Clara Park (U of Colorado, Boulder) will present "Economic Competitiveness, Climate Policy, and the Clean Energy Transition."
Abstract: Why do some countries implement comprehensive, cross-sectoral climate policies while others do not? Although 195 countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the Paris Accord, countries vary considerably in their domestic mitigation and adaptation policies. While existing explanations of collective action and distributive concerns well highlight the challenges in climate change cooperation, they fall short in systematically identifying the source of governments' preferences across countries. Using text analysis of over 2300 climate policies of 86 countries, I show that countries' economic competitiveness in the clean energy transition explains their willingness to accelerate or decelerate the transition through their climate policies. A country with a large manufacturing sector, which heavily uses fossil fuel and would incur large transition costs, is less likely to adopt any climate policies, and when it does, it proposes fewer policies related to clean energy, such as renewable energy and decarbonization. On the other hand, countries without large manufacturing sectors have more comprehensive mitigation and adaptation policies across sectors. Understanding why countries lead (or lag) in efforts to combat climate change can help answer a source of collective action problem in international environmental cooperation.