How China May Have Just Changed The Climate Game How China May Have Just Changed The Climate Game By Zack Beauchamp on May 30, 2013 at 3:40 pm Last week, the Chinese government made a critical move toward placing a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide it would emit. That’s a significant decision especially when seen in context of the local emissions permit trading schemes being tried out around the country. Depending on how tight the cap is, this could be a big deal in its own right: China is the world’s largest and fastest-growing emitter. Its citizens are already suffering as a consequence. But the impact of the Chinese decision could be even broader. Understanding why requires seeing climate change as an issue that’s every bit as much about the structure of international politics as it is about domestic policy or environmental science. Broadly speaking, it’s useful to think of the international climate regime in three parts: power, ideas, and institutions. Power is the ability that states, corporations, or other actors have to get what what they want — think of how the Bush Administration wielded American economic clout to weaken the Kyoto protocol. Power determines who has the most say over how any climate agreement ends up going down in practice and hence whose interests end up being reflected in practice. Ideas are the basic beliefs that determine, sometimes independent of interests, what states believe about environmental problems. A good example here is the way the UN IPCC report helped convince the international community that climate change was a real threat they needed to address. Ideas matter because they set the terms of the international climate debate on issues like how urgent a problem climate change is, who should bear the costs of solving it, and what sorts of policy options would be best suited to mitigating its effects if everyone could agree to them. Power and ideas aren’t conceptually separate in a neat sense... thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/page/2/?mobile=nc
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 03:20:28 +0000
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