Any agreement from the Copenhagen climate change conference is likely to amplify the "green" threat to wealth-creating free trade that is necessary to cut global carbon emissions.
Despite the media hype there are still strong barriers to securing a Copenhagen deal.
There is little convergence in negotiating positions with Europe seeking binding emissions reduction targets, America wanting scheduled commitments of unilateral action, the developing world expecting rich countries to do most of the lifting, and the oil-rich Gulf States who want the CRU "climategate" leaked emails and data investigated before a deal is done.
But irrespective of negotiations positions, so long as individual countries introduce a carbon price signal like Europe has through its emissions trading scheme, and Australia, the United States and Canada may, the political pressure to introduce carbon trade barriers to "level the playing field" against imports will increase.
Free trade is necessary to drive emissions reductions because it increases the most efficient use of scarce resources by encouraging countries to leverage their comparative advantages.
Free trade will also deliver the investment necessary to innovate emissions-cutting technologies and ensure their diffusion.
Wealth-creating free trade also cuts poverty improving the economic capacity of developing countries to take care of the global environment.
But the first sign of climate-protectionism has already been introduced in the EU against imported biofuels made from agriculture crops that don't reduce emissions enough against fossil fuels, like palm oil-sourced biofuels.
And the Copenhagen negotiating text includes proposals for waiving intellectual property rights on technologies that would assist in reducing emissions and adapting to climate change.
But the biggest threat is the looming introduction of carbon tariffs on imports to offset the cost of imposing a domestic carbon price signal.
The Waxman-Markey Bill to establish an American cap-and-trade scheme includes such a tariff.
US Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Max Baucas, has argued that these tariffs are necessary "to prevent the carbon leakage that would occur if US manufacturing shifts to countries without effective climate change programs".
Similar proposals are also being considered by the European Union supported by French President, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Carbon tariffs are also being proposed in the hope that they will countries in the developing world to adopt their own carbon price signal on production rather than face discrimination against their imports.
But the cost of carbon tariffs will vastly outweigh their benefits.
Carbon tariffs are expensive to practically implement. Applying them in a non-discriminatory way would require the carbon-intensity of each product to be assessed despite the intensity varying from country to country.
And for products that include components from multiple countries such as electronics, each component's carbon intensity would need to be assessed.
To do so an army of global carbon auditors would need to be employed to assess the carbon content of products with the cost ultimately passed onto consumers and business.
Carbon tariffs will not even achieve their stated goal. Instead they will harm the same industries they seek to protect by increasing the cost of imported inputs into manufactures and consequently reducing the competitiveness of these industries to export.
And their cost will be considerable. Based on my calculations a tariff for carbon-intensive imports into the US will need to be set at more than ten per cent to offset the potential cost of a cap-and-trade scheme.
But most the most concerning element of carbon tariffs are that they will undermine the credibility of the international trading system itself.
Under current World Trade Organisation rules carbon tariffs are likely to violate requirements for countries to provide equivalent treatment to all imports and domestically produced goods once they have passed the border.
To avoid these violations a new agreement to manage trade and climate change would have to be successfully negotiated.
But with outcomes in the WTO secured by consensus it is unlikely such an agreement can be secured. And to do so a terrible precedent would be set by establishing new WTO-sanctioned protectionism.
But without such an agreement the multilateral trading system countries would have to openly flout their WTO obligation and the risk of a climate-induced trade war will become a reality.
Last week a WTO Ministerial was held in Geneva. In his closing statement Chilean Finance Minister, Andrés Velasco, argued that a key contribution of the WTO to reducing global carbon emissions can be "through removing barriers to trade in environmental goods and services".
But instead the threat is that many countries are following the path of WTO Director General, Pascal Lamy, who stated recently on the relationship between trade and climate change that the focus should be "climate first, and trade second".
It needn't be the case.
The likelihood of an overall agreement at Copenhagen appears slim, but countries can recognise that tackling climate change and cutting emissions are mutually supportive and oppose the introduction of new climate protectionism.
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