Delaying Forces and Climate Negotiation—Games, Lock-ins, Leakages, and Tipping Points

In practice, not all of the above dynamic decision models yield policies that are as efficient and optimal as might be desired. Thus, the real question is if they are sufficiently accurate to provide useful guidance as to implementable policy. Many of the previously discussed versions of the climate-macro link work with intertemporal optimizing behavior. However, we should acknowledge that there is some legitimate criticism of those same models. For example, behavioral approaches that do not presume optimizing behavior are also widely applied in the field. Endowing decision-making institutions and policymakers with more realistic features will also shed some light on why the environmental and climate policy creation has taken so long, and indeed, may be expected to proceed slowly. We provide three model-based illustrations exemplifying the proverbial snail’s pace of negotiations and policy creation.