While the scientific evidence for climate change grows, the policy responses have so far had little or no impact on the build-up of emissions. Current trends in emissions are adverse. The paper considers why the disconnect between science and policy exists and, in particular, why the Kyoto Protocol has achieved so little. Some contributing factors considered are: the focus on carbon production ...

I construct a putty-clay model of directed technical change and use it to analyze the effect of environmental policy on energy use in the United States. The model matches key data patterns that cannot be explained by the standard Cobb-Douglas approach used in climate change economics. In particular, the model captures both the shortand long-run elasticity of substitution between energy and non-...

The climate change research community's shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) are a set of alternative global development scenarios focused on mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. To use these scenarios as a global context that is relevant for policy guidance at regional and national levels, they have to be connected to an exploration of drivers and challenges informed by regional exp...

This article answers a series of questions about the role of environmental degradation in population displacement, refugee movement, and migration. The environment tends not to be included in the reasons for migration. Roger's indicators of migration potential include population growth, economic restructuring, increased economic disparities, and increased refugee flows. Myers (1993) estimate...

Low-carbon city is a hotspot under the background of climate change. Current problem on low-carbon urban planning was analyzed based on low-carbon city development practices. Low-carbon urban planning methods were studied from an ecosystem perspective, and new pathways for low-carbon city construction were suggested. Low-carbon development should be carried on from four aspects: urban structure...

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence for man-made climate change, many people and more importantly policymakers still remain skeptical about the subject. While this phenomenon of ”climate-skepticism” prevents implementation of environmental policies around the globe, it is ignored in economic models of climate change. In this paper we fill this gap by creating a model that allows for climat...

Tourism, being volatile and situation-specific, is responsive to climate change. A crosssection analysis is conducted on destinations of OECD tourists and a factor and regression analysis on holiday activities of Dutch tourists, to find optimal temperatures at travel destination for different tourists and different tourist activities. Globally, OECD tourists prefer a temperature of 21 ◦C (avera...

THE BELFAST AGREEMENT AND CROSS-BORDER ECONOMIC COOPERATION IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY This paper examines the impact of the Belfast Agreement on north-south economic cooperation in Ireland, using the tourism industry as a case study. The first part of the paper sets out the suggested benefits that may arise from greater economic and business connections between both parts of the island. It also d...

This paper examines the extent to which economic development decreases a country's risk of experiencing climate-related disasters as well as the societal impacts of those events. The paper proceeds from the underlying assumption that disasters are not inherently natural, but arise from the intersection of naturally-occurring hazards within fragile environments. It uses data from the Internation...

• At this stage of scientific knowledge about global environmental processes, and in the absence of sophisticated economic models, environmental factors such as climate change, natural disasters, epidemics, growing pollution or shortage of water can be included in the framework of conventional country risk analysis by looking at the potential impact of new environmental risks on tested and prov...