Climate change: an international policy issue
نویسنده
چکیده
Climate change is the exemplary global public good, because each country’s emissions of greenhouse gases contribute cumulatively to the increase of the overall concentration, and each country’s abatements entail higher cost than benefit, unless effective concerted collective actions take place. Unfortunately there are weak political and economic instruments for entering a climate agreement and for attaining and maintaining its goals. Moreover there are strong free-riding incentives since it is quite difficult and indeed very unpopular for governments to convince people to give up part of their current wealth for the sake of uncertain gains in the future, maybe accruing to population in remote distance. In this paper I deal with the main issues put forward by the global public good nature of climate change. Namely, I firstly shed some light on the economics of global warming in order to point out a benefit-cost framework suitable for quantifying its impacts. Then, I analyse the determinants of the provision of climate stability and the international collective action that should be undertaken to compel sovereign countries to enter into a climate agreement. Hence, after outlining the most important approach to international cooperation, I consider the possibility of a coalition formation according to the game theoretic perspective, the interests determining the participation in international agreements, and the possible sanctions imposable to countries that refuse to comply with an international climate agreement.
منابع مشابه
Paying for Avoided Deforestation – Should We Do It?
Deforestation remains one of the largest sources of global CO2 emissions, constituting around 17% of total emissions (Figure 1; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007a). When forests are converted to agriculture, most of the carbon in biomass is emitted into the atmosphere either through active burning, or through decay. Deforestation is rather common today in tropical regions (Brazil,...
متن کاملClimate change 2011 : A status report on US policy
A growing partisan divide in Congress stalled almost all new federal climate policy in 2011. The divide frustrated efforts to pass a cap-and-trade carbon permitting system, spawned a battle between the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Congress, pushed most substantive climate change policy down to the municipal level and hindered US ability to effectively negotiate an international ...
متن کاملMisdefining ‘‘climate change’’: consequences for science and action
The restricted definition of ‘‘climate change’’ used by the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) has profoundly affected the science, politics, and policy processes associated with the international response to the climate issue. Specifically, the FCCC definition has contributed to the gridlock and ineffectiveness of the global response to the challenge of climate change. This paper ar...
متن کاملCLIMATE CHANGE SCIENTIFIC ASSESSMENT AND POLICY ANALYSIS Agreement on technology? Exploring the political feasibility of technology-oriented agreements and their compatibility with cap-and-trade approaches to address climate change
Exploring the political feasibility of technology-oriented agreements and their compatibility with cap-and-trade approaches to address climate change This study has been performed within the framework of the Netherlands Research Programme on Scientific Assessment and Policy Analysis for Climate Change (WAB), project 'Compatibility of technology-oriented and cap-and-trade approaches for internat...
متن کاملEthics and Global Climate Change
Very few moral philosophers have written on climate change. This is puzzling, for several reasons. First, many politicians and policy makers claim that climate change is not only the most serious environmental problem currently facing the world, but also one of the most important international problems per se. Second, many of those working in other disciplines describe climate change as fundame...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2004