Global Warming: More Common Than Tragic (Response to the Global Warming Tragedy‪)‬

Global warming (often called climate change, to represent the broader types of changes an increased average global temperature would cause) is indeed a difficult international environmental problem. Moreover, it is not clear that the Kyoto Protocol will, in fact, be the mechanism that succeeds in addressing the problem. Although it is unlikely that the United States will remain outside of international cooperative efforts indefinitely, its current lack of support for the protocol, combined in particular with Russia's recent recalcitrance, could mean that this specific agreement will not be the one that will ultimately focus the world's response to the problem. Nevertheless, Stephen Gardiner's skepticism about the content of the Kyoto regulatory process is unwarranted. Indeed, previous efforts at international environmental cooperation on other potentially difficult environmental issues that pertain to uncertain future benefits suggests that international cooperation, of the sort embodied in the Kyoto Protocol, should be possible--though difficult--on climate change. It also suggests that whatever system gets implemented will--as the Kyoto Protocol does--start with measures so small as to seem inconsequential, but set in place an institutional and scientific process that will ultimately result in much more significant cooperative efforts. It suggests that a focus on ensuring compliance is much less important than getting agreement in the first place. In other words, rather than representing a tragedy, the Kyoto Protocol (or something much like it) could represent the beginning of a process in which current generations take the first steps at collective action that dramatically improve the lives of future generations.