Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Eric W. Orts
Guardsmark Professor Director, Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership
Diagnosis: failure of standard legal and economic policy recommendation that the problem of climate change requires a comprehensive treaty involving all countries.
One leading source (among many): Jonathan B. Wiener, Think Globally, Act Globally: The Limits of Local Climate Policies, Univ. of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 155, pp. 1961-79. Classic: Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, Science, vol. 162, pp. 1243-48 (1968).
Long-term horizon for climate problems as compared with present economic benefits. Short-term evolutionary wiring of human brains.
Location leakage: industrial or other sources of emissions relocate from more heavily regulated places (e.g. EU) to less regulated places (developing countries). Market leakage: prices increase for products/services in more heavily regulated places, thus providing market incentives favoring less regulated places.
Prescription: private and public solutions at various levels: from global to transactional scales. Best solutions: co-benefits with other environmental problems (e.g., urban air pollution, energy supplies, loss of biodiversity).
Cf. Environmental Contracts (Kurt Deketelaere and Eric Orts eds.) (Kluwer Law International 2001); Michel Serres, The Natural Contract (MacArthur and Paulson trans.) University of Michigan Press 1995).
Agreement about need to change behavior and sharing responsibility for the future. Reliable and available information. Monitoring of actual behavior.
See White House, U.S.-China Clean Energy Agreements, press release, Nov. 17, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/us-china-clean-energy-announcements.
National or regional greenhouse emissions trading, technology subsidies, or taxes (with global harmonizing features)
William D. Nordhaus, A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies (2008).
e.g., European Union Emissions Trading Scheme; Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI); Western Climate Initiative
e.g., Pew Center on Global Climate Change, U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP)
e.g., American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (now over 600 signatories)
life cycle analysis/assessments of products (e.g. Patagonia) eco-labels and carbon footprints for products (e.g. Timberland) green supply-chain management (e.g. Walmart)
No comprehensive guarantee of mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon (Hardin) But unpredictable, long-term leverage for both mitigation and adaptation through:
Normative and behavioral change
Technological innovation
Legal and political developments (including possibility of carbon tariffs with WTO challenges) Consumer pressure (e.g., expression of preferences; possibility of carbon boycotts)
Chinas share of global emissions is increasing radically: from 8% (1981) to 14% (2002) to 21% (2007). At least half of Chinas carbon emissions increase is due to net export production to other countries. Who should take responsibility for reducing these emissions?
Sources: Tao Wang and Jim Watson, Who Owns Chinas Emissions? Tyndall Centre Briefing Note, Oct. 2007; Dabo Guan et al., Journey to the Top Emitter: An Analysis of Chinas Recent CO2 Emissions Surge, Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 36 (Oct. 2008) (incl. fig. 2 above).