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The Road not Taken: Climate Change Policy in Canada and the United States

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  • Kathryn Harrison

Abstract

In 2001, President George W. Bush confirmed that the US would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Despite the US' withdrawal, its neighbor Canada chose to ratify the Kyoto Protocol the following year. The divergence of these two highly integrated countries is surprising, since Canada and the US accepted comparable commitments in the 1997 Kyoto negotiations, and both could expect the costs of compliance to be significant given the greenhouse-gas intensive nature of their economies. The divergence cannot be explained by politicians' electoral incentives since Canadian and US politicians alike faced strong business opposition and a relatively inattentive public. A strong normative commitment to international cooperation to protect the global commons was necessary to overcome political opposition to ratification, but still not sufficient. In particular, while both Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and US President Bill Clinton supported ratification, only Chrétien had the institutional capacity to deliver on his values. (c) 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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  • Kathryn Harrison, 2007. "The Road not Taken: Climate Change Policy in Canada and the United States," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 7(4), pages 92-117, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:7:y:2007:i:4:p:92-117
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Christoph Böhringer & Nicholas Rivers & Thomas Rutherford & Randall Wigle, 2015. "Sharing the burden for climate change mitigation in the Canadian federation," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(4), pages 1350-1380, November.
    2. Iris Hui & Gemma Smith & Caroline Kimmel, 2019. "Think globally, act locally: adoption of climate action plans in California," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 155(4), pages 489-509, August.
    3. Valentine, Scott Victor & Sovacool, Benjamin K., 2019. "Energy transitions and mass publics: Manipulating public perception and ideological entrenchment in Japanese nuclear power policy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 295-304.
    4. Torres-Brito, David Israel & Cruz-Aké, Salvador & Venegas-Martínez, Francisco, 2023. "Impacto de los contaminantes por gases de efecto invernadero en el crecimiento económico en 86 países (1990-2019): Sobre la curva inversa de Kuznets [Impact of the Effect of Greenhouse Gas Pollutan," MPRA Paper 119031, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Christian Engau & Volker Hoffmann, 2011. "Corporate response strategies to regulatory uncertainty: evidence from uncertainty about post-Kyoto regulation," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 44(1), pages 53-80, March.
    6. David J. Gordon, 2016. "Lament for a network? Cities and networked climate governance in Canada," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 34(3), pages 529-545, May.
    7. Burkard Eberlein & Dirk Matten, 2009. "Business Responses to Climate Change Regulation in Canada and Germany: Lessons for MNCs from Emerging Economies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 86(2), pages 241-255, March.
    8. Erin C. Pischke & Barry D. Solomon & Adam M. Wellstead, 2018. "A historical analysis of US climate change policy in the Pan-American context," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 8(2), pages 225-232, June.
    9. David J. Gordon, 2015. "An Uneasy Equilibrium: The Coordination of Climate Governance in Federated Systems," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 15(2), pages 121-141, May.
    10. Griffin, Paul A. & Lont, David, H. & Pomare, Carol, 2021. "The curious case of Canadian corporate emissions valuation," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(1).
    11. Katja Biedenkopf, 2012. "Emissions Trading - A Transatlantic Journey for an Idea?," KFG Working Papers p0045, Free University Berlin.
    12. Jessica C. Liao, 2021. "The Club‐based Climate Regime and OECD Negotiations on Restricting Coal‐fired Power Export Finance," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 12(1), pages 40-50, February.
    13. Houle, David, 2019. "Un climat démocratique? Le rôle de l’opinion publique dans l’adoption de la tarification du carbone dans les provinces canadiennes," SocArXiv atkz8, Center for Open Science.
    14. Stefanie Bailer & Florian Weiler, 2015. "A political economy of positions in climate change negotiations: Economic, structural, domestic, and strategic explanations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 43-66, March.
    15. Olivier Boiral & Jean‐François Henri & David Talbot, 2012. "Modeling the Impacts of Corporate Commitment on Climate Change," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(8), pages 495-516, December.

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