Climate Politics from Kyoto to Bonn: From Little to Nothing?!?

Abstract

We investigate how the U.S. withdrawal and the amendments of the Bonn climate policy conference in 2001 will change the economic and environmental impacts of the Kyoto Protocol in its original form. Based on simulations with a large-scale computable general equilibrium model, we find that U.S. withdrawal together with the new provisions of Bonn are likely to reduce environmental effectiveness to zero. U.S. compliance under the new Bonn amendments would accommodate a substantial cut in global emissions at small compliance costs for OECD countries rising some hopes that the U.S. might rejoin the Kyoto Protocol during the next years.

Keywords: climate policy, emission trading, computable general equilibrium

JEL Classification: D58, Q43, Q58