Environment & Climate Change

41 Items

A container ship of the shipping line Hamburg Süd passing under the Golden Gate Bridge

Wikimedia CC/Frank Schulenburg

Analysis & Opinions - Resources Magazine

A Solution to the Competitiveness Risks of Climate Policy: Countervailing Duty Law

| Oct. 05, 2021

Joseph Aldy describes how the United States can work toward its ambitious climate goals and ensure a level playing field for U.S. businesses by using countervailing duties under international trade law, without the need for new legislation.

Official group photo of the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference

Wikimedia CC/Casa Rosada

Analysis & Opinions - The Conversation

The Madrid Climate Conference’s Real Failure was Not Getting a Broad Deal on Global Carbon Markets

| Dec. 18, 2019

Robert N. Stavins writes that the negotiations failed to reach one of their key stated goals: writing meaningful rules to help facilitate global carbon markets. As an economist, he sees this as a real disappointment — although not the fatal failure some portray it to be.

Discussion Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

US Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement: Economic Implications of Carbon-Tariff Conflicts

    Authors:
  • Christoph Böhringer
  • Thomas F. Rutherford
| August 2017

Authors Christoph Böhringer and Thomas Rutherford evaluate the efficacy of imposing carbon tariffs on U.S. imports as an alternative to U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement. The authors warn that carbon tariffs on the United States could lead to a tariff war that ultimately hurts China, in particular, and the European Union more than the United States.

Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Bilateral Cooperation between China and the United States: Facilitating Progress on Climate-Change Policy

| February 2016

The Harvard Project has released a paper on China-U.S. cooperation on climate-change policy—jointly authored with researchers at China's National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation.

UN Conference on Climate Change (COP 21) in Paris, France, November 30, 2015.

Creative Commons

Analysis & Opinions - The Boston Globe

What the WTO Can Learn from Paris Climate Talks

| December 7, 2015

"For many years, negotiators at the annual conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change looked longingly at how the World Trade Organization was able to negotiate effective international agreements. Ironically, the Paris climate talks that are scheduled to conclude on Friday and the WTO negotiations, which will take place next week in Nairobi, lead to the opposite conclusion. Trade negotiators should emulate the progress made in the climate change agreements by moving away from a simplistic division between developed and developing countries."

Discussion Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Belfer Center

Internationally-Tradable Permits Can Be Riskier for a Country than an Internally-Imposed Carbon Price

    Author:
  • Martin L. Weitzman
| September 2015

Uncertainty in the form of country-specific abatement-cost shocks, together with cross-border revenue flows from internationally-tradable permits, can lead to greater country risk from an international emissions-trading system than from the imposition of a uniform carbon price.

Discussion Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Negotiating Effective Institutions Against Climate Change

    Authors:
  • Christian Gollier
  • Jean Tirole
| July 2015

The authors argue that the climate change global commons problem will be solved only through coherent carbon pricing. They discuss a roadmap for negotiating a uniform carbon price across countries, for verification of emissions reduction, and for a governance process to which countries would commit.