EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

China’s Paris pledge on climate change: inadequate and irresponsible

Paul G. Harris (pharris@eduhk.hk)
Additional contact information
Paul G. Harris: Education University of Hong Kong

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2017, vol. 7, issue 1, No 9, 102-107

Abstract: Abstract This essay critically assesses China’s pledge—its “intended nationally determined contributions”—toward achieving objectives of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. It addresses some potential misconceptions about China’s pledge, including their inadequacy relative to the scale of pollution causing climate change and the dangers posed by its impacts. China’s pledge is little more than business as usual. Significant ethical obligations arise from China’s role as the largest national source of greenhouse gas pollution and home to hundreds of millions of affluent consumers. The Paris Agreement disregards such obligations. The inadequacy and irresponsibility of China’s Paris pledge exposes some fundamental flaws in the international climate change negotiations and agreements, demonstrating that science and environmental studies cannot be disconnected from ethics and justice.

Keywords: China; Climate change; Common but differentiated responsibility; Paris agreement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13412-017-0422-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jenvss:v:7:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s13412-017-0422-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13412

DOI: 10.1007/s13412-017-0422-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences is currently edited by Walter A. Rosenbaum

More articles in Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences from Springer, Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla (sonal.shukla@springer.com) and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (indexing@springernature.com).

 
Page updated 2024-12-29
Handle: RePEc:spr:jenvss:v:7:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s13412-017-0422-0