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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 4, NUMBER 12, DECEMBER 1991

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS...
GENERAL, POLICY AND ECONOMICS

Item #d91dec9

"Toward Climate Conventions Scenario Analysis for a Climatic Protection Policy," W. Bach (Dept. Geog., Univ. Münster, R. Koch Str. 26, D-4400 Münster, Germany), A.K. Jain, Ambio, 20(7), 322-329, Nov. 1991.

Proposes a strategy for developing a climate convention with the following elements: limits for warming and the rate of warming; emission scenarios that satisfy the limits based on climate modeling; allocation of national emissions; assessment of emission reduction potential by gas, source, measure and nation; national emission reduction plans; a climate fund. Global mean surface warming should be limited to about 2 K by the year 2100 over the preindustrial level. The scenarios developed are assessed using a 1-D climate model from 1860 to 2100.

Item #d91dec10

"Climate Change Negotiations Polarize," C.P. Collins (1321 Milvia St., Berkeley CA 94709), ibid., 340-344.

Discusses the progress of negotiations after three sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee and the views of developing nations and nongovernmental organizations. Countries are divided over how strictly greenhouse emissions should be limited and how to share the associated hardship fairly. The existence of significant low-cost energy reforms represents untapped bargaining space for overcoming present deadlocks, but these are easy "no regrets" steps. Powerful and deeply entrenched social forces will resist an increasingly desperate need to dramatically reduce the global combustion of fossil fuels.

Item #d91dec11

Modifications to the Montreal Protocol are suggested by A. Jagadeesh (Soc. Sci. for the People, Andhra Pradesh, India) in Energy Policy, 19(9), 814-815, Nov. 1991. These include publishing the percentage of damage done to the ozone layer by industrial and developing nations, with rectification at the national level, and abandoning dual criteria for industrial and developing countries.

Item #d91dec12

"Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Air Pollution Control Measures," A. Voss (Inst. Energy Econ., Univ. Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 31, W-7000 Stuttgart 80, Germany), G. Schmid, Energy, 16(10), 1215-1224, Oct. 1991.

Describes an analytical framework for identifying efficient control strategies and gives selected results on cost-effective methods to control emissions of CO₂, SO2 and NOx. With further improvements, the approach could be used to determine a fair distribution of the burden of greenhouse gas emission reductions among nations.

Item #d91dec13

"Three Reports on German Environmental Policy," K. von Moltke (World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C), Environment, 33(7), 25-29, Sep. 1991. Discusses three important documents, written by Germany's Inquiry Commission on Precautionary Measures to Protect the Atmosphere, that helped formulate its relatively ambitious environmental goals.

Item #d91dec14

"The European Community and International Environmental Policy," N. Haigh (Inst. European Environ. Policy, London, U.K.), Intl. Environ. Affairs, 3(3), 163-180, Summer 1991. A synopsis that includes the EC position on ozone depletion and global warming.

Item #d91dec15

Three articles from a special issue of World Development, 19(1), Jan. 1991, entitled "Global Commons--Site of Peril, Source of Hope":

"Protecting the Global Environment: An Immodest Proposal," R. Dorfman (Harvard Univ., Cambridge MA 02138), 103-110. Assuming that each nation's environmental behavior does not affect the behavior of other nations, the inherent response to global problems is continued abuse of the environment. Shows how the experience of the Montreal Protocol demonstrates that countries can cooperate when conditions are right, and indicates what those conditions are.

"Global Institutions and Ecological Crisis," J.M. Harris, (Boston Univ., Boston, Mass.), 111-122. The concepts of growth management and sustainable development have emerged as responses to the global environmental crisis. For these to be successful, the future world economic system must be based on a kind of global ecological Keynesianism, with a significant social direction of capital flows, demand management and technological choices.

"Global Prospects in an Interdependent World," P. Streeten (Boston Univ., Boston, Mass.), 123-133. Discusses the necessary conditions for a working international order concerned with development, and three future scenarios: global, bloc forming, and oligarchic. The lag between technological advance and political institutions is said to be responsible for many of our problems. Illustrates how institutional innovations that transcend the state are the solution.

Item #d91dec16

"Global Change in Carbon Combustion: Trends in Anthropogenic Forcing of Atmospheric Change," J.G. Patterson (Dept. Geol. Sci., Erindale College, 3359 Mississauga Rd., Mississauga, Ont. L5L 1C6, Can.), Energy Sources, 12(3), 377-392, 1990.

Analysis of the relationships among population growth and per capita energy production and increased by-products of carbon combustion indicates that global warming will continue unless human behavior changes. The growth curves of population and carbon combustion must be flattened. Scientists must be encouraged to intensify research on alternative sources of energy through creating a conducive climate and providing adequate funding. A deep-seated perceptual shift in society is needed to attain sustainable development.