Institutions, Climate Change, and the Foundations of Long-term Policymaking

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.33774/apsa-2019-6ft75-v2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jared J. Finnegan

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Policy ◽

Policy Change ◽

Interest Group ◽

Electoral Rules ◽

Short Term ◽

Climate Politics ◽

Independent Effects ◽

Policy Problems

Many policy problems require taking costly action today for future benefits. Examining the case of climate change, this paper examines how two institutions, electoral rules and interest group intermediation, structure distributional politics, and as a result drive variation in climate “policy investments” across the high-income democracies. Proportional electoral rules increase electoral safety, allowing politicians to impose short-term costs on voters. Concertation between industry and the state enables governments to compensate losers, defusing organized opposition to policy change. Moreover, the joint presence of both institutions generates complementarities that reinforce their independent effects, pushing countries onto different climate politics trajectories. Newly available data on climate policy stringency provides support for the arguments. Countries with PR and interest group concertation have the highest levels of policy stringency and distribute higher costs toward consumers. The analysis points to causal mechanisms that should structure responses to a more general set of long-term challenges.

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Satellites, Self-reports, and Submersion: Exposure to Floods in Bangladesh

The American Economic Review ◽

10.1257/aer.p20151095 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 105 (5) ◽

pp. 232-236 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Raymond Guiteras ◽

Amir Jina ◽

A. Mushfiq Mobarak

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Economic Activity ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Objective Data ◽

Short Term ◽

Temperature And Precipitation ◽

Flood Exposure ◽

Self Reports ◽

Term Variation

A burgeoning “Climate-Economy” literature has uncovered many effects of changes in temperature and precipitation on economic activity, but has made considerably less progress in modeling the effects of other associated phenomena, like natural disasters. We develop new, objective data on floods, focusing on Bangladesh. We show that rainfall and self-reported exposure are weak proxies for true flood exposure. These data allow us to study adaptation, giving accurate measures of both long-term averages and short term variation in exposure. This is important in studying climate change impacts, as people will not only experience new exposures, but also experience them differently.

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Climate change: long-term targets and short-term commitments

Global Environmental Change ◽

10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2003.09.001 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 13 (4) ◽

pp. 277-293 ◽

Cited By ~ 29

Author(s):

Jan Corfee-Morlot ◽

Niklas Höhne

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Short Term

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From Kyoto to Paris and Beyond: The Emerging Politics of Climate Change

India Quarterly A Journal of International Affairs ◽

10.1177/09749284211027252 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 097492842110272

Author(s):

Saurabh Thakur

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Hybrid Approach ◽

Political Issue ◽

Climate Politics ◽

Greenhouse Gases Emissions ◽

Climate Action ◽

Action Strategies ◽

Multi Stakeholder ◽

Justice Movements

Anthropogenic climate change has emerged as the most disruptive socio-political issue in the last few decades. The Kyoto Protocol’s failure to curb the rising greenhouse gases emissions pushed the UNFCCC-led negotiations towards a more flexible, non-binding agreement at the Paris COP21 meeting in 2015. The Paris Agreement’s hybrid approach to climate change governance, where flexible measures like the nationally determined commitments are balanced against the ambition of limiting the global temperature within the two-degree range, ensured the emergence of an increasingly complex and multi-stakeholder climate change regime. The article outlines the roadmap of the transition from the top-down approach of Kyoto Protocol to the legally non-binding, bottom-up approaches adopted for the post-Paris phase. The article outlines the post-Paris developments in international climate politics, which hold long-term geopolitical and geoeconomic implications. The article focuses on the fundamental shifts and balances within the UNFCCC architecture and examines the four fundamental features of this transition—the interpretation of differentiation and common but differentiated responsibilities, the evolving role of emerging economies in the negotiations, the rising profile of non-party stakeholders in shaping the climate action strategies and the emergence of climate justice movements as an alternate site of climate action.

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Introduction

The Phanerozoic Carbon Cycle ◽

10.1093/oso/9780195173338.003.0003 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

Robert A. Berner

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Carbon Dioxide ◽

Carbon Cycle ◽

Global Climate ◽

Geological Time ◽

Short Term ◽

Quaternary Period ◽

Geological Time Scale ◽

The Earth

The cycle of carbon is essential to the maintenance of life, to climate, and to the composition of the atmosphere and oceans. What is normally thought of as the “carbon cycle” is the transfer of carbon between the atmosphere, the oceans, and life. This is not the subject of interest of this book. To understand this apparently confusing statement, it is necessary to separate the carbon cycle into two cycles: the short-term cycle and the long-term cycle. The “carbon cycle,” as most people understand it, is represented in figure 1.1. Carbon dioxide is taken up via photosynthesis by green plants on the continents or phytoplankton in the ocean. On land carbon is transferred to soils by the dropping of leaves, root growth, and respiration, the death of plants, and the development of soil biota. Land herbivores eat the plants, and carnivores eat the herbivores. In the oceans the phytoplankton are eaten by zooplankton that are in turn eaten by larger and larger organisms. The plants, plankton, and animals respire CO2. Upon death the plants and animals are decomposed by microorganisms with the ultimate production of CO2. Carbon dioxide is exchanged between the oceans and atmosphere, and dissolved organic matter is carried in solution by rivers from soils to the sea. This all constitutes the shortterm carbon cycle. The word “short-term” is used because the characteristic times for transferring carbon between reservoirs range from days to tens of thousands of years. Because the earth is more than four billion years old, this is short on a geological time scale. As the short-term cycle proceeds, concentrations of the two principal atmospheric gases, CO2 and CH4, can change as a result of perturbations of the cycle. Because these two are both greenhouse gases—in other words, they adsorb outgoing infrared radiation from the earth surface—changes in their concentrations can involve global warming and cooling over centuries and many millennia. Such changes have accompanied global climate change over the Quaternary period (past 2 million years), although other factors, such as variations in the receipt of solar radiation due to changes in characteristics of the earth’s orbit, have also contributed to climate change.

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The Effect of Incentives: Diffusion of Responsibility

10.1093/oso/9780190076559.003.0010 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 166-182

Author(s):

Jason Brennan ◽

William English ◽

John Hasnas ◽

Peter Jaworski

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Collective Action ◽

Tragedy Of The Commons ◽

Short Term ◽

Collective Action Problem ◽

P Diffusion ◽

Perverse Incentives ◽

The Commons ◽

Diffusion Of Responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility refers to the problem that when something is everyone’s job, it in effect ends up being nobody’s job. This explains why many collective problems arise. People face perverse incentives to free ride on others’ actions and not to do their part. As a result, agents often think in short-term rather than long-term ways. Problems such as climate change can be modeled as instances of the tragedy of the commons, one form of a collective action problem that arises due to perverse incentives created by the diffusion of responsibility.

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Nemo-Nordic 1.0: A NEMO based ocean model for Baltic & North Seas, research and operational applications

10.5194/gmd-2018-2 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Robinson Hordoir ◽

Lars Axell ◽

Anders Höglund ◽

Christian Dieterich ◽

Filippa Fransner ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Ocean Model ◽

Anthropogenic Pressure ◽

Short Term ◽

To Come ◽

Ocean Forecasting ◽

The Baltic ◽

Industrialised Countries ◽

High Degree

Abstract. We present Nemo-Nordic, a Baltic & North Sea model based on the NEMO ocean engine. Surrounded by highly industrialised countries, the Baltic and North seas, and their assets associated with shipping, fishing and tourism; are vulnerable to anthropogenic pressure and climate change. Ocean models providing reliable forecasts, and enabling climatic studies, are important tools for the shipping infrastructure and to get a better understanding of effects of climate change on the marine ecosystems. Nemo-Nordic is intended to come as a tool for both short term and long term simulations, and to be used for ocean forecasting as well as process and climatic studies. Here, the scientific and technical choices within Nemo-Nordic are introduced, and the reasons behind the design of the model and its domain, and the inclusions of the two seas, are explained. The model's ability to represent barotropic and baroclinic dynamics, as well as the vertical structure of the water column, is presented. Biases are shown and discussed. The short term capabilities of the model are presented, and especially its capabilities to represent sea level on an hourly timescale with a high degree of accuracy. We also show that the model can represent longer time scale, with a focus on the Major Baltic Inflows and the variability of deep water salinity in the Baltic Sea.

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The development of climate security discourse in Japan

Sustainability Science ◽

10.1007/s11625-020-00863-1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 271-281

Author(s):

Yasuko Kameyama ◽

Keishi Ono

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Economic Losses ◽

Specific Reference ◽

Short Term ◽

Weather Patterns ◽

Security Discourse ◽

Level Of Understanding ◽

Change Problem ◽

Indirect Economic Losses

AbstractAs the level of understanding about climate change has increased, the term “climate security” has been increasingly used in the rapidly growing literature on this subject. Although Japan has officially acknowledged the importance of tackling climate change, discussion of climate security has been almost nonexistent among Japanese governmental officials, politicians, and academics. Our aim was to trace discourses related to climate security in Japan to determine why so little exists in Japan and whether or not such discourse could suggest new areas for consideration to more comprehensively respond to the climate change problem. Because of different interpretations and uses of the term “climate security” in the existing literature, we first categorized existing approaches to climate security into four types and used this categorization to examine Japan’s discourse from these perspectives. Two of the approaches, namely “long-term irreversible planetary changes” and “short-term abrupt risks to individuals”, had been considered in Japan previously but without specific reference to the term climate security. The other two, “cause of conflict and violence” and “impacts to military and defense organizations”, however, had not been used and need to be included in discussions of climate change in Japan. Some of the topics not discussed in Japan include indirect economic losses of Japanese industries via supply chains, loss of Japan’s exclusive economic zone due to sea-level rise, and the potential inflow of refugees resulting from extreme weather patterns outside of Japan.

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Perception and risk of Covid-19 and climate change: investigating analogies in a common framework

Global Sustainability ◽

10.1017/sus.2020.30 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

Author(s):

Antonello Pasini ◽

Fulvio Mazzocchi

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Structural Changes ◽

Short Term ◽

Common Features ◽

Risk Equation ◽

Related Risk ◽

Policy Level ◽

Common Framework

This paper investigates analogies in the dynamics of Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. A comparison of their common features (such as nonlinearity and inertia) and differences helps us to achieve a correct scientific perception of both situations, increasing the chances of actions for their solutions. Besides, applying to both the risk equation provides different angles to analyse them, something that may result useful especially at the policy level. It shows that not only short-term interventions are needed, but also long-term strategies involving some structural changes. More specifically, it also shows that, even if climate change is probably more critical and long-lasting than the Covid-19 crisis, we still have, at least currently, more options for reducing its related risk.

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Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate: Blockade or Impe- tus for the International Climate Regime?

elni Review ◽

10.46850/elni.2007.013 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 23-27

Author(s):

Christoph Holtwisch

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Policy ◽

World Economy ◽

Point Of View ◽

Asia Pacific ◽

Climate Regime ◽

International Climate Policy ◽

The Usa ◽

International Climate

The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate [APP or AP6] is a very new phenomenon in international climate policy. It has important effects on the traditional climate regime formed by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change [FCCC] and its Kyoto Protocol [KP]. From its own point of view, the APP is a grouping of key nations to address serious and long-term challenges, including anthropogenic climate change. The APP partners - Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the USA - represent roughly half the world economy and population, energy consumption and global greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason, this “coalition of the emitting” is – and will be – a central factor in international climate policy.

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