这是一个鲜明而令人恐惧的事实，尽管国际努力超过二十年，包括京都协议上花费了巨大的时间和精力，而且经济成本很大，但现在的碳排放量仍比1990年更快。每年每百万分之1.5分约1.5份。现在是2 ppm。关键的400 ppm全球阈值很快就会越过，几乎没有理由相信这种趋势很可能很快就会停止。
This raises two obvious questions. How could so much effort lead to so little result, and how could so much political capital and economic cost be expended to so little effect? The second follows from the first: Given that current approaches have so lamentably failed, what new directions do we need to take if climate change is to be cracked?
The obvious place to start is with thecauses这些排放。答案很简单：Coal has been the big winnerin meeting the growth of energy demand since 1990, particularly for electricity generation.
It is carbon consumption that measures the carbon footprint, not carbon production in particular countries.
It has increased from around 25 percent of world primary energy demand to nearly 30 percent — a rising percentage on a sharply growing underlying demand. Much of that extra coal has been burned in China, and despite moves to reduce coal’s share of electricity generation, China is going to burn a lot more over the rest of this decade. China and India together currently add around three new coal stations a week, and between now and 2020 around 400 to 600 gigawatts of new coal is likely to come onto the world’s energy systems.
But before we get carried away blaming China, it is important to work out why this increase has taken place. China’s phenomenal economic growth has been based on exports, notably of energy-intensive goods, from steel and petrochemicals to a host of manufactured products. These have been bought largely by the U.S. and Europe, which together account for nearly 50 percent of world GDP.
It is carbon消耗衡量碳足迹和因此责任，而不是碳生产in particular geographical areas. Yet remarkably the Kyoto framework does not take consumption into account. Instead it focuses on carbon production, and mostly in Europe, where deindustrialization and the collapse of the former Soviet Union make compliance with the targets easy. For example, the UK’s carbon production fell by more than 15 percent between 1990 and 2005, but once imported carbon is taken into account, carbon consumption went up more than 19 percent. This explains how carbon production can be falling in Europe in line with its Kyoto targets, while global carbon emissions keep going up.
While talking is usually a good idea, the fabric of Kyoto is not going to head off climate change.
可悲的是，这并不是京都式方法中唯一的断层线。它充满了自由骑手问题 - 其中一些国家减少了排放，而另一些国家则无所作为 - 并且并不是针对排放量真正重要的国家。难怪美国拒绝了。的确，京都框架甚至可以在2011年12月的德班气候会议上齐心协力是一个奇迹。尝试to agree by 2015 whatmight发生after2020. By that time, all those new coal power stations will have been built and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will be well above 400ppm. The upcoming summit in Doha, Qatar, will not make much difference to this timetable.
It is time to recognize that while talking is usually a good idea, the fabric of Kyoto is not going to head off climate change. So the answer to our first question — why there has there been no dent in emissions? — leads to the second: What would we need to do to make such a dent?
答案有三个部分。前两个是相关的。除非人们支付污染费用，否则他们将不会对此做太多。这种污染最好通过碳消耗而不是碳的产量来衡量。因此，必须有碳消耗的价格（税） - 与边境调整有关的碳税，以确保从没有碳价格的国家进口碳密集型商品与国内生产相同。
立即听到政治抗议的how叫。政客们不喜欢碳税，因为他们担心如果我们敢于让我们为污染付出代价，我们的选民会把他们赶出去。据称碳边境税是贸易保护主义者，干扰了世界贸易。Yet a moment’s reflection tells us something quite profound: If we don’t want to pay for the pollution we cause, we don’t really want to address climate change, since a carbon price is almost certainly cheaper than the alternatives of command-and-control and detailed government intervention. Setting specific pollution controls on large industrial installations, picking “winners” among technologies, setting quotas, and targeting subsidies to influence investment decisions are all open to interference by lobbyists seeking to profit from the interventions.
因此，如果要处理气候变化，则别无选择，只能面对碳定价的批评者。政治家是否引起挑战还有待观察。然而，对新收入来源的需求结合在一起，再加上许多某种形式的碳定价国家的零碎出现，这表明了一些有限的乐观基础。
A carbon consumption tax would include a domestic tax on carbon and a tax on carbon imports.
Not to have a carbon price is an export subsidy and hence a distortion to trade. Making sure we have a level carbon-pricing field is pro-trade and enhances efficiency. It might of course be complex, but it turns out that a small number of large, energy-intensive industries make up the bulk of the carbon trade and so in practice it will not require much to make a big difference to the outcome. It is better to be roughly right, than precisely wrong.
碳消耗税将包括两个要素 - 对碳的国内税和碳进口税。从提取点上游税到对企业或消费者的下游税，有多种近似国内维度的方法。在外部，边界税可以从钢，铝，石化和肥料开始，然后逐渐扩大。额外的吸引力是，这可以自下而上：国家可以单独执行此操作，而不是等待国际协议。换句话说，它围绕着想要成为早期推动者的国家面临的自由骑士问题。他们可以行动而不会违反自己的行业。
市场的需求和供应方面都有碳价格信号，并向投资者发出了长期信号。然而，它的直接效果几乎全部在相对的煤炭和天然气的经济成本，使煤炭成比例地更加昂贵。在欧洲，可悲的低，波动和短期碳价格通过欧盟的排放交易计划生成has had no significant impact, and indeed it has allowed a major dash from nuclear to coal and from gas to coal. Germany leads the way — it is burning more coal in its existing coal power stations和它正在增加新的褐煤煤站。
直接的优先事项是处理这一煤炭问题。煤真的是肮脏的东西。它杀死了许多矿工 - 例如，在中国每年几千人。煤矿泄漏甲烷，用重金属污染了地下水位，需要大量精力来挖掘煤炭并将其运输到电站，然后将其散发出来，然后散发出碳，而且发出其他主要污染物。燃煤电厂使用大量的水进行冷却，需要处置灰烬。
资金必须可以花在所有可能只是破坏气候变化的新技术上。
天然气提供了暂时的定格，其中一半是煤炭的碳足迹和其他几个污染物。在美国，几乎没有或没有能源或气候政策，页岩气正在大力侵入煤炭，导致了京都协议之外的发达经济体排放中最大的减少。相比之下，在欧洲，政府（尤其是法国）一直在禁止页岩气，理由是它可能导致甲烷泄漏和地下水位污染。这些是需要调节的真正问题，但是片刻的反思应该得出这样的结论：如果要禁止页岩气，那么所有煤炭开采也应该是非法的。然而，在欧洲，将束缚放在天然气上，这意味着更多的煤炭正在燃烧。
气体是一个暂时的解决方案，除非在碳捕获和存储方面取得了巨大成功，否则最终也需要在脱碳世界中淘汰它。这使我们获得了可再生能源。可悲的事实是，当前的可再生能源都无法弥合脱碳的差距。风，常规的屋顶太阳能以及各种生物燃料和生物量需要根本无法提供的土地和水资源领域。它需要大量的间歇性风力涡轮机，最多只有几兆瓦来传达传统电站的输出。与目前在美国和欧洲总共使用相比，它需要大量的屋顶和更多的农业土地，才能使汽车燃料大大融入。
Yet it is these current renewables where all the effort — and money — is going. Europe in particular is determined to meet the short-term renewables and biofuels targets by 2020, spending billions on offshore wind and rooftop solar. Not only does this undermine Europe’s competitiveness against the shale gas-powered U.S., but it means that the money is not available to spend onfuture可再生能源和所有可能只是破坏气候变化的新技术。其中包括下一代太阳能，涉及改善现有太阳能电池板的慢性低效率，尤其是通过光谱的红外部分，以及许多新材料以捕获太阳能。然后是太阳能热;人造光合作用；地热，仍处于起步阶段；下一代核；许多辅助转换技术（例如智能电网和仪表）会影响需求，电池和存储，这可能解决了长期以来一直在发电行业的固有存储问题。
当前的可再生能源无法弥合差距，因此要么是气候变化，要么是新技术。然而，与此同时，如果可以根据碳消耗来引入严重的碳价格，并且我们可以迅速将煤炭自动扶梯变成天然气，那么希望在2050年之前不会越过500 ppm的阈值。正如我们的那样，希望京都能解决这个问题，比一厢情愿的想法更糟糕：它几乎没有任何好处。