Climate Change

Intervention and Policy

Framework
Unit 3
Introduction to Climate Change and Society
 Background
• Increased anthropogenic carbon emissions translated into
increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
• Carbon dioxide concentrations are now around 400 ppm,
compared with the 280 ppm pre-industrial baseline.
• As with the atmosphere, measurements showed that the oceans
had warmed during the second half of the twentieth century.
• The upper 300 meters of the oceans warmed a bit less than 0.2
degrees Celsius after 1950, while the upper 3,000 meters
warmed just shy of 0.04 degrees.
• Increased atmospheric temperatures likely will alter a great
many of the world’s ecosystems, change regional precipitation
patterns, cause more frequent and extreme weather events, raise
sea levels and erode coastlines, harm the world’s biological
diversity, enhance the spread of infectious diseases, and cause
more heat-related human fatalities, among many other effects.
 • In 1972, the first international environmental
summit took place in Stockholm, Sweden.
• This UN-convened conference marked a turning point in
the development of international environmental politics.
• It led both to the creation of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) and to commitments
Background to coordinate global efforts to promote sustainability and
safeguard the natural environment.
• Climate change, however, was just a footnote at the
Stockholm Conference.
• The issue was viewed largely as a scientific concern and
not a pressing political “problem”.
Climate Science Meets Climate Politics
• Until the 1980s, discussion of anthropogenic climate change had been confined
largely to the scientific community.
• Political awareness and media convergence were limited.
• Moreover, the scientific consensus about warming was relatively weak.
• But the 1980s were a watershed decade, as scientific agreement about
anthropogenic warming strengthened and the issue became political for the first
time.
• From the late 1970s onward, acid rain became an important political issue
regionally in Europe and eastern North America.
 Climate Science Meets
Climate Politics
• Political concern about the thinning of the ozone
layer suddenly emerged during the 1980s, but, in
contrast to acid rain, on a global level.
• The 1986 discovery of an ozone “hole” over the
Antarctic stimulated public interest and gave a major
boost to the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol in
1987.
• This agreement, which committed signatories to
reduce their emissions of CFCs, brought scientists
into global atmospheric politics.
• Public awareness of the ozone hole was still fresh in
1988 when record-breaking heat and drought in
North America helped stimulate public and
governmental interest in institutionalizing climate
change politics at the global level.
Climate Science
Meets Climate Politics
• That year, the WMO and UNEP helped create the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific body charged with arriving
at a consensus on anthropogenic warming.
• Since then, the IPCC has produced four large assessment reports in 1990,
1995, 2001, 2007, and most recently in 2014. All were based on
comprehensive reviews of the scientific evidence surrounding climate
change.
• These became increasingly assertive in linking climate change to human
activities and warning of the urgent need for a global political response.
Climate Science Meets
Climate Politics
• 1990: IPCC’s first assessment report released. IPCC and second World
Climate Conference call for a global treaty on climate change.
• 1990: United Nations General Assembly negotiations on a framework
convention begin.
• 1992: Rio Earth Summit held. The United Nations framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is opened for signature.
• Follow-up meetings over the next few years set the stage for
negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, a binding agreement that
mandated small emissions cuts by the world’s rich countries.
• But trouble appeared immediately as rift among the world’s biggest
green house gas emitters threatened to undermine the Kyoto
agreement.
Climate Science Meets
Climate Politics
• The two largest polluters, the United States and China, resisted
binding agreements on emissions.
• In the American case, domestic political resistance made it
exceptionally difficult for even the most willing presidential
administration to commit the United States to deep emissions cuts.
• The US diplomatic position emphasized the need for the largest
developing countries, in particular China, India, and Brazil— all of
which had much lower per capita emissions—to be party to any
mandatory green house gas emission cuts framework.
Climate Science Meets
Climate Politics
• China, on the other hand, argued that the industrialized countries
should make commitments first.
• China also pointed to the per capita emissions rates as a key measure
of responsibility and a reason the United States should move first to
restrain its emissions.
• Other large developing countries took positions similar to China’s.
India, and argued that the world’s richest countries had a moral duty to
make emissions cuts.
Climate Science
Meets Climate Politics
• Domestic pressures, unsurprisingly, shaped diplomatic
positions on climate politics in Russia as well.
• In 2004, the Russian parliament cheerfully ratified the
Kyoto Protocol.
• Russia’s economic collapse of the 1990s had resulted in
emissions levels well beneath those required by Kyoto,
and Russia stood to benefit from any emissions trading
scheme.
• Subsequently, however, as Russia’s economy recovered
and as its oil and gas industry boomed, Russia’s leaders
lost their enthusiasm for international climate
agreements.
Climate Science Meets
Climate Politics
• Other countries also altered their positions as domestic political
and economic conditions shifted.
• A 2007 election in Australia, for instance, brought to power a
government eager to reduce green house gas emissions.
• The new prime minister often named climate change the great
moral challenge of his generation, and for several years climate
policy was an urgent political issue in Australia.
• Australia also enacted a carbon tax on some emitters in 2012
but scrapped it in 2014.
• Canada, on the other hand, ratified Kyoto in 2002 but failed to
meet its targets.
Climate Science Meets Climate Politics
• The countries keenest on Kyoto and subsequent proposals to limit emissions were
those of the European Union, together with some small island nations.

• Therefore, until 2013, Climate politics kept running into the same roadblocks:
• First, addressing climate change seriously held little charm for politicians
focused on staying in office.
• Secondly, negotiators were tempted to “free ride,” hoping to induce others to
make sacrifices from which all would benefit.
 Then, in 2014, the United States and China surprised the world
with a joint promise to reduce carbon emissions, or in China’s
case, to cap their growth, over the next ten to fifteen years.

The following year, prodded by German Chancellor Angela

Climate Merkel, the G-7 countries vowed to phase out fossil fuels
altogether by the end of the century.
Science Meets
Climate In 2015, Pope Francis framed climate change as a great and
urgent moral challenge, putting the moral weight of the Vatican
Politics firmly on the side of climate stabilization.

Optimists found reason to hope that renewable energy would

make emissions targets attainable,

The other best hope for avoiding unwelcome climate change lies
in geo-engineering schemes.
The Paris Agreement
• From 30 November to 11 December 2015, the governments of 195 nations gathered in Paris, France,
and discussed a possible new global agreement on climate change to reduce global greenhouse gas
emissions and thus reducing the threat of dangerous climate change.
• The 32-page Paris Agreement with 29 articles is widely recognized as a historic deal to stop global
warming.

• Substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to hold global temperature increase to well
below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial
levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change,

• Periodically assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this agreement and its
long-term goals,

• Provide financing to developing countries to mitigate climate change, strengthen resilience, and
enhance ability to adapt to climate impacts.
 It entered into force on 4 November 2016.
195 Parties

Today, 195 Parties (194 States plus the European

Union) have joined the Paris Agreement.

The Paris The Agreement includes commitments from all

countries to reduce their emissions and work together to
adapt to the impacts of climate change. It also calls on
Agreement countries to strengthen their commitments over time.
net-zero

It marks the beginning of a shift towards a net-zero

emissions world. Implementation of the Agreement is
Sustainable Development Goals

also essential for the achievement of the Sustainable

Sustainable Development Goals

Development Goals.
 • The Paris Agreement works on a five-year cycle of
increasingly ambitious climate action carried out by
countries.
• Every five years, each country is expected to submit
an updated national climate action plan - known as a
How does it Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC.
• In their NDCs, countries communicate actions they
work? will take to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to
reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.
• Countries also communicate in the NDCs actions
they will take to build resilience to adapt to the
impacts of rising temperatures.