Oil Plunge Seen Eroding Emissions Ambition: Carbon & Climate

While the falling price of crude oil is giving consumers cheaper energy, it’s threatening long-term global pollution-control efforts.

Reduced national income from energy taxes and “a low-growth economic environment” might spur countries to curtail their emissions-curbing pledges for after 2020, leading to more emissions of carbon for a longer time, said Zoe Knight, head of HSBC Holdings Inc.’s climate change center in London. These proposals will be submitted under a United Nations climate-protection process starting in March.