Abstract
The climate change issue has evolved substantially since the 1970s. The focus in the 1970s and the early 1980s was on determining whether human activities had any discernible influence on the global climate. Following the discovery of the ozone hole in 1985 and the hot summer of 1988, the focus shifted toward achieving international cooperation to address the issue. An agreement on international cooperation was reached with the signing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. After the signing of the FCCC, emphasis was placed on reaching international agreement on an environmental goal—specifically, what the emissions target should be, within what timeframe, and how the target could best be achieved.
This research was supported by Harvard’s Global Environmental Assessment Project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. The author benefited from discussions with, and comments from, William Clark, John Holdren, Dale Jorgenson, Nancy Kete, Henry Lee, Jonathan Pershing, Raymond Prince, David Reiner, Thomas Schelling, Stephen Schneider, and Robert Stavins.
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Notes
For a discussion of the factors influencing domestic policy instrument choice, see Nathaniel O. Keohane, Richard L. Revesz, and Robert N. Stavins, “The Positive Political Economy of Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy,” in Environmental Economics and Public Policy: Essays in Honor of Wallace E. Oates, edited by Portney and Schwab (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1997).
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Raymond Vernon, “The Triad As Policymakers,” in Shaping National Responses to Climate Change, edited by Henry Lee (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1995); Stavins, “What Can We Learn from the Grand Policy Experiment?” 69–88.
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Fisher-Vanden, K. (2000). International Policy Instrument Prominence in the Climate Change Debate. In: Harris, P.G. (eds) Climate Change and American Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137120809_8
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