Follow Vaania as she/they brings together the story of climate mitigation policies. Part one evaluates the inadequacies of present climate mitigation policies while part 2 introduces readers to a new and emerging climate mitigation policy.
Part 1 will first address the inefficiencies of national and international climate mitigation policies.
Present national and international policies have failed to reach their goals for two reasons. Firstly, because of the political nature of such policies and secondly, due to the inefficiencies of Government bureaucracy. Regarding the former, climate change denial is supported by many political parties. Take for example USA’s Republican party who are significantly funded by oil and gas companies such as Exxon that also fund the climate denial movement (Grasso, 2019: 112). This, along with the ideology of self interested Government conservatives perpetrates the climate denial movement (Collomb, 2014: 4). A Simple formula: fossil fuel influence + political ideology = climate denial movement, prevents the Government from gaining consensus on climate mitigation policies at a national level which hinders effective policymaking. In terms of the latter, international mitigation policies fall prey to the red tape problem of bureaucracy (Troolin, 2021), leading to the the cost of delayed action (Council of Economic Advisors, 2014: 9) which makes such policies redundant. For example, the Kyoto protocol was signed in 1997 but because of bureaucratic delay, it was only adopted by 2005 (United Nations Climate Change, 2019) which by then proved to be too little too late due to the ever changing climate crisis. This led to the failure of the protocol.
While the protocol waited for bureaucratic approval, sea levels didn't.
Let us explore this further:
International Approach
The most common international approach (presently in effect) is the 2015 Paris agreement (United Nations Climate Change, 2016) . I am looking at this international agreement in particular because it is considered a landmark in global efforts towards climate change (ibid). The goal of the agreement was to keep the average rise in temperature to “well below 2°C” (ibid). However, studies show that none of the major industrialised nations are implementing policies that could reach this goal (Victor et al, 2017).
Figure 1: Source: (Climate Action Tracker, 2020)
According to figure 1, with the current policies, global temperature is set to rise between 2.7 and 3°C which are temperatures well above the goals of the Paris agreement. Clearly, the Paris Agreement is nowhere close to achieving its set goals. Considering that even a “landmark agreement” (United Nations Climate Change, 2016) like this is unable to achieve its goals, it shows how international agreements are ineffective in mitigating climate change.
Figure 2: Source: (Tollefson, 2019)
Furthermore, it is important to note the withdrawal of the USA from this agreement. We know that all countries do not contribute equally to the climate crisis (Tollefson, 2019). As seen in Figure 2, the US contributes to 25% of world emissions. However, according to the climate Change Performance Index, the USA is the 2nd worst performer in the 2020 climate change policy (Burck et al., 2020). Thus, when the largest emitting country is itself no longer a part of the agreement, the efficiency of such an agreement is highly limited. Even with the Biden administration now deciding to rejoin the accords, it still goes to show how easy it is for such agreements to break down, rendering it unreliable. Hence, it shows the problems of an international approach to climate mitigation.
National Approach
The most disputed climate mitigation policy, at the national level, is the implementation of a carbon tax. Presently, only 25 countries have introduced a carbon tax (Chow, 2020). Even the nature of this carbon tax is proving to be unsatisfactory because the tax structure is not harsh enough on coal production (ibid). This clearly shows that a carbon tax, even when implemented, is incapable in dealing with the challenges of the present day climate crisis.
A newer approach to national mitigation policy is called asset revaluation which aims at providing a form of monetary compensation to climate vulnerable assets (assets that will lose value over time due to an increase in climate change, like labour in fossil fuel industries) holders (Colgan et al, 2020). However, this approach again has several problems, mainly that unlike the carbon conversations method (that this essay argues in favour of), asset revaluation has never been tested in the real world and so one cannot know the effectiveness of this method. Furthermore, many Governments may simply not be able to afford to provide a monetary compensation to climate vulnerable asset holders.
Based on the above explanations, do you think we will ever have an effective climate mitigation approach?
Keep an eye out for Part 2 where I describe a new and upcoming mitigation policy that has yielded positive results but, like any solution, comes with its own set of impediments.
Bibliography
Grasso, M. (2019). Oily politics: A critical assessment of the oil and gas industry’s contribution to climate change. Energy Research & Social Science, [online] 50, pp.106–115. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629618306376.
Collomb, J.-D. (2014). The Ideology of Climate Change Denial in the United States. European journal of American studies, [online] (9–1). Available at: https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/10305.
Council of Economic Advisors (2014). THE COST OF DELAYING ACTION TO STEM CLIMATE CHANGE The Council of Economic Advisers. [online] Available at: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/stock/files/cost_of_delaying_action.pdf.
Troolin, A. (2021). The Problems of Bureaucracy: Contributing Factors - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com. [online] Study.com. Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-problems-of-bureaucracy-contributing-factors.html.
UnitedNationsClimateChange(2016).TheParisAgreement|UNFCCC. [online]Unfccc.int. Available at: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement.
UnitedNationsClimateChange(2019).WhatistheKyotoProtocol?|UNFCCC. [online] Unfccc.int. Available at: https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol.
Victor, D.G., Akimoto, K., Kaya, Y., Yamaguchi, M., Cullenward, D. and Hepburn, C. (2017). Prove Paris was more than paper promises. Nature, [online] 548(7665), pp.25–27. Available at: http://www.nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/548025a.
Climate Action Tracker (2020). Temperatures | Climate Action Tracker. [online] Climateactiontracker.org. Available at: https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/.
Tollefson, J. (2019). The hard truths of climate change — by the numbers. [online] Nature.com. Available at: https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-019-02711-4/index.html.
Burck, J., Hagen, U., Höhne, N., Nascimento, L. and Bals, C. (2020). Results 2020. [online] Available at: https://newclimate.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/CCPI-2020-Results_Web_Version.pdf.
Chow, C. (2020). Carbon Tax: A Shared Global Responsibility For Carbon Emissions. [online] Earth.org - Past | Present | Future. Available at: https://earth.org/carbon-tax-a-shared-global-responsibility-for-carbon-emissions/.
Colgan, J., Green, J.F. and Hale, T. (2020). Asset Revaluation and the Existential Politics of Climate Change. [online] papers.ssrn.com. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3634572.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vaania Kapoor Achuthan is a 1st year undergraduate studying politics and international relations. Strangely, her/their interests lie in the intersections of war correspondency and animal rights.
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