after 1945—which historians have called “growth liberalism”—presided over an expansionist boom in the industrialized world that did not contract until the 1970s. Subsequent doctrines—the supply-side gospel of the Reagan era, the high-tech evangelism of the 1990s, and the asset ownership creed of the 2000s—were all aimed at reviving and boosting the high growth rates that managers of a consumer society had come to expect. Growthmanship spread abroad, along with the internationalization of production, and soon growth in GDP became the most important yardstick for nations, whether in the advanced or the developing world. Slowing growth rates were a cause for concern, while falling numbers were a sign that something was awry, and that close scrutiny, even intervention, from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund was in the offing. Those who believed or behaved otherwise were not wrong; they were simply treated as dropouts from modernity. So entrenched was this orthodoxy that The Limits to Growth, the momentous 1972 Club of Rome report that concluded that current rates of industrial growth could not be sustained ecologically in the long term, was received among business and policy elites as a genuinely heretical document that had to be publicly pilloried. Subsequent surveys, drawing upon a wider range of experts and a more comprehensive collection of scientific data, amplified the 1972 warning about the ruinous impact of unrestrained growth. Less