Scrapping cap and trade

BBC NEWS | 'Time to ditch climate policies'

An international group of academics is urging world leaders to abandon their current policies on climate change.

The authors of How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course say the strategy based on overall emissions cuts has failed and will continue to fail....

LSE Mackinder programme director Gwyn Prins said the current system of attempting to cap carbon emissions then allow trading in emissions permits had led to emissions continuing to rise.

He said world proposals to expand carbon trading schemes and channel billions of dollars into clean energy technologies would not work.

"The world has been recarbonising, not decarbonising," Professor Prins said.

"The evidence is that the Kyoto Protocol and its underlying approach have had and are having no meaningful effect whatsoever.

Dot Earth has more about this. It appears that these particular critics think Japan can teach us a thing or two about worthwhile policy. They are quoted as follows:

....the last thing one would do is invent layers of regulatory bodies requiring international accord and transparency in arenas like energy policy, where countries traditionally go it alone. As Professor Prins put it in a statement, “Worthwhile policy builds upon what we know works and upon what is feasible rather than trying to deploy never-before implemented policies through complex institutions requiring a hitherto unprecedented and never achieved degree of global political alignment.”

Hear hear.