Newsletter Article
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter
A Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in Copenhagen in December to try to decide a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol. This study offers a proposal that builds on the foundations of Kyoto, in that it accepts the framework of national targets for emissions and tradable permits. But it attempts to solve the most serious deficiencies of that agreement: the need for long-term targets, the absence of participation by the United States and developing countries, and the incentive for countries to fail to abide by their commitments. Although there are many ideas to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the existing proposals are typically based on just one or two out of the following three factors: science (e.g., capping global concentrations at 450 ppm) or equity (equal emissions per capita across countries) or economics (weighing the economic costs of aggressive short-term cuts against the long-term environmental benefits). The plan for emissions reductions proposed in this paper is more practical because it is based heavily on politics, in addition to those three considerations.