To wait for Copenhagen is in fact to put domestic climate change policy on hold indefinitely, until an agreement is reached. This would be a mistake for two reasons. A treaty on climate change is not a magic bullet. We are yet to discover a treaty structure which would eliminate the prisoner’s dilemma problem. Discouraging free-riding by countries will only happen if there is domestic as well as international pressure on governments to act. And domestic pressure will manifest itself in unilateral action. Moreover, though we should not wait for an international agreement, we do still need one. There will be more mitigation with an international agreement than without. The stronger the prior domestic action, the more likely and the more ambitious any subsequent international agreement will be. The fundamental decision facing all countries in relation to climate change is whether they will be part of a coalition of the willing on the issue. Being part of such a coalition implies both acting unilaterally and supporting an international agreement. Undertaking to do more if there is an agreement is a sensible strategy (the EU and Australia have both tabled unconditional and conditional emission reduction targets), but making an international agreement a prerequisite for domestic action is not. Howes’ essay is one in a collection from leading regional experts and analysts that comprise the third issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly (EAFQ) on ‘Copenhagen and beyond‘ that we publish this week.
In Brief
Prime Minister Rudd's prominence in the Copenhagen meeting on climate change has not stopped the political process in Australia from staggering decisively backward from the introduction of an emissions trading scheme in Australia, as the rest of the world inches towards an international agreement to cut carbon output. Although it's unlikely that Copenhagen will produce that agreement, the announcement last week of US targets and Chinese initiatives in addition to the participation of both President Obama and Prime Minister Wen in the meeting enhances the prospect of movement towards one. Stephen Howes, in this week's lead, notes that many in Australia, including the stalling forces in the opposition, argue that we should ‘wait for Copenhagen’ before legislating an emissions trading scheme. This approach, he suggests, though apparently grounded in hard-nosed realism, is naïve.