A Climate Summit That Matters Little | Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar | Cato Institute: Commentary

A Climate Summit That Matters Little | Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar | Cato Institute: Commentary: "International law allows sovereign governments to scrap any prior treaty.

In the Kyoto treaty on climate change, 37 rich countries pledged to reduce their carbon emissions to 5% below their 1990 level. But most actually increased their emissions. These very treaty-breakers now propose another treaty!

The US signed an anti-ballistic missile treaty with the USSR during the Cold War. But subsequently the US scrapped the treaty, with impunity. The Maastricht Treaty, setting up the European Union, mandated a fiscal deficit ceiling of 3% of GDP for member states. But several members, including Germany and France, have been running deficits far higher than this, with impunity. When political and economic conditions change, treaties hardly matter."

"While governments can try to promote technological change, they cannot guarantee it. After the 1973 oil crisis, the OECD countries spent billions to develop alternate fuels (synthetic crude, shale oil). They also financed projects for solar, wind, wave and ocean thermal energy. None of these technologies proved cost-effective.

Meanwhile, thousands of innovations by individual companies reduced the energy-intensity of every conceivable appliance and practice. This halved the energy-intensity of GDP in the US and reduced its oil imports, breaking the power of OPEC in 1986. This was a typical technological surprise, not the result of governmental planning."