R&D and Adoption of “Breakthrough” Technologies in a Strategic Climate Change Treaty System

An effective climate change treaty must supply two global public goods: climate change mitigation and knowledge about new technologies that can lower the cost of mitigation. The Kyoto Protocol disregards the second public good and only feigns to promote the first—by establishing short-term emission ceilings for a subset of countries. Basic research is not only needed but should be co-determined with mitigation (Lawrence H. Substantial, long-term reductions in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will only be achievable with the development and diffusion of revolutionary, " breakthrough " technologies (Martin I. Hoffert et al. 2002). Of course, emissions would also fall if Kyoto were strengthened. However, that response may be inadequate—and impossible to achieve in any event: any agreement on climate change mitigation must be self-enforcing, and as I shall demonstrate, the constraint of sovereignty prevents the Kyoto approach from reducing global emissions substantially. Can a treaty system relying on targeted R&D and the adoption of breakthrough technologies perform better in this same setting of anarchic international relations? I shall show that, as a general rule, the alternative approach fails to improve substantially on Kyoto even when it would be vastly superior if the breakthrough technology were