After Kyoto: Solving The Climate Conundrum

President Obama will join some 90 other heads of state in Copenhagen on December 18th to showcase the outcome of the international climate negotiations on a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. To be effective and ultimately successful, any feasible successor agreement must contain three essential elements: meaningful involvement by a broad set of key industrialized and developing nations; an emphasis on long-term accomplishment; and use of policies that work through the market, rather than against it. In a discussion paper of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, we examine in detail these three pillars of a new international climate agreement.