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Copenhagen failed to produce an agreement on climate change commensurate with the scale of the problem, highlighting the fundamental weaknesses in the existing UN framework.
Confronting the Crisis of International Climate Policy
About the authors
Warwick McKibbin
Professor Warwick McKibbin was a Professorial Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy until October 2012.
Fergus Green
Fergus Green recently completed a PhD at the London School of Economics & Political Science.
Topics
Progress on a new agreement is agonisingly slow. Weightier commitments by the major emitters are necessary, but calls for ‘greater ambition’ ignore the structural problems embedded in the institutions, processes and policy models of the UN climate regime.
This study proposes an international framework based on carbon prices rather than emissions targets. Under a price-based international framework, countries would undertake to implement specified actions and policies. Those policies should then be converted into an internationally standardised form of economy wide ‘carbon price equivalent’, with each country pledging/negotiating to implement a starting carbon price equivalent policy along with a schedule of real annual price increases.
