Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

La politique climatique change enfin de paradigme

2014; Volume: 67; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3406/ecoap.2014.3660

0013-0494

Michel Damian,

Climate Change Policy and Economics

This article proposes a history of economic thought concerning the greenhouse effect over the last quarter of a century. The analysis focuses especially on the the views put forward by US economists concerning the formation of a market for permits related to S02 and C02 emissions. The underlying thesis here is that there has been a paradigm change in climate preservation policy. Historical climate policy was first engaged by the signing of the Convention on Climate Change in Rio in 1992, which was then implemented through the Kyoto Protocol from 1997. The general architecture of these agreements was based on two pillars : 1. a binding international agreement capable, sooner or later, of being imposed on all states and 2. an international market in greenhouse effect gases capable of reducing the total cost of reducing emissions. This “top-down ” approach is now at a dead-end. The new political economy of the greenhouse effect now focuses on production. It takes the shape of a long-term energy transition, whose contours vary substantially from one country to another. This is a “bottom up” approach, in which national policies, regulations and low carbon content technologies become the cornerstone of the battle against global warming. Mainstream economics of the environment and of the greenhouse effect -focused on price policy to the detriment of the economics of production -has resulted in two decades being wasted for the better understanding of the climate question and has been, so to speak, an impediment to clearer thinking about paths towards decarbonisation. Our study suggests that the content of the Paris Agreement, which could be signed as early as 2015, will be determined by national policies. It will represent a break with the historical climate policy. The United States, with the likely support of China, will be the leading factor in engendering the break with the approach followed in the past. Facing a global energy mix dominated by fossil fuels, the new policy won’t bring about miracles in the short run stabilization of emissions.