哥本哈根峰会的失落与收获

哥本哈根气候峰会将无助于进一步促进环保技术的投资。

The Copenhagen climate summit will do little to spur further investment in environmental technologies.

鉴于该过程的核心部分存在根本性的缺陷，这点不足为奇：减少全球二氧化碳排放量的谈判的前提是这些国家产生了多少二氧化碳，而非他们消费了什么。

That's hardly surprising given the fundamental flaw at the heart of the process: Negotiations to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions were premised on how much of the gas nations produce, rather than what they consume.

发展中国家担心，要求它们减排可能是发达国家贸易保护主义的诡计。一个国家的减排如果是通过依靠进口减少了当地的二氧化碳排放量实现的，那么它意味着另一个国家的排放量的增加，世界气候并没有从中得益。

Industrializing countries feared the emissions curbs being demanded of them were a protectionist ruse by the developed world. One country's production cuts, if achieved by reducing local CO2 emissions by relying on imports, is another country's production increase, with no gain for the world's climate.

由世界上最大的工业国家炮制出来的不具约束力的协议看来是怀疑彼此动机和越来越不信任预测全球变暖科学的国家所能达成的最小公分母。

The non-binding accord cooked up by the world's biggest industrial nations looks like the lowest common denominator you would expect from countries skeptical of each others' motives and increasingly mistrustful of the science that predicts global warming.

对于投资者和商界领袖来说，可以帮助他们预测二氧化碳成本的国际监管框架未能进一步明确。这种确定性对于评价环保项目的投资价值，以达到联合国建议的减排目标至关重要。

For investors and business leaders, there is no extra clarity on an international regulatory framework that might help them predict the cost of CO2. Such certainty is critical for evaluating the investment merits of environmental projects to meet the emission reductions advised by the United Nations.

麦肯锡(McKinsey)曾预测，到2020年，这部分开支可能高达5,300亿欧元（7597.6亿美元），而2030年增加到8,100亿欧元。

McKinsey has forecast such spending might amount to as much as 530 billion euros (9.76 billion) a year by 2020 and 810 billion euros by 2030.

欧盟拥有世界上最先进的排放交易体系，它的二氧化碳价格约为每吨14欧元，不到让许多低排放项目具有经济可行性所需价格的一半。欧洲严重的经济衰退加之过于慷慨地发放交易许可证破坏了通过含税碳定价削减碳排放的市场化做法所应该具有的优势，即带来了更加可预测的结果。

The price of CO2 in the European Union, which has the world's most advanced emissions trading system, is around 14 euros a metric ton, less than half the level necessary to make many low-emission projects viable. The combination of the severe European recession, coupled with too generous issuance of trading permits, has undermined the perceived advantage of a market-based approach to carbon reduction over tax-based carbon pricing: that it leads to more predictable outcomes.

更重要的是，欧盟对二氧化碳交易制度的规划只延续到2020年，而发电站等许多二氧化碳密集型项目的使用寿命远远超过这个年限，这就造成了另一个问题。

What's more, EU planning for the CO2 trading regime extends only to 2020, another problem when many CO2-intensive capital projects, like power stations, have far longer lives.

然而，各方都不是输家。欧洲的好消息是，二氧化碳的底价正在通过新的碳税得以建立。

Still, all isn't lost. The good news in Europe is that a floor price for CO2 is being established through new carbon taxes.

欧盟委员会正在寻求设立地区范围内的排放税，以将目前游离在排放交易体系之外的二氧化碳排放者纳入其中，但越来越多的欧洲国家都已开始单方面征税。

The European Commission is seeking a region-wide tax to catch CO2 emitters currently exempt from the emissions trading system, but European states are increasingly putting levies in place unilaterally.

上述举动的动机可能更多地是筹集资金来弥补捉襟见肘的政府预算，而不是减少全球变暖，但它对促进欧洲绿色投资的作用可能还要大过哥本哈根的紧张气氛。

Raising money to pay for stretched government budgets may be the motivation rather than reducing global warming, but it may do more to spur green investment in Europe than all the hot air in Copenhagen.