Bridging the Gap: Public Support in the Shadow of Unilateral Climate Policies

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Bridging the Gap

Public Support in the Shadow of Unilateral Climate Policies

Søren A. Steen-Johnsen

Masteroppgave i statsvitenskap, Institutt for statsvitenskap, Universitetet i Oslo

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO

2019

Antall ord: 28647

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Bridging the Gap

Public Support in the Shadow of Unilateral Climate Policies

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Bridging the Gap: Public Support in the Shadow of Unilateral Climate Policies Søren Alexander Steen-Johnsen

http://www.duo.uio.no/

Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo

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Abstract

Survey data from around the world indicate high levels of support for climate policies. Yet, when we examine global greenhouse gas emissions, we find that they increase. If there are high levels of public support, then surely governments around the world have enough room to enact climate policies. The research question in the thesis is: “If there is public support for climate policy what explains the gap between current policy and those required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement”. In order to answer this question, the paper covers a lot of ground and starts with examining classic theories of how to govern the commons confronted with updated insights. Through investigations into survey data, text analysis, literature reviews and examples of current events and policies, I find evidence to support that there are reasons to believe there exists public support for ambitious climate policies. However, this support is conditional, and what these conditions are is not always easily determined and varies across different political landscapes. Lastly, I examine a revenue neutral carbon tax found in Canada and discover that while it is certainly a result of political craftmanship, it currently lack the potency to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions to a sufficient degree.

Whether it has the potential to be an important policy in reaching the targets of the Paris Agreement is hard to determine, but it seems unlikely to be able to do so within the timeframes laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Jon Hovi, for providing me with the building blocks that formed the basis of all my chapters. Even if I at the time struggled to see how the pieces would fit together. I also want to highlight his availability and interest in discussing matters outside of academia during our sessions.

Also, thanks to Kari, for her feedback on a particular chapter in the closing phases. I am certain that without it I would have struggled to meet the deadline.

I would like to thank the members BGK for their spirit and good humour during the writing process. The team organising Energi4010, if any of you read this (ha!), you should know that this subject was the highlight of the last year of my masters programme. It came at a time when I was struggling to find motivation and provided a much-needed boost to my confidence and belief that climate policy was worth writing about.

Thanks to all the rest that have stuck by me, even as I constantly disappeared into my own thought processes and struggled to follow any conversation unrelated to my thesis. A last thanks must go to my robotic vacuum, Sopulf, for cleaning up after me.

I now look forward to having a life again.

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1 Introduction

The challenge of climate change has been the focus of several international agreements under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Latest in line is the Paris Agreement, which was signed in 2015. Unlike the previous Kyoto Protocol, this agreement refrains from imposing any legally binding emission targets on the signatory states.

Instead, each nation determines its own contributions, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The overarching goal of the Paris Agreements is to limit the global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius (UNFCCC, 2018).

A special report, published in October 2018 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), titled “…the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways” laid out a scientific basis for the international efforts. According to the IPCC an unparalleled scale of energy transition will be required, along with a multitude of options and upscaling of investments, to reach the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2^oC. If current national pledges are implemented, they will require a huge lift in ambitions from 2030 and then cause CO2 emissions to descend to net zero within 2045 to succeed. Even then, success is dependent on the estimated geophysical response to be at the lower end of the uncertainty range (Rogelj et al., 2018, pp.

95 & 152–153).

Whilst similar transitions, in terms of speed, have been observed in specific sectors at previous points in history “…the geographical and economic scales at which the required rates of change in the energy, land, urban, infrastructure and industrial systems would need to take place are larger and have no documented historic precedent” (de Coninck et al., 2018, p. 317).

It is, in other words, difficult to overstate the enormity of the challenge.

Since the new international framework of the Paris Agreement moves the responsibility of setting national ambitions down to the state level public support is likely paramount in order

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to implement the policies that are required to meet the common goal (Beiser-McGrath and Bernauer, 2019, p. 248).

On a positive note, there appears to be substantial support for climate change policy among populations in many countries. Survey data, based on data collected world-wide, paint a picture of populations that are willing to cut emissions, even in the absence of a global, binding, agreement regulating emissions (McGrath and Bernauer, 2017, pp. 1–4).

However, after a period of flattening global GHG emissions between 2014 to 2016, emissions are projected to go up by more than 2% in 2018 (Figueres et al., 2018). Yet, if people are generally positive to climate policies, surely there should be room for national governments, worldwide, to implement climate policies that are in line with the pathways laid out by the IPCC in their 2018 special report.

In this paper I therefore aim to answer the question:

“If there is public support for climate policy what explains the gap between current policy and those required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement”

Firstly, it is important to find an answer to this question because even the 2°C target is unlikely to be attainable without costly policy action, bar some unprecedented technological breakthrough. Exceeding 2°C of global warming will likely have unmatched social and economic consequences to human civilization, and inflict substantial damage to the worlds ecosystems (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018, pp. 179–181).

Secondly, finding answers to the research question might go some way to help understand either why governments are reluctant to act on climate change, despite ominous forecasts from the world’s climate scientists, or what the potential roadblocks between public climate support and climate policy are. Potentially, research into this question can help us understand how national governments are to reach the climate ambitions agreed upon in the Paris Agreement.

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1.1 Overview

Whilst there has been done much research on the link between public opinion and policy formation¹, this thesis has a slightly different angle. Since the Paris Agreement relies on national ambition levels to meet the overall targets, the structure of the agreement itself might be a roadblock for implementation. If public opinion is negative to unilateral climate policies and fear free riding effects, then there is likely to be little room for national governments to manoeuvre under the current climate regime.

This thesis builds upon the survey data examined in chapter three, that claim that there exists substantial public support for unilateral climate policies. The aim is to investigate if this assumption is correct, and if so, what other obstacles may exist to hinder nations to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.

In chapter two I will provide an overview of the traditional economic theories on problems of governing commons, like the global climate, and the proposed solutions. Since unilateral policies have rarely been the norm in the international agreements it is somewhat puzzling as to why a solution to handle one of the biggest political challenges of our time should break with this tradition. Drawing on the criticism of these models, formulated by Elinor Ostrom, and the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, I attempt to explain why that is.

In order to determine whether the underlying assumption of public policy support holds, and that there really is a gap between public opinion and policy, I will in chapter three review the latest research on public support for unilateral climate policy. After this, a quantitative text analysis to test some of the findings made in the literature, through newspaper analysis during the 2018 US midterm election, follows.

Chapter four draws on the theory of time inconsistencies to examines examples of how public opinion can hinder policy implementation. The examples are drawn from current events.

In chapter five I use the theory of “super wicked” problems to determine what a successful climate policy should look like. Combined with economists’ policy recommendations for how to mitigate GHG emissions, I examine a revenue neutral carbon tax found in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Through an examination of the tax, and a literature review of

1 See Burstein (2003) for a review

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its efficacy, I determine whether or not this policy option is as effective as it is promised to be.

Findings are then discussed in chapter six, and are followed by concluding remarks.

1.2 Notes on validity and reliability

This paper does not rely on one overarching theory or method of data collection, although, Elinor Ostrom’s’ notion of a polycentric approach, and the structure of the Paris Agreement, are latent throughout. Some of the sections, namely chapters three and five, contain literature reviews. The method of compiling the literature is described in each section for transparency and reproductivity. In chapter three, the quantitative contains its own section addressing sample sizes and representativeness.

In chapter four, examples are provided as a buttress to the theory of time inconsistencies, but the examples themselves are not supposed to indicate any reliability or validity. They are simply used to illustrate how climate policies can manifest themselves into different types of public opposition. Opposition that undermine the overarching goal of said policies. Due to the need for imminent global action on climate change mitigation, the examples are drawn from current events to maximise relevance. Since technological solutions that may provide pathways to GHG mitigation, and in consequence new climate policy options, are in rapid development, older cases may be less relevant to the research question. Whilst the recent nature of these examples may induce some measure of myopia, and a resultant failure to see the potential consequences these examples may prove to have in the future, the immediate need for ambitious climate policies forces us to dispense with the luxury of waiting for a potentially broader perspective.

The theory of how to handle “super wicked problems”, used in chapter five, provides a rationale for why a revenue neutral carbon tax as climate policy, such as the one implemented in British Columbia, is an optimal solution. Since the theory it is forward facing, in that it explains why such a policy is likely to be successful, it functions as a reference for the reader to help follow the rationale of why a revenue neutral carbon tax is a superior policy approach.

In combination, the “Economist statement on carbon dividends” (2019) has elevated this form of taxation as one of the only viable solutions to GHG emissions mitigation and provides another perspective as a foil.

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1.3 The scale of the problem and current status

To appreciate the scale of the challenge the goals of the Paris Agreement has set, and the consequences policy implementation likely will have on the societies we live in, I will broadly outline the state of the global climate, according to the IPCC, before the next chapter commences.

First, we do not have much time to limit global warming to below 2ôC. The world has a limited amount of carbon left that can be released into the atmosphere before mitigation pathways become prohibitively costly and technologically challenging, known as a carbon budget. This budget is estimated² to be at the size of 580 GtCO2 for any pathway to 1.5ôC, and 1500 GtCO2 for roads to the 2ôC target³. Any overshoot of this budget will require Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) to balance out the emissions. CDR is a technological approach to capture carbon already emitted into the atmosphere, and then store it somewhere.

However, CDR is unproven at large scales and relying on this form of technology adds further uncertainty to, among other things, the effect CO2 removal will have on the climate system itself and the social acceptability of such measures (Rogelj et al., 2018, pp. 96 & 107–108).

The share of energy production from renewable sources⁴ must by 2050 constitute 52-67% of primary energy use, with nuclear power to come on top of this. While coal must come down to 1-7%, although those plants will require carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

CCS is an active capture technology where emissions are collected at the point of release, for example at a coal fired plant. The share of primary energy from oil must be reduced by between 39-77% and natural gas with 13-62%, although this particular number is dependent on the prevalence of CCS. However, if the carbon budgets limitations are exceeded, these numbers will rise substantially. At the same time, the amount of primary energy supplied by wind and solar power have to increase 16-fold between 2020-2050, whilst fossil fuels can only be allowed as share of 0-25% in the electricity supply if we are to reach 2^oC target (ibid:

pp. 97, 119-121 & 131-134).

Lastly, there must be a large change in land use. Land use for food crops must be greatly reduced, as must pastural land uses for feed stocks. Forestation must likely increase, as must

2 These estimates come with a 50% chance of reaching the goals, the uncertainty is due to the complexities in climate modelling.

3 Anthropogenic CO2e emissions are currently ~ 50 Gt yearly (Rogelj et al., 2018, p. 128).

4 Mainly wind, solar, hydro and bio energy.

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land used for bio energy crops. The pathways to both 1.5^oC and 2^oC are fairly similar in magnitude when it comes to land use, but either one will likely “…pose profound challenges for sustainable management of the various demands on land for human settlements, food, livestock feed, fibre, bioenergy, carbon storage, biodiversity and other ecosystem services”

(ibid: p. 97).

The transition is unlikely to be a smooth one and will require lifestyle choice changes that lowers both energy demand and GHG emissions. This pertains to things like the food we eat, the transportation we use and the industries that provide both employment and products that we enjoy. Furthermore, technologies like bioenergy might have negative local impacts that undermine sustainability. Renewable, or non-emission, technology is not necessarily synonymous with sustainability, and whilst climate policies can have an overall positive effect on the health of populations, there may exist serious local concerns that require deliberation (ibid).

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2 The classic understanding

One of the features of the global climate is that it essentially belongs to everyone, and it is almost impossible to deny anyone access to. Yet, the specific responsibility to sustainably maintain it rests with no-one. Any use, or misuse, of this public good affects everyone, however, the effects of climate change are not distributed uniformly.

For example, rising sea levels will affect an island nation more than a landlocked nation.

Moreover, rising temperatures might make certain geographical areas unbearably hot and render them uninhabitable, whilst a previously cold region might become primed for human settlement. Exactly how these effects will be distributed, their impact, and when they will occur is subject to much uncertainty (Asseng, 2015; Kundzewicz et al., 2018).

In this chapter I will describe the classic understanding of the challenges related to public goods, how the problem of governing the commons has been perceived and how the international measures to address it has been structured.

The first section lays out an overview of the traditional view of the inherent difficulties in governing a public good, and the solutions that have been suggested. I will then examine the criticism levelled at the traditional views, consisting mainly of the arguments formulated by Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom. Lastly. Then, I will describe how the 1997 Kyoto Protocol built on some of the historical arguments and briefly discuss why it failed. The contrast with the new structure of the 2015 Paris Agreement will illuminate some of the difficulties the traditional view encountered in its implementation and why new insights have come to dominate.

2.1 The traditional view

The tragedy of the commons

Garret Hardin calls the inability to successfully govern a public good the “Tragedy of the Commons”. In his seminal paper by the same name (1968), he connects this problem to the absence of private ownership of a resource. If a good is privately owned, then it will be in its owner’s interest to preserve it and prevent its degradation. Conversely, when something is unowned there will exist no force to correct any overexploitation.

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In his famous example of this dilemma, we are presented with a pasture that is open to all, where several farmers send their cattle to graze. This pasture is the commons. If rational, he claims, a farmer will realize that it is possible to put one more animal onto the commons, the value of which he will gain the full benefit of himself. Yet, the slight degradation of the pasture, through the now increased use, will be shared by all the farmers. Since each added cow benefits one farmer in its entirety, and the negative aspect is divided among them, Hardin posits that each and every farmer has a strong incentive to introduce as many animals as they can to the pasture. Since the pasture can only support a certain number of animals, and there is no-one with the authority to regulate that number, the commons will ultimately degrade to the point of destruction and a loss for everyone (Hardin, 1968, pp. 1244–1245).

When it comes to pollution, the situation is reversed. Nothing is removed from the commons, like the grass growing on a pasture, but rather, something is put in and degrades the commons in that fashion. Again, any rational man “finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them” (ibid: p. 1245). Ostensibly this is true for everyone, and thus we are set on a road to ruin if enough people are present to exceed the limitations of the commons.

The solution proposed by Hardin is to leave behind the concept of commons completely;

nothing should be unowned. We must relinquish our previous rights to exploit a common resource, educate ourselves as to the reasons why, and let the government regulate access through its laws (ibid: pp. 1247-1248)

Collective Action

In Mancur Olson’s logic of collective action, he draws certain conclusions about the underlying mechanics that drive human behaviour patterns when dealing with public goods.

Olson defines public goods as “any good such that, if any person in a group, consumes it, it cannot feasibly be withheld from others in that group” (Olson, 1965, p. 14).

According to him, certain interests cannot be advanced adequately at the individual level but require organisation among the likeminded to further a goal. This is argued to be the fundamental reason for any collective action in the first place. However, organisations beyond a certain size will suffer from crippling free-riding effects, unless there exists coercion or strong individual incentives to prevent members from doing so. The reasoning for this, he

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9 claims, is that although it might be in each individuals interest to attain a certain goal, the rational self-interest of each member will make them do otherwise (ibid: pp. 1–3).

For example, a producer of goods will have an interest in as high a price as possible for its product, and this is true for all producers of said good – they have a common interest in a high commodity price. In a perfectly competitive industry, the price of the product is also uniform, and no producer can successfully charge a higher price than its competitors. Each producer also has an incentive in selling as many products as it can, within the economic boundaries of the production process. Yet, the more the supply increases the more prices will fall⁵, and the less of a profit margin a business will have. For each producer, the introduction of one additional unit will not impact prices much, but the result of this action by all will result in all producers being worse off. Simultaneously, no individual producer will have an interest in reducing its production, because the price will fall regardless of any individual action, and they will be even worse off than if they kept producing (ibid: pp. 9-11.

This logic is supposedly true for almost any collective goal. For a further example: Members of a labour union, that together produce a common good supported by the dues paid by the individual workers, will always lose out to the self-interest a labourer has in not paying union fees. A union will not be affected much by the lack of donations from single individual, but the individual gain in not paying will be high. This rational self-interest then dominates the individual interest of paying for the existence of the union, and when this cascades to every member the common good will ultimately fail to be supported.

However, in small groups, say a coalition of few producers or a very small union, the consequence of each individual action has a much larger impact and will override the rational self-interest. In other words, as an organisation grows, there will be a point of equilibrium where self-interest becomes the dominant strategy – when individual contributions are perceived to be less important. When a group grows beyond this threshold, it will start to degrade.

Since the individual self-interest will always trump the collective greater good in larger groups, the only way to prevent this from happening is through outside intervention. Even a state, with all its benefits, require the coercion of its inhabitants, through compulsory taxation, to successfully fund its services (ibid: p. 13). It is therefore necessary, if we are to

5 Demand is inelastic in this scenario.

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successfully provide and maintain a public good, to implement measures that keeps all parties in line. Which, when it comes to the global climate, means every nation and every individual in the world.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

In game theory, the Prisoner’s Dilemma sheds light on why cooperation, even when it is in every actor’s interest, can be difficult when dealing with a public good.

The premise is that it is in all state’s interest to address GHG emissions, but when it comes to any individual action, it may be preferable to abstain from action if everyone else commits to emission cuts. As each state’s contribution is likely to be costly, the effort required by a nation, from a single state’s perspective, may not be worth the cost since the public good provided by the efforts of other nations cannot be denied any state, nor its quality or availability be diminished. A state may thus be able to free ride on the efforts of others (Gardiner, 2006).

However, free riding will undermine the overall strategy and lead to a sub-optimal outcome for all. When faced with this problem, states must create a framework to ensure all actors follow the agreed upon strategy, lest they want to pay for other countries’ free riding.

In the classical version, two players are presented with two choices: to either comply with a joint strategy or to free ride. Table 1.2 is a very simplified demonstration of the problem states are faced with in the prisoner’s dilemma.

Table 2.1.1: The prisoner’s dilemma.

State A

1 0

State B 1 3 | 3 1 | 4

0 4 | 1 2 | 2

The numbers represent gains for each player, state A and state B. In this example the players have a choice between 1, which represents compliance with a GHG commitment, and 0, which is to free ride. If State A is uncertain State B complies with its committed to GHG emission cuts, there is a chance they will be left with a worse outcome if they choose

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11 alternative 1 over alternative 0. If this happens, a choice of 1 would then result in payoff of 1 for state A, while State B gets 4. They are both left with 2 if both choose to free ride. But if they both act in their common interest they get 3 each. This last option also leaves the game with the highest total payoff of 6 (3+3).

Based on a one-shot game states are stated to be likely to act in their own self-interest, as uncertainty of the others action would leave a very real possibility of receiving the lowest possible payoff. But, if the game is run multiple times, we might see different results.

Repeated play may facilitate cooperation, since any gamble on cooperation can be justified as any loss can be remedied in the next play. With this possibility there is an increased chance for both players to choose option 1 and get the maximum total payoff (Snidal, 1985).

Unfortunately, the nature of Climate change mitigation policy puts some limitations on the ability for a state to change their play in the next round. Climate policy often requires long term investments⁶, or need to be in effect for some time to maintain market stability. As such a player cannot realistically change all of its mitigation efforts in the next play, some efforts will likely be bound and contribute to the creation of the public good regardless (Hovi et al., 2012, pp. 743–44).

Public goods

Classic economic theory breaks public goods into several categories. Mancur Olson (1965, pp. 14–15) defines it as a good that is non-exclusive. By this he means that it is a benefit that cannot be withheld from any other group member, even if they refuse to partake in the creation of that good. Thus, a person can benefit from the labour or management of others, yet still harvest the yields. In the case of the global climate, it can obviously not be withheld from anyone. Paul Samuelson (1954) supposes a public good as something that is non-rivalry.

Which means that one person’s consumption of a good does not diminish the quality or availability of the good to another.

6 E.g. Infrastructure for electric vehicles, investment in technologies or national subsidies such as green certificates.

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Table 2.1.2: Possible categorisation of goods

Non-rival Goods Rival goods

Non- exclusive goods

Pure public goods Common pool resources

Exclusive goods Club goods Private goods

This means that we can have goods that are rivalry/non-rivalry or exclusive/non-exclusive. As we can see in Table 2.1.

For example, A club good can be a newspaper subscription. It is only available to those that pay for it, whilst its use does not degrade the experience of the news to other subscribers.

Private goods can be the shoes we wear every day or the food we eat. A pure public good may come in the form of a national defence, whilst a common resource pool might be fish stocks that migrate between jurisdictions.

Since we are all group members when it comes to the global climate, it falls into the non- exclusive category at the top of the table, but whether or not it is rival can be subject to discussion. When reading the report from the IPCC it is hard not to argue that it is clear that overuse of our common climate certainly diminishes the quality of use for others. This echoes the thought of Elinor Ostrom, who argues that the global climate should be placed in the common pool resources category (1999, pp. 497–498).

2.2 Criticism and alternative solutions

Despite the popularity of Hardin’s original article, empirical evidence that the Tragedy of the Commons is an unavoidable side-effect of lack of public goods ownership is lacking. There are several examples of a responsibly governed public goods without any form of ownership, and, conversely, irresponsible governing by both public and private ownership structures (Ostrom, 1999, p. 495).

Hardin’s example of the pastures has in reality been resolved by farmers through successful self-governing institutions for centuries (Dietz et al., 2003, p. 1907). Yet, government

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13 ownership of fisheries in the US state of Maine has led to degradation due to top-down regulations lacking local credibility. In the same state, lobster fisheries, which have been governed by user institutions, both formal and informal, have had very high levels of compliance and preservation of the commons (ibid).

Even large-scale problems, such as the management of international fisheries, struggle to be successfully governed through ownership. In 1982, the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) treaty bequeathed one third of the world’s then international oceans to individual nations to regulate due to the inability of the international community to successfully manage the fishery resources. In Canada, the government then used flawed modelling to estimate fish stocks, resulting in a collapse of cod stocks in in 1992. Even though they had been warned by local fishermen, years earlier, that this would be the consequences of the new regulatory regime (Ostrom, 2010a, p. 5).

Neither do problems related to collective action necessarily follow the path described by classic theory. High levels of trust by participants that other are also complying with the overarching strategy, can override the short-term rationality described by Olson. If this can be facilitated, then any enforcement costs of policies will also be much lower (Ostrom, 2010b, pp. 551–552).

Additionally, the benefits of GHG emission cuts may not necessarily be relegated to diffuse global effects. For example: Communities that build energy networks, with solar power panels, can both cut their own costs, through cheap energy, as well as GHG emissions. A larger network in a metropolitan area, can reduce urban pollution and provide local health benefits (ibid). It is therefore not given, in the case of climate change, that the collective goal fails to yield any short-term gains as well. Which undermines the notion that rational self- interest, when a group reaches a certain size, will always be to free ride.

The Prisoners’ Dilemma relies on the assumption that the players do not know each other and have no common history. However, when players are given the opportunity to communicate and build a group identity together, behaviour changes away from that predicted by game theoretical models, with greatly increased joint payoffs (Ostrom, 2008, p. 3). In fact, there is substantial heterogeneity in individual behaviour, even with minimalistic designs in experiments of game theory. Which breaks with the expectations brought forward by the classic theories (ibid, p. 6).

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Trust building between players is key to overcome free riding effects, and a centralised framework does little to foster this. It is hard for a citizen to be certain that someone at the other side of the globe keeps their side of the agreement, and without this certainty risks of free rider behaviour increases (Ostrom, 2009, p. 35).

Ostrom does not discount the difficulty in successfully governing a commons, but rather claim that to achieve a reduction in GHG emissions we need efforts at all levels of governance. Based on the lack of empirical support for the tragedy of the commons and the at times flawed reasoning behind the logic of collective action there are good reasons to doubt that centralised, ownership based, solutions are a sound strategy for dealing with the problem of climate change. The classic underlying assumption of self-interested payoff maximisers does not hold as a general prediction for human behaviour either. Instead, Ostrom claims, successful climate cooperation requires every level of stakeholders, from the national level down to the local communities to work together through a polycentric approach (2010a, pp.

1–4).

2.3 The international framework

I now will briefly explain how the United Nations institutions that facilitate how the global climate agreements are structured, and how the Paris Agreement differs from the Kyoto Protocol.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was founded in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), with the aim to gather the voices of all climate scientists into one forum and produce regular reports on the global climate. It was kickstarted on initiative from, among others, the Reagan administration, and it became the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change (Kutney, 2014, p. 17).

The IPCCs function as a provider of scientific research that forms the basis for decision making among countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a 1992 environmental treaty, whose objective it is to achieve “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (United Nations, 1992, article 2). Its reports are based on existing research and is an assessment and amassment of papers that are

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15 considered relevant and of sufficient quality. The IPCC does not conduct any new original research, nor monitor the climate or related phenomena. Its first assessment report was published in 1990, and a new communiqué has arrived at intervals of between five and seven years since then (Weart, 2013). Additional special reports, on more specific issues, are published more frequently.

Based on the IPPC’s work, the UNFCCC has spawned two major international climate agreements, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol had a top-down approach to reducing global carbon emission. Through centrally agreed upon GHG emission cuts, different geographical regions were assigned different emission targets, based on the perceived capability and historical responsibility of each, for the current state of global GHG emission levels. Developed nations were to reach an overall target to reduce emissions by 5.2% from 1990 levels by 2008-2012. With 8% to be achieved by the EU, whereas the US had a target of 7% (Rosen, 2015, p. 35). Developing nations were excluded from any binding targets, which included China, the then second largest GHG emitter after the USA, and India.

The attempt to carve out a comprehensive and collective agreement in practice invited 150 developing nations to be free riders, which, in turn, pitted direct economic interests against climate policies. Abatement policies were deemed to be costly, and the burden of these cost, were to be borne mainly by western nations. This forced international economic competition into the equation when low-cost producers, like China, where exempted. No US administration ever ratified the Kyoto agreement, largely due to the lack US interest in providing an opportunity for direct competitor to free ride on their efforts (Kutney, 2014, pp.

13–15). In fact, the US Senate passed a resolution with 95 votes against 0, expressing their concern due to the:

“…disparity of treatment between Annex I Parties and Developing Countries …could result in serious harm to the United States economy, including significant job loss, trade disadvantages, increased energy and consumer costs, or any combination thereof…” (Byrd- Hagel Resolution, 1997).

Yet, these juxtapositions were, by design, part of the structure of the Kyoto Protocol.

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In the end, only thirty-six countries, responsible for less than 20 percent of global GHG emissions completed the first period of emission cuts (Hovi et al., 2017, p. 1), making the Kyoto Protocol largely a failure when measured against its intended goals. However, the next large agreement, 18 years later, would be built on different principles.

The Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement, signed in late 2015, is structured quite differently than the Kyoto Protocol, as it sheds some of the international dimensions of its predecessor. Its overarching goal is to keep the global temperature rise to well below 2°C, compared to pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further, to 1.5°C. But, instead of centrally determined GHG emission cuts, to be agreed upon through protracted negotiations, the agreement leaves the individual ambition level up to each signatory state to decide for themselves (UNFCCC, 2015, pp. 3–4 & 22). These national ambitions, in the shaped of GHG emission targets, are called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and are not subject to any enforcement mechanisms. It is only the prestige gain, or loss, associated with non-compliance, that acts as a normative leash on government behaviour (Bang et al., 2016, pp. 214–16). When ratification has been made, the INDCs are turned into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Since ambition levels are now solely the domain of national governments, this new agreement has reversed the perspective of the Kyoto Protocol and become a bottom-up agreement.

The Paris Agreement thus breaks with the classic understanding of the problem of climate change represented by Hardin and Olson. They argued that binding agreements and enforcement mechanisms are necessary in order to prevent free-riding and the degradation of a common good. But since no targets are now forced upon one nation, and not the other, as the case was with the USA and China previously, the perceived competitive advantages gained or lost are not baked into the agreement. By leaving all states free to set their own emissions target, the Paris Agreement may circumvent some of the problems inherent in the Kyoto Protocol, that drove away nations like the US.

There may, of course, be free riders present in the Paris Agreement as well, but their actions are more detached from the agreement framework instead of integrated in it, as it recognizes that it is impossible to force dominant powers to commit to emission cuts. Simultaneously, it might also transfer some of the pressure to pursue ambitious climate policies from the

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17 international level down to that of domestic politics (Falkner, 2016, p. 1107). As Ostrom claims, free rider effects will always be a risk in any framework, but a less centralised approach can build bridges between stakeholders to foster enough trust to prevent free riding.

Early research indicates that the structure of the Paris Agreement may be able to generate such trust (Dagnet et al., 2016, p. 43)

Nevertheless, there is a danger that no nation will prove willing to set sufficient targets to achieve the overarching goal of the agreement, turning the problems of Kyoto on its head.

Whilst the Paris Agreement have resulted in a many signatory parties, it may also result in a scenario where there is no-one willing to voluntarily cut emissions. When we look at the submitted INDCs we do find evidence of that. Even if the INDCs are successfully implemented, they currently lack the GHG emission targets required to reach the goal of keeping global warming to well below 2°C. Instead they put the world on track to an increase of between 2.9°C and 3.4°C (Rogelj et al., 2016, p. 633).

However, this is not necessarily a good measure of what approach is most likely to be successful. Since the scale of the challenge may be so big that no global framework could ever hope to induce the emission cuts required to reach the targets that have been set in the Paris Agreement. In comparison, even if the current INDCs fall short, they have proven to be more ambitious than the binding targets ultimately produced by the Kyoto Protocol.

Current emission trends

Even if the IPPC paints a picture an up-hill effort required to reach the common goal in the Paris Agreement, there has been positive developments in GHG emissions previously. The European Union had decreased its emissions by 21.9 percent in 2017 compared to 1990 levels, which puts them ahead of their own 20 percent reduction target by the year 2020 (EEA, 2018a). China’s rate of emissions has fallen since 2013, down to 2.3% from an almost 10% year-on-year increase since the early 2000s. Even the US has almost fallen back to 1990 levels after a 20 percent increase in mid-2000s (CAT, 2018). Evidently, there are some positives to take home from even the largest emitters.

The challenge lies in the fact that these measures are not enough to limit global warming to well below 2°C, and that the momentum in reductions shows signs of slowing down. For example, the EU increased its emissions by 0.6% from 2016 to 2017, mainly due to an

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increase in energy demand. And while the 2020 goals are still very likely to be met, the goals for 2030 (a 40% reduction) and onwards are starting to look unlikely to be met with current measures (EEA, 2018c, p 17). Similarly, based on current policy projections, China is not expected to achieve a fall in emissions in the next decade, and the US is projected to only have a small percentage drop in the same period (CAT, 2018).

Next steps

Given that the clock is ticking, and the initiatives to successfully halt the worst impacts of climate change will have to arrive immediately, there is hardly time to negotiate fair and comprehensive global climate agreement, if we are to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.

If global warming is to be restricted to below 2°C, we are therefore likely stuck with the current framework as far as global agreements go. However, as described, a top-down, binding global agreement does not necessarily guarantee success in curbing emissions either, and what any such global framework may look like divides opinion (Rosen, 2015, pp. 44–45).

Following the background on the differing views about the nature of regulating a common good, and the climate change problem, the next question is whether the classic understanding is latent in the mind of the public when determining the level of support for climate policies.

Given the Paris Agreements structure, if the public perception of the problem is in line with Hardin and Olson, that climate policy should be conditional on the actions of other states, then the lack of any central authority able to enforce policy compliance will likely make climate policy on the national level hard to implement.

In the next chapter I will scrutinise the recent research on public support for unilateral climate policies to determine whether or not the new UNFCCC framework is a likely hindrance for national governments when implementing climate policies.

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3 Public support for climate policy

Several survey data experiments have been conducted in order to map how receptive populations are to unilateral climate policies. Data from the World Bank show high levels of support for climate policy, even without a globally binding agreement, in almost every country (Figure 3.1). However, these numbers are based on a questionnaire that refrains from putting climate policy into a context of the traditional understanding of the problem.

More sophisticated survey methods are therefore needed to extract opinions that are in line with how public opinion is likely to react. Especially preferences that will be expressed in elections or other forms of policy support or opposition. If there appears to be sufficient support for unilateral climate policies to implement the recommendations provided by the IPPC, then the reasons for a lack of potent climate policies likely lies elsewhere. Of, course this is contingent on public support being key to national policy implementation, which it is assumed to be in this paper.

In this chapter I will critically examine the latest literature on public opinion regarding unilateral climate policy support, which are all driven by survey data. After the critical review, I will look at some recent election results to see if the framing effects found in the literature hold.

Following that, I will try to examine whether there are framing effects in selected newspapers in two states, that can verify those described in the surveys, through quantitative text analysis.

The point of departure is to determine whether the bottom-up structure of the Paris Agreement is a hindrance for public support for national climate policies, whose ambition levels are now the domain of nation states.

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20

Figure 3.1: Preference for Climate Policy Without Global Agreement.

Source: McGrath and Bernauer (2017, p. 4)

Question wording:

“Imagine that at the meeting, the other countries do NOT come to a global agreement on taking steps against climate change. If this happens, do you think our country would have a responsibility to take steps against climate change, or would it not have responsibility?”

93 73

82 86 49

96 89 83 78

91 70

87 88

95 72

95 83

3 24

7 9 27

3 8 17

15 6 9 11 12

3 13

4 11

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Vietnam USA Turkey Senegal Russia Mexico Kenya Japan Iran Indonesia India France Egypt China Brazil Bangladesh Average

Taking Action Without Global Agreement

Would have responsibility Don't Know Would not have responsibility

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3.1 The survey data

The research basis on public support for climate change has been found through the Web of Science search engine, initially using the following search string: “public support AND climate policy AND unilateral” with results from the last five years. This initial result was sparse, with only eight articles, three of which were relevant for the question posed.

Replacing “unilateral” with “survey data” in the search string yielded more results (99), but not more relevant ones. In order to find the rest of the research I have used a combination of going through the list of citations in articles from the initial string and reviewing some of the other work by the authors of the relevant articles.

Two weakness to this approach is a lower level of replicability, and the risk of a narrower, more myopic, sample of research papers than ideal. However, the lack of publications on how the nature of the problem of climate change is perceived in the general populace, and the relevance of this angle to this thesis’ research question, means that these are necessary losses when attempting to answer the question of level of public support for unilateral climate policy.

Since the survey experiments are conducted in the largest emitters in the world there may be some sample bias. The population in smaller emitter countries might not feel the same responsibility, under the different treatments given, as those examined below. Yet, as we can see in Figure 3.1, the initial level of support for climate action does not appear to follow such a pattern. In fact, countries with lower GHG emissions appear to have a higher proportion of responses positive to action against climate change. Additionally, there are attempts to mitigate this effect in the research experiments, but any such bias cannot be ruled out entirely.

India and the US

Several survey data experiments have been conducted in order to further uncover the level of support of unilateral climate policy. As mentioned, that people have a positive response a climate policy suggestion does not mean much if they do not understand the costs and consequences involved in the implementation of such a policy. In order to extract more precise data and control for these effects, Bernauer and Gampfer (2015) conducted two experiments in the United States and India through online survey polls (in the US) and face to face interviews (in India).

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22

In the first, a framing experiment, respondents were given policy suggestions and supplied with different levels of information regarding the effects on both costs and the effects on other states’ climate policy and behaviour. They were then asked under what conditions their country should commit to these proposals: Unilaterally? Or dependent on other countries also reducing emissions? (ibid, pp. 318-320)

The second experiment generated policy proposals through a pool of different characteristics.

Respondents were then asked to compare and rate these proposals individually on a 1-7 scale.

The intention was to evaluate the effects of changes in costs and the behaviour of other states on policy support, without forcing a choice from the respondents (ibid, pp. 320-322).

In the first experiment, high costs and the ability of other states to free ride and cause carbon leakage, proved to have the most explanatory power on support for unilateral climate policy when respondents were primed by information. Yet the results of the second experiment show quite high levels of support even for policy proposals that combine the most negative characteristics. The lowest level of support for a policy proposal was 31.3% in the US and 64.3% in India. Additionally, the second experiment also showed that making unilateral climate policy dependent on cuts in other countries or having mechanisms for pressuring other states to comply, had little to no effect on climate policy support (ibid, pp. 322-324.

In short, perceptions of the classic theoretical understanding does not seem to lie at the forefront of responders’ minds when answering.

These findings are supported by those of McEvoy and Cherry (2016). In their surveys of US respondents’ opinions on climate policy, the willingness to reduce national GHG emissions was independent of the actions of other states. Through online surveys in the US, they query respondent on under what conditions the US should commit to emission cuts, dependent on the actions of other countries or unilaterally. Similar to the first framing experiment by Bernauer and Gampfer (2015) presented above.

In order to control for naïveté, or lack of information, of the collective action aspect of climate change, McEvoy and Cherry measured respondents’ level of knowledge on these matters before supplying the questions. Then, two versions of the survey were supplied, one with information on the collective action nature of the climate change problem and one without it. Furthermore, the survey had a follow-up question for those preferring unilateral action, asking what reasons were most salient for their answer (2016, p. 2).

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23 Their results (Figure 3.2) show that 79% support unilateral action, which is 6 percentage points higher than the World Bank figures in Figure 3.1, while 5% preferred the US to take no action, which is 19 percentage points lower. Recipients of the information treatment preferred unilateral action to a larger extent than those that did not. Leadership, morals and responsibility are the main reasons given for preferring unilateral policy. But not only these three responses are the prime reasons given, they are also overrepresented amongst those that demonstrated the highest levels of understanding of the climate problem (ibid, p. 3-4).

Figure 3.2: Willingness to reduce GHG emissions and reasons given for supporting unilateral policy.

Source:McEvoy and Cherry (2016, p. 3)

It therefore appears that the more one understands the problem of climate change, the less one emphasises the collective action aspect of the problem. These results seem to contradict the classic understanding of problems relating to the governing of the commons.

Third country impact

An empirical example of unilateral climate policy is the EU’s attempt to adopt an emissions trading system that impacts airliners’ emissions when flying to and from the EU, thereby effectively putting a carbon tax on aircraft flying outside of the EU airspace (European Commission, 2016). However, opposition from affected countries led the proposal to be

5.40%, Don't act 3.20%, Don't know

6.30%, Conditional on

all countries 5.70%, Conditional on

other developed

countries 35.90%, Should lead by

example

14.10%, Responsibility

31.30%, Morally right

7.80%, Energy independence 5.10%, Economically

advantageous 5.80%, Self-protection 79.4%,

The US Should act unconditionally

The US should act to reduce GHG emissions... Reasons given why

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24

postponed (Bernauer et al., 2014, pp. 134–137) and only a tax on flights between EU/EEA members has been implemented⁷.

Despite this proposal’s failure, it created an opportunity to measure the reaction in third-party countries to unilateral climate policy. Bernauer et al. (2014) fielded online survey experiments in India and the US (countries that both opposed the EU policy) in order to measure the impact of an imposed climate policy cost from a third country. A description of the EU’s emissions trading system was provided to respondents, and similarily to the framing experiment by Bernauer and Gampfer (2015) above, the respondents were given different information treatments that emphasised cost and level of infringement on Indian/US sovereignty. Additionally, retaliatory measures deployed on the EU could be selected as a response (p. 138-140).

Costs, again, had a negative effect on policy support. Yet, high costs do not correlate with strong support for a retaliatory policy. Conversely, framings emphasising that the polluter should pay, or emphasising the climate benefits reaped, did not mediate the negative impact of costs on policy support. Infringement on sovereignty did not increase support for retaliatory action, except in the most explicit framing treatment. Furthermore, the strongest sovereignty treatment had a higher effect on support for retaliation in the US than in India (Bernauer et al., 2014, pp. 140–144).

Policy support in China

As the largest GHG emitter in the world, China, is also of interest when assessing the level of support for unilateral climate policies. Whilst the country lacks the democratic mechanisms of the US and India, the national government still incorporates the level of public policy support in its decision-making processes (Bernauer et al., 2016, p. 153). If there exists strong support in the Chinese populace for climate policies under the framework of the Paris Agreement, then the government would have more room to manoeuvre and implement them.

Bernauer et al. (2016) conducted two online experiments, with respondents recruited through various social media platforms. Combined with the high self-reported educational levels of the responders this gives the survey an overrepresentation from higher socioeconomic strata.

The authors thus regard it as a form of “elite survey” (p. 155).

7 The original scope of the policy is now scheduled to take effect in 2024

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25 In the first experiment, respondents were given information about various climate policies from the other top four GHG emitters (India, the US and the EU) and were exposed to information treatments. The information presented contained real data on pledges made by the other countries as well as invented expert opinions on the countries (or the EU’s) capabilities and historic responsibility (p. 155).

As in the previous survey methods deployed, the second China experiment was a framing experiment presenting text of Chinese policy proposals. These proposals were followed by questions about to what degree the responder believes China should implement these proposals. Finally, respondents were asked if China should implement climate policy if various other states do, or do not, do the same (pp. 159-160).

Results from the first experiment showed that an information treatment of other countries climate policies, regardless of any supplementary negative or positive “expert opinion”, had a positive effect on support for unilateral Chinese policy initiatives. In the second experiment, a majority (50 - 65%) supported unilateral Chinese climate policy (pp. 158-161).

Take home message from the experiments

There appears to be substantial popular support for unilateral climate policy in the three large emitters examined above. Some conditions appear to have a generally negative impact on the support, namely cost and high impact on sovereignty; however, these are at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Thus, governments in these countries appear to have plenty of leeway to implement climate policy.

In this vein, it should also be noted that it was powerful lobby groups that facilitated opposition in the US and India towards the EU’s emissions trading system, not public opinion (Bernauer et al., 2014, pp. 147–148). At first glance, and on the basis of these findings, public opinion cannot be said to be a potent roadblock in climate policy implementation at the national level.

Classical theories of collective action, public goods and the prisoner’s dilemma does not appear to have much firm ground when confronted by these findings. Free rider predicaments leave little impact on the public’s climate policy support. Rather, the polycentric approach proposed by Ostrom⁸ to solve these problems receives a strong boost to its viability,

8 Described in chapter two.

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emphasised by the increase in policy support even when information of the possible side effects of unilateral policy is presented to respondents.

3.2 Pitfalls in the survey data

The survey data I have reviewed paint a promising picture of how respondents weigh the classic theories against unilateralist policy, and how much they are willing to sacrifice to see such policy implemented. Yet, we can still not be certain as to how reliably survey questionnaires manage to pick up the true opinions and prioritisations of the respondents. If climate policy surveys are unable to extract how important respondents believe climate policy is when compared to other policy areas, then they are likely measuring attitudes in a vacuum.

For example, despite the results of the survey data experiments, US voters in 2016 and 2018 did not list climate policy among their top five most important issues (Clement and Guskin, 2016; Sarlin, 2018). Likewise, in the EU climate change ranks low in comparison with other issues. On aggregate, when asked what the most important issues facing your country are,

“the environment, climate and energy issues” rank seventh. When asked what the most important issues facing the EU are, it ranks fifth (European Commission, 2018 p15, 19). It should, however, be noted that the relative importance of climate change as a policy area varies greatly across the union and is more salient in the northern EU countries (ibid).

Nevertheless, the bottom line is that if voters do not prioritise climate policy, there may be less fertile ground for ambitious climate legislators to work with than the surveys examined above would lead us to believe.

Based on this, there appears to be a disconnect between what the surveys examined report as support levels for climate policies, and what people do when support is to be expressed at elections. To examine this disparity I will now critically evaluate various effects that may distort survey data.

It is easy to agree to do good

First, there is a possibility that social desirability bias colours the survey responses. There likely exists a normative pressure in any social situation; however, it is particularly strong when the respondent is being asked direct questions regarding own behaviour and even more so when the subject matter exist within some perceived normative boundaries of what is

Bridging the Gap: Public Support in the Shadow of Unilateral Climate Policies

Bridging the Gap

Public Support in the Shadow of Unilateral Climate Policies

Søren A. Steen-Johnsen

Masteroppgave i statsvitenskap, Institutt for statsvitenskap, Universitetet i Oslo

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO

Bridging the Gap

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

List of tables

List of figures

“If your time to you is worth savin' then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone”

– Robert A. Zimmerman

1 Introduction

1.1 Overview

1.2 Notes on validity and reliability

1.3 The scale of the problem and current status

2 The classic understanding

2.1 The traditional view

2.2 Criticism and alternative solutions

2.3 The international framework

3 Public support for climate policy

Taking Action Without Global Agreement

3.1 The survey data

The US should act to reduce GHG emissions... Reasons given why

3.2 Pitfalls in the survey data