Can the Eu Persuade the Us to Rejoin the Kyoto Agreement?

Abstract

The aim of this work is to identify a clear policy proposal for how the EU may persuade the US to rejoin the Kyoto agreement. Accordingly the US' three major concerns in The Hague about the Kyoto Protocol have been investigated with the following result. Firstly, the EU should scrap the supplementarity principle of 50% domestic reduction or at least reduce it considerably. This would lower costs particularly by enhancing more free trade with emission permits. Secondly, the EU should support the US proposal to incorporate carbon sinks into the Protocol. Thirdly, the developing countries should be persuaded to make binding commitments preventing any carbon leakage which is harmful to the American economy. Together these measures should minimize US compliance costs, and ensure for the US a positive net gain from participation and thereby provide an incentive to rejoin. The overall result is that the EU necessarily has to make concessions to persuade the World's largest CO 2 emitter to join international climate negotiations again. This would ensure environmental improvement and cooperation in contrast to the present situation of US refusal to participate.

Ideologies of Certainty in a Risky Reality: Beyond the Hauntology of Planning

“…Rather than attempting to engage these initially unsymbolized or poorly articulated, but emerging issues, where old words tend to fail, our institutions, including the public information media, often simply try to negate them. In this regard, climate change, even after the Kyoto Agreement, might be considered a prime example, at least for several countries (Carvalho, 2007;Krogstrup and Svendsen, 2004;Soroos, 2001). 4 Perhaps we need a better understanding of how new contentious issues emerge, and why institutional responses so often commence by attempting to seal off, or negate, these initially poorly articulated, but haunting issues.…”