9 ms·

"For the first time, the trade agreement includes countries' Paris climate deal commitments." This is a brilliant answer to the tragedy of the commons. Often t

by max76 8y ago

"For the first time, the trade agreement includes countries' Paris climate deal commitments." This is a brilliant answer to the tragedy of the commons. Often times people ask why they should make great efforts to be more environmentally friendly when other groups are not. This creates multiparty incentives attached to real economic benefits to keep their word on climate change. I hope The US, China, and Russia all enter economic agreements with similar clauses. EDIT: I didn't mean to single out those three countries. All countries should include these clauses in their economic agreements. India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Canada are top ten polluters that are not covered in this specific agreement or mentioned by me above.

roywiggins 8y ago
The TPP would have folded in a bunch of environmental protection rules, but the US blew it up. It's debatable how good these protections would have been, but they were not nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Environmental_protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Envi...
- cyphar 8y ago
  The TPP had many other issues though. Examples include criminal penalties for breaking DRM or disclosing trade secrets, and establishing an international tribunal that allows corporations to sue for monetary damages from a government that passes a law which they feel is discriminatory. (I know the US has trade agreements like this already, but it's a new thing for Australia -- and unfortunately we are now part of the new US-exempt TPP.)
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    The point of that was to stop Malaysia and Singapore from pirating movies and software. I think there's something to be said about the correct distrust of MPAA. But at the same time, Malaysia and Singapore were clear pirate hubs that were harmful to any IP based economy.
    - fungi 8y ago
      > ... Singapore were clear pirate hubs that were harmful to any IP based economy. That's an absurd and factually incorrect statement.
      - crowdpleaser 8y ago
        You're aware of the history of singapore, right? Joke alert - it used to be a piracy hub.
        fungi 8y ago
        arr. strait over my head.
    - Asooka 8y ago
      Well, from my point of view, copyright maximalism is much bigger theft than file sharing in Malaysia.
  - avar 8y ago
    What's your proposed alternative to this sort of international tribunal? To me it feels like obviously the correct solution, and e.g. the EU/EEA has this with the EFTA courts and the WTO has it with its courts. Point in favor: 1. It makes sense for a corporation in say Malaysia to be able to sue Australia over state subsidies, otherwise they need to convince their own governments to bring it up at the inter-state level, and Malaysia may consider it too small of an issue to piss off Australia 2. There needs to be one centralized enforcing mechanism. A Malaysian company can't sue the Australian government in its own courts (or Australia's), both would have an obvious bias towards their own country. Even if we assume the courts are fair you'll create N^2 amount of enforcement relationships for the N countries in the deal. That's just redundant, and everyone has an interest in centrally set legal precedent. 3. There need to be damages so countries can't circumvent the trade deal with what amounts to state-sponsored favoritism with impunity.
    - afiori 8y ago
      The presence of a central court that can regulate goverment that act rashly is one thing, to allow individual companies to sue governments is another.
      - avar 8y ago
        Yes it's a different thing. I'm asking you to make the case that it's a bad thing, which you're not doing. You're also assuming that all trade disputes are going to involve country X having an issue with country Y, whereas e.g. in the EU/EEA companies sometimes sue their own government for being in breach of the trade rules, and prevail in front of the EFTA court. E.g. a meat importing company in Iceland sued the Icelandic state over the Icelandic government's ban on the import of fresh meat from the EU/EEA[1]. They prevailed, and now Iceland's having to allow that, over the objections of its powerful farming lobby. It wouldn't have made sense for any foreign EU/EEA government to start a trade dispute with Iceland over this matter, but it got resolved because a local company was able to sue and have the EFTA court rule on the matter. Why shouldn't the aggrieved party be able to sue? 1. http://www.eftasurv.int/media/press-releases/Fact-sheet-Iceland_s-restrictions-on-the-import-of-fresh-meat,-egg-and-dairy-products-in-breach--ENG.pdf http://www.eftasurv.int/media/press-releases/Fact-sheet-Icel...
- floathub 8y ago
  It's not quite accurate to say the US "blew it up." The other countries just signed TPP-11 without the US, and the agreement went into effect on December 30, 2018
CountSessine 8y ago
William Nordhaus, winner of the 2018 Nobel prize in economics, advocated for this, calling such agreements "Climate Clubs" https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.15000001 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.15000001
DoctorOetker 8y ago
this will enable the creation of brand new vegetable varieties like Chernushima carrots...
lozenge 8y ago
Hardly. The countries already made these non binding commitments, there is still no penalty for breaking them, and they bear no resemblance to what would be required to stay below 1.5C or 2C (the supposed headline achievement of Paris). They were not negotiated on either - they are just what each country has said it would do.
- azernik 8y ago
  There is technically a penalty, but it's unlikely to be enforced - if one party breaches their commitments, they could be considered in breach of the agreement and the other party would have license to break it.
  - max76 8y ago
    As the effects of climate change become worse I suspect enforcement of these penalties to increase.
kaybe 8y ago
Here is some good news I found today: The Montreal protocol (to ban ozone-layer-destroying gas emissions) works quite well so far and also has implications for climate change: > As reported in the 2014 Assessment, chemistry–climate models suggest that continued accumulation of ODSs in the atmosphere in the absence of the Montreal Protocol would have led to a collapse of the global ozone layer by the mid-21st century, with devastating environ-mental implications (Newman et al., 2009; Garcia et al., 2012). > The last Assessment also reported on the additional (mostly unanticipated) benefits of ODS regulations for mitigation of global climate change. > Specifically, it was reported that by later this century, unregulated ODS increases could have led to global surface temperature increases comparable to tem-perature increases caused by other greenhouse gases (Velders et al., 2007) and could have almost doubled changes in the hydrological cycle (precipitation minus evaporation) over the next few decades. The newest addition, the Kigali Amendment, phases out some more gases. This also has implications: > As discussed in Chapter 2, these new studies indicate that the an-ticipated phasedown of HFCs is expected to avoid up to 0.4 K of global mean surface warming by 2100. (see some plots on page 34) http://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/Assessment_Panel/SAP-2018-Assessment-report.pdf http://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/Assessment_Panel/S...
- riffraff 8y ago
  I _think_ a key difference between the montreal protocol and the paris agreement is that the first meant _banning products_, so a if country X keeps producing something with CFCs and tries to sell it to country Y then the latter can just forbid importing. So individual actors have an economical incentive to be compliant. This does not work for CO2 emissions, we're left to the individual countries' "goodwill".

by max76 8y ago

roywiggins 8y ago

The TPP would have folded in a bunch of environmental protection rules, but the US blew it up. It's debatable how good these protections would have been, but they were not nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Environmental_protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Envi...

cyphar 8y ago
The TPP had many other issues though. Examples include criminal penalties for breaking DRM or disclosing trade secrets, and establishing an international tribunal that allows corporations to sue for monetary damages from a government that passes a law which they feel is discriminatory. (I know the US has trade agreements like this already, but it's a new thing for Australia -- and unfortunately we are now part of the new US-exempt TPP.)
- dragontamer 8y ago
  The point of that was to stop Malaysia and Singapore from pirating movies and software. I think there's something to be said about the correct distrust of MPAA. But at the same time, Malaysia and Singapore were clear pirate hubs that were harmful to any IP based economy.
  - fungi 8y ago
    > ... Singapore were clear pirate hubs that were harmful to any IP based economy. That's an absurd and factually incorrect statement.
    - crowdpleaser 8y ago
      You're aware of the history of singapore, right? Joke alert - it used to be a piracy hub.
      - fungi 8y ago
        arr. strait over my head.
  - Asooka 8y ago
    Well, from my point of view, copyright maximalism is much bigger theft than file sharing in Malaysia.
- avar 8y ago
  What's your proposed alternative to this sort of international tribunal? To me it feels like obviously the correct solution, and e.g. the EU/EEA has this with the EFTA courts and the WTO has it with its courts. Point in favor: 1. It makes sense for a corporation in say Malaysia to be able to sue Australia over state subsidies, otherwise they need to convince their own governments to bring it up at the inter-state level, and Malaysia may consider it too small of an issue to piss off Australia 2. There needs to be one centralized enforcing mechanism. A Malaysian company can't sue the Australian government in its own courts (or Australia's), both would have an obvious bias towards their own country. Even if we assume the courts are fair you'll create N^2 amount of enforcement relationships for the N countries in the deal. That's just redundant, and everyone has an interest in centrally set legal precedent. 3. There need to be damages so countries can't circumvent the trade deal with what amounts to state-sponsored favoritism with impunity.
  - afiori 8y ago
    The presence of a central court that can regulate goverment that act rashly is one thing, to allow individual companies to sue governments is another.
    - avar 8y ago
      Yes it's a different thing. I'm asking you to make the case that it's a bad thing, which you're not doing. You're also assuming that all trade disputes are going to involve country X having an issue with country Y, whereas e.g. in the EU/EEA companies sometimes sue their own government for being in breach of the trade rules, and prevail in front of the EFTA court. E.g. a meat importing company in Iceland sued the Icelandic state over the Icelandic government's ban on the import of fresh meat from the EU/EEA[1]. They prevailed, and now Iceland's having to allow that, over the objections of its powerful farming lobby. It wouldn't have made sense for any foreign EU/EEA government to start a trade dispute with Iceland over this matter, but it got resolved because a local company was able to sue and have the EFTA court rule on the matter. Why shouldn't the aggrieved party be able to sue? 1. http://www.eftasurv.int/media/press-releases/Fact-sheet-Iceland_s-restrictions-on-the-import-of-fresh-meat,-egg-and-dairy-products-in-breach--ENG.pdf http://www.eftasurv.int/media/press-releases/Fact-sheet-Icel...
floathub 8y ago
It's not quite accurate to say the US "blew it up." The other countries just signed TPP-11 without the US, and the agreement went into effect on December 30, 2018

CountSessine 8y ago

William Nordhaus, winner of the 2018 Nobel prize in economics, advocated for this, calling such agreements "Climate Clubs" https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.15000001 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.15000001

DoctorOetker 8y ago

this will enable the creation of brand new vegetable varieties like Chernushima carrots...

lozenge 8y ago

Hardly. The countries already made these non binding commitments, there is still no penalty for breaking them, and they bear no resemblance to what would be required to stay below 1.5C or 2C (the supposed headline achievement of Paris). They were not negotiated on either - they are just what each country has said it would do.

azernik 8y ago
There is technically a penalty, but it's unlikely to be enforced - if one party breaches their commitments, they could be considered in breach of the agreement and the other party would have license to break it.
- max76 8y ago
  As the effects of climate change become worse I suspect enforcement of these penalties to increase.

kaybe 8y ago

Here is some good news I found today: The Montreal protocol (to ban ozone-layer-destroying gas emissions) works quite well so far and also has implications for climate change: > As reported in the 2014 Assessment, chemistry–climate models suggest that continued accumulation of ODSs in the atmosphere in the absence of the Montreal Protocol would have led to a collapse of the global ozone layer by the mid-21st century, with devastating environ-mental implications (Newman et al., 2009; Garcia et al., 2012). > The last Assessment also reported on the additional (mostly unanticipated) benefits of ODS regulations for mitigation of global climate change. > Specifically, it was reported that by later this century, unregulated ODS increases could have led to global surface temperature increases comparable to tem-perature increases caused by other greenhouse gases (Velders et al., 2007) and could have almost doubled changes in the hydrological cycle (precipitation minus evaporation) over the next few decades. The newest addition, the Kigali Amendment, phases out some more gases. This also has implications: > As discussed in Chapter 2, these new studies indicate that the an-ticipated phasedown of HFCs is expected to avoid up to 0.4 K of global mean surface warming by 2100. (see some plots on page 34) http://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/Assessment_Panel/SAP-2018-Assessment-report.pdf http://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/Assessment_Panel/S...

riffraff 8y ago
I _think_ a key difference between the montreal protocol and the paris agreement is that the first meant _banning products_, so a if country X keeps producing something with CFCs and tries to sell it to country Y then the latter can just forbid importing. So individual actors have an economical incentive to be compliant. This does not work for CO2 emissions, we're left to the individual countries' "goodwill".