Climate action needs green, not just red lights
The Guardian; April 28, 2017
In the twentieth century environmental protection centred on national government regulations and standards, often requiring emitters to install mandated pollution control equipment. This approach delivered some gains: across Europe and North America, the air is now much cleaner and rivers, streams, and lakes are less polluted. But such “command and control” regulation has not delivered much progress on some other big issues endangering the global commons, including climate change.
Despite more than two decades of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, emissions have continued to rise – threatening to produce global warming, rising sea levels, more frequent and intense hurricanes, changed rainfall patterns, more floods and droughts, and diminished farm productivity in many places. This failure can be traced to structural flaws in the past global response to climate change.
The 20th century regulatory model, on which the 1992 treaty builds, makes what could be called the “lawyer’s mistake” of assuming it is enough to pass a law, draft regulations, or sign an international agreement. Telling people, particularly in the corporate world, what not to do is insufficient. What is really needed is a framework of incentives that changes behaviour and induces innovation to solve problems.
