The Globalization of Carbon Trading: Transnational Business Coalitions in Climate Politics

Jonas Meckling
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Jonas Meckling: Jonas Meckling is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He is also a Research Fellow with the Global Governance Project ( www.glogov.org ). He specializes in business in global environmental politics, international climate politics and carbon markets. His most recent publications include "“Sectoral Approaches for a Post-2012 Climate Regime: A Taxonomy"” (Climate Policy 9 (6), 2009, with Gu Yoon Chung) and "“Corporate Policy Preferences in the EU and the US: Emissions Trading as the Climate Compromise?"” (Carbon & Climate Law Review 2 (2), 2008). He has just completed a book on business coalitions and the global rise of carbon trading.

Global Environmental Politics, 2011, vol. 11, issue 2, 26-50

Abstract: Over the past decade, carbon trading has emerged as the policy instrument of choice in the industrialized world to address global climate change. In this article I argue that a transnational business coalition, representing mostly energy firms and energy-intensive manufacturers, actively promoted the global rise of carbon trading. In this process, business was able to draw on the support of government allies and business-oriented environmental groups, particularly in the UK and the US. Alongside its allies, the coalition had pivotal influence in the internationalization of carbon trading through the Kyoto Protocol, in the U-turn of the EU from skeptic to frontrunner on carbon trading and in the re-import of carbon trading to the US. While business was not able to prevent mandatory emission controls, it was able to critically affect the regulatory style of climate policy in favor of low-cost, market-based options. (c)© 2011 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Date: 2011
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