The War on Carbon Heats Up Globally, but Strategies for Change Remain Local

By JEFFREY BALL

"Think globally, act locally," urged an environmental mantra popular in the 1970s. That strategy made sense when communities faced visible problems such as polluted streams and smoggy air. It is less effective today, as the world tries to tackle a threat as broad and shapeless as climate change.
For all the talk about a unified response to global warming, what is emerging is a crazy quilt of often-competing local strategies. Different industries, regions and countries are trying to shape policy to stick others with the bulk of the cleanup costs. And when they do act, they are focusing on the part of the problem that is most apparent to them. That's human nature, and it is getting in the way of bailing out Mother Nature on an unprecedented, global scale.

This messiness is about to spill into public view on two levels. Globally, diplomats are convening over the next two weeks in Poland for a climate-change conference, where the official purpose is to protect the planet and the subtext is to shift the cost to someone else. In the U.S., the same basic battle soon will heat up as President-elect Barack Obama, who has pledged to push for deep cuts in U.S. emissions of global-warming gases, moves into the White House.
Local interests are clashing with global interests in many places. In California, proposals for large solar-energy projects in the desert are running into opposition from area residents who don't want to have to look at all those mirrors. In Washington, calls for a minimum national energy-efficiency standard for buildings -- which research suggests may be one of the cheapest ways to curb the growth in fossil-fuel consumption -- are unpopular with the construction industry. In China, there is increasing support for curbing pollution, as long as the effort doesn't crimp the country's freedom to keep building power plants that run on cheap coal.
Even when cities or countries try to make broad environmental progress, they often aren't doing the things that would deliver the biggest impact.
One example is ethanol, a corn-based fuel long pushed by Midwestern farmers and by Washington as a way to reduce U.S. oil dependence. Even if cars running on ethanol emit lower levels of greenhouse gases than do cars running on gasoline, very few cars run on ethanol, which makes for a negligible environmental benefit.
Another example is the market for "carbon credits." These chits are bought by companies, mainly in Europe and Japan, that face government requirements to curb their environmental impact. The credits are said to fund pollution-cutting projects in developing countries, supposedly helping the planet at lower cost than if the work were done in the developed world. But several studies suggest that companies in industrialized countries may be paying for pollution cuts that would have happened even without their cash, which would mean some of their money is going to waste.
After a decade of small and fitful experiments with curbing emissions in isolated industries and regions, it is now clear that a massive economic transformation would be necessary to achieve the scale of emissions cuts that many scientists and politicians are suggesting. Under a 1997 international agreement called the Kyoto Protocol, most industrialized countries pledged to trim their greenhouse-gas emissions by a collective 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. Now, some of those countries seem likely to miss their targets. Even if they met them, it wouldn't make enough difference to the planet. The world's two biggest polluters -- the U.S. and China -- aren't constrained by the Kyoto agreement. The U.S. declined to ratify the accord, and China, as a developing country, isn't required by Kyoto to make any pollution cuts.
Today, the European Union is considering setting a more-ambitious goal: a 20% emissions cut below 1990 levels by 2020. But several coal-dependent European countries say they think those goals would cost too much. Among them: Poland, the site of the conference this week and next that's supposed to pursue bold international environmental action.
One lesson from all this is that regulatory sticks aren't likely to be enough. Financial carrots also will be important to try to convince polluters, whether companies or countries, that cleaning up their act is in their economic interest. Here again, however, those interests are being defined in narrowly local terms.
In the U.S., proponents of more-aggressive action to curb climate change say the push could create new economic opportunities. That is the argument made by Mr. Obama, who has endorsed the goal of slashing U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. He says a multibillion-dollar federal investment in environmentally friendly technology, from wind turbines to energy-efficient buildings, could create millions of "green jobs."
The big question is whether that money gets spent in a way that maximizes its environmental impact. Developing countries, where emissions are rising fastest, argue that the West should fork over more money to help them adopt cleaner energy technology. But amid today's economic downturn, there is less wealth to spread around.
Speaking to reporters recently, Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), who plans to attend the global-warming conference in Poland, said the U.S. is "not going to be in the position we were two years ago, in the short term, to do as much technology transfer or other economic assistance" to countries such as China. That, he added, "shouldn't change the willingness of some other cash-flush countries" to help pony up.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com