The New Status Quo of the Paris Agreement: The Psychological Impact of the 2 Degrees Aspiration

Abstract

This brief opinion piece draws upon behavioral and cognitive research to argue that the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global temperature change below 2 degrees Celsius sets a psychologically powerful baseline against which future policy failures can be measured. When international law successfully triggers perception of a baseline, it can lead decision-makers to perceive deviations from that baseline as "losses." This implicates loss aversion, which provides an additional motivation to achieve international norms. The psychological impacts of the new status quo set by the Paris Agreement may therefore prove to be more powerful and more durable than either the unusual structure of the document or the domestic implementation questions that have already attracted so much scholarly debate.

Keywords: international law, loss aversion, prospect theory, status quo bias, baseline, psychology of law, Paris Agreement, climate change

JEL Classification: Q54, K33, K32, K42, F53, F50, Q58