chapter 3.2 review questions

Difference between private goods, public goods, and common-pool resources.

• private good: excludable (people can be prevented from using it) & rivalrous (one person’s consumption reduces availability for others)

• public good: non-excludable, non-rivalrous

• common-pool resource: non-excludable, highly-rivalrous → overexploitation & depletion

Difference between private goods, public goods, and common-pool resources regarding externalities

• private goods: generate no external effects → all costs & benefits are fully internalised through market prices

• public goods: suffer from positive externalities due to free-riders who don’t pay for them

• common-pool: generate negative externalities as people ignore the social cost of their consumption → tragedy of the commons

What type of good is biodiversity? What type is biodiversity protection?

• biodiversity: common-good resource → its components (eg fish/timber) are often non-excludable, but their harvesting is highly-rivalrous

• biodiversity protection: pure public good → its benefits are entirely non-excludable & non-rivalrous

What is the Montreal Protocol and its impact on global CFC emissions?

• 1987: international treaty designed to protect ozone layer by phasing out production of ozone-depleting substances (CFCs)

• successful → led to 99% reduction in global CFC production

What is the Kyoto Protocol, its impact on GHG emissions, and the reasons?

• international protocol

• set legally binding emission reduction targets for developing nations

• impact: weak → emissions continued to rise sharply worldwide

• weak because major polluters never ratified it, developing nations had no binding targets, & there was no enforcement mechanism to penalise non-compliance

Banning CFCs vs. GHGs as a Prisoner's Dilemma, and why Montreal outpaced Kyoto.

• both treaties resemble prisoner’s dilemma → every nation has an incentive to free-ride on others’ emission cuts

• montreal protocol solved this because they quickly engineered substitutes for CFCs, reducing economic compliance costs

• kyoto protocol failed because phasing out GHG required altering entire national energy architectures → cost barrier that amplified incentive to defect

Major mitigation components of the Paris Agreement (pledge, review, ratchet).

• paris agreement: bottom-up approach → countries voluntarily submit their own action climate target (NDCs)

• pledge & review process: progress assessed every 5 years, then a ‘ratchet mechanism’ compels nations to submit more ambitious NDCs over time

Is the Paris Agreement legally binding?

• overall treaty & its procedural frameworks: yes under international law

• specific emissions reduction targets in individual NDCs: non-binding

According to the 2023 Global Stocktake, are we on track for emissions and 2100 temperatures?

• no, we are off-track to meet paris target of limiting warming to 1.5-2ºC

• progress has slowed the worst-case warming trajectories

• current policies: put the planet on path to 2.4-2.7ºC increase by 2100

Did the ratchet mechanism compel more ambitious NDCs up to 2025?

• forced countries to update pledges by 2025 deadline

• resulting revisions fell short of the radical reductions needed

• many major emitting nations submitted minor improvements

Why was the Paris Agreement not a complete failure regarding mitigation?

• it created a permanent, universal diplomatic architecture that brought nearly every nation into a single accountability framework

• bent the global emissions curve downward → shifted baseline proejctions from 4ºC+ to below 3ºC

Why is Paris a "diplomatic success but an environmental struggle" after 10 years?

• Diplomatic success

  • achieved unprecedented global consensus

  • institutionalised regular climate reporting

  • normalized net-zero targets globally

• Environmental struggle

  • actual atmospheric GHG concentrations still hit record highs due to persistent gap between political promises & concrete national implementation

Björn Lomborg's "Paris Promises Extended" assumption and why it may be wrong.

• Nations will maintain initial Paris pledges through 2100 without adjusting for tech growth → unchanged emission path

• Wrong as it discounts the non-linear, compounding pace of green tech & operational force of the Paris ratchet mechanism