Letter: Letters : Throw in the sinks

From David Wilson, Simon Brenman

Stroud, Gloucestershire

The preparatory negotiations for this year’s Climate Change Convention in
Kyoto appear to consider only half the problem of rising levels of atmospheric
carbon dioxide (“Chill winds at the summit”, 1 March, p 12).

It is essential to include both sources and sinks of CO₂ when
attempting to establish the basis for the kind of global trade in CO₂
permits proposed by Michael Grubb and others. Thus, nations that have large
areas of sustainable forest or wetland would find themselves in possession of
real assets, in the form of CO₂ credits, which could be offset against
debt (CO₂ emissions) or traded like any other commodity on the global
market.

If such an economy is eventually to attain the magnitude necessary to
stabilise atmospheric CO₂ levels, an accurate, ongoing, global audit of
the entire CO₂ cycle will undoubtedly be required. Of course, this
might be difficult to achieve and there is ample scope for controversy over the
apportioning of the world’s oceans but, in the absence of a commonly accepted
baseline against which to measure progress, it is difficult to imagine anything
other than continuing disagreement.