The Impacts of the Kyoto Protocol on Full Cost Transportation in the U.S.

Abstract

The Kyoto Protocol is an important step taken under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to avert the buildup of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to dangerous levels. Emissions of carbon dioxide from transportation activities are a major source of such greenhouse gases, about one-third in the U.S. and potentially very large globally as developing country economies grow. The use of full social costing of transportation is attractive as a part of U.S. policy to meet, or indeed surpass, its emission reduction obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. For example, fall cost transportation could be reflected instrumentally in a comprehensive ecological tax reform across the entire economy. In this approach transportation and other energy prices would embody taxes that reflect imputed costs of carbon emissions as well as environmental, health and other external costs, while existing taxes (e.g., on business, labor or households) would be reduced.¹ This would have the pragmatic advantage of linking climate protection to other health and environmental co-benefits.