Environment & Climate Change

An effective international climate agreement poses formidable challenges. Existing agreements, naturally, have some good features. Further improvements are being discussed in the current negotiations. But the cost and uncertainty associated with regular renegotiation of commitments is not being addressed. The São Paulo Proposal suggests mechanisms that would avoid the need for regular renegotiation of commitments and suggests other ways to make international climate agreements more effective.

A climate treaty is characterized by a large number of parameters: What should the abatement or emission levels be? How should the burden to abate be distributed across countries? What should the time profile for the emission levels be? Should there be issue linkages with other policy areas? Should there be any side transfers between some countries and, if so, what should the transfers be? This richness in parameters implies that there is a lot to decide and negotiate before the final climate treaty is ready.

Moreover, there is great uncertainty regarding the future costs and benefits of abatement. Today, it is not yet known how much abatement will be desirable in the future. This means that any climate treaty must be updated, or renegotiated, quite frequently in the coming years. The realized climate policies depend on future international negotiations—and the rules governing these.

Will the Obama administration's plan for vehicle emissions standards and auto efficiency affect consumer behavior? During today's OnPoint, Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, gives her take on the administration's recent auto emissions announcement and whether it will have any significant effects on the environment. Gallagher, editor of the new report, "Acting in Time on Energy Policy," explains why she believes Congress should consider a variable tax on the price of oil as part of the United States' energy policy.

This policy brief outlines urgent priorities for U.S. energy policy at the dawn of the Obama administration, and recommends specific steps that the U.S. government should take to address the numerous energy-related challenges facing the United States. It is based on the book, Acting in Time on Energy Policy (Brookings 2009), edited by Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center.

We concentrate on six topics: climate change policy, carbon capture and storage policy, oil security policy, energy-technology innovation policy, electricity market structure, and infrastructure policy. The United States cannot afford to wait any longer to enact long-term policies on these topics. In fact, acting early is clearly in the longer-term interest of the United States.

The Kyoto Protocol uses a top-down mechanism to negotiate economy-wide emissions caps. This paper proposes an alternative "sectoral" approach, which would determine industry-level emissions reduction targets based on technological analyses.

Managing the dangers of global climate change will require developing countries to participate in a global climate regime. So far, however, those nations have been nearly universal in their refusal to make commitments to reduce growth in their greenhouse gas emissions. This paper describes how a set of international "Climate Accession Deals" could encourage large policy shifts that are in developing countries' interests and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Development of effective strategies to address climate change will require collective effort on the part of many countries over an extended period and across a range of activities. The challenge for the international community will be to judge the equity and integrity of the various national commitments.

Global efforts to address climate change may be on a collision course with global efforts to reduce barriers to trade.  This paper discusses the broad question of whether environmental goals in general are threatened by free trade and the WTO, before turning to the narrower question of whether trade policies likely to be included in various national efforts to address climate change are likely to come into conflict with WTO rules.

This paper proposes a design for a post-2012 international climate agreement (Kyoto II) to follow the Kyoto Protocol. The proposed design would impose national limits on rich countries' greenhouse gas emissions and promote voluntary abatement by developing countries. It includes two new features aimed at promoting participation and compliance and addressing concerns about carbon leakage: (1) an escape clause that would give signatories the option to reduce their abatement requirements in exchange for a penalty and (2) the use of trade restrictions.

In recent years, India's military, diplomatic and economic energies have expanded far beyond Nehru's Non-Aligned position. But what does that mean for India, its region, and the United States?