Dismantling of a Breakthrough: The Kyoto Protocol – Just Symbolic Policy!
نویسندگان
چکیده
We show that U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol is straightforward under political economy considerations. The reason is that U.S. compliance costs exceed low willingness to pay for dealing with global warming in the U.S. The withdrawal had a crucial impact on the concretion of the Protocol prior to its likely ratification at the end of 2002. Remaining non-EU Parties to the Kyoto Protocol gained veto bargaining power and, thus, were successful in asserting far reaching concessions from the EU on sink credits and tradability of emission rights. Taking these concessions into account, the Kyoto Protocol was essentially reduced to a symbolic treaty that codifies more or less business-as-usual emissions and makes compliance a rather cheap deal. JEL classification: D58, H40, Q43
منابع مشابه
The Kyoto Protocol: A Review and Perspectives
International concern about climate change has led to the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in 1997, which contains legally binding emission targets for industrialized countries to be achieved during the commitment period 2008-2012. While proponents of the Protocol celebrate it as a breakthrough in international climate policy, opponents criticize that its approach, namely setting targets and timetabl...
متن کاملA Critical Appraisal of Climate Policy
Ten years after the initial Climate Change Convention from Rio in 1992, the developed world is likely to ratify the Kyoto Protocol which has been celebrated as a milestone in climate protection. Standard economic theory, however, casts doubt that Kyoto will go beyond symbolic policy. In this paper we show that the final concretion of the Kyoto Protocol obeys the theoretical prediction: Kyoto mo...
متن کاملR&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...
متن کاملA New Synthesis
We are on the eve of a revolution in health policy that will forever change our way of thinking about health and healthcare. A few years from now, our vision of the organization and the administration of healthcare services will be transformed. This is not a revolution born out of crisis, albeit the financial pressure on public and private funders of healthcare is clearly at play. It has not ...
متن کاملTowards a Breakthrough for Deadlocked Climate Change Negotiations
With the gap between developed and developing nations remaining unclosed, post-Kyoto Protocol negotiations have run into rough waters: Developing countries insist that developed countries be committed to more ambitious targets for the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol and provide large amounts of financial or technological assistance to developing countries, while developed countries propose t...
متن کامل