Stavins, Robert N. “
Is Obama's Climate Change Policy Doomed to Fail? Maybe Not.”
PBS NewsHour, 2013.
Publisher's VersionAbstractUntil there is an obvious, sudden and perhaps cataclysmic event, such as a loss of part of the Antarctic ice sheet, the odds would seem to be stacked heavi
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Schmalensee, Richard, and Robert N Stavins. “
The Sordid History of Congressional Acceptance and Rejection of Cap-and-Trade: Implications for Climate Policy.”
VoxEU.org, 2013.
Publisher's VersionAbstractNot so long ago, cap-and-trade mechanisms for environmental protection were popular in Congress. Now, such mechanisms are denigrated. What happened? This column tells the sordid tale of how conservatives in Congress who once supported cap and trade now lambast climate change legislation as ‘cap-and-tax’. Ironically, conservatives are choosing to demonise their own market-based creation. The successful conservative campaign that disparaged cap-and-trade means it may now be politically impossible to promote it in the US. The good news? Elsewhere, cap and trade is now a proven, viable option for tackling large-scale environmental problems.
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Solman, Paul, and Robert N Stavins. “
Why the US and China Inspire Hope for International Climate Change Action.”
PBS NewsHour, 2013.
Publisher's VersionAbstractProtesters assemble outside the 19th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Warsaw, Poland, late last month.
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Stavins, Robert N, and Joseph E Aldy. “
Designing the Post‑Kyoto Climate Regime.” In
A New Global Covenant: Protection without Protectionism,
edited by Mary H Kaldor and Joseph E Stiglitz, 205-230. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
desiging_the_post-kyoto_climate_regime_aldy_stavins.pdf Ranson, Matthew, and Robert N Stavins. “
Linkage of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Systems: Learning from Experience.” Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, 2013.
Publisher's VersionAbstractThe last ten years have seen the growth of linkages between many of the world’s cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gases (GHGs), both directly between systems, and indirectly via connections to credit systems such as the Clean Development Mechanism. If nations have tried to act in their own self-interest, this proliferation of linkages implies that for many nations, the expected benefits of linkage outweighed expected costs. In this paper, we draw on the past decade of experience with carbon markets to test a series of hypotheses about why systems have demonstrated this revealed preference for linking. Linkage is a multi-faceted policy decision that can be used by political jurisdictions to achieve a variety of objectives, and we find evidence that many economic, political, and strategic factors — ranging from geographic proximity to integrity of emissions reductions — influence the decision to link. We also identify some potentially important effects of linkage, such as loss of control over domestic carbon policies, which do not appear to have deterred real-world decisions to link. These findings have implications for the future role that decentralized linkages may play in international climate policy architecture. The Kyoto Protocol has entered what is probably its final commitment period, covering only a small fraction of global GHG emissions. Under the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, negotiators may now gravitate toward a hybrid system, combining top-down elements for establishing targets with bottom-up elements of pledge-and-review tied to national policies and actions. The incentives for linking these national policies are likely to continue to produce direct connections among regional, national, and sub-national cap-and-trade systems. The growing network of decentralized, direct linkages among these systems may turn out to be a key part of a future hybrid climate policy architecture.
ransonstavinslinkagecop-19.pdf Stavins, Robert N. “
Navigating a Two-Way Street Between Academia and the Policy World.” In
Introduction to Economics of Climate Change and Environmental Policy: Selected Papers of Robert N. Stavins, Volume II, 2000-2011. Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. 2013.
stavins_introduction_selected_papers_2.pdf