Advances in Management and Applied Economics

After the COP21 Agreement: Small Steps Towards a Global Catastrophe

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• Abstract

  The COP Agreement or Treaty is merely a promise about global policy-making against climate change, albeit with a heavy decentralised emphasis, trusting the government of the countries of the world with the main responsibility for making policies that counteract the global warming process. Policy-making is one side of the coin: goals, hopes, plans and promises. The other side is the implementation of policy: outputs and outcomes. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere keeps increasing: 399.6 (Jan 2015), 402.52 (Jan 2016) and 404.21 (March 2016). It is true that a few countries have managed to not only halt the increase in GHG emissions but also decrease the emissions. But from a global point of view, the CO2 emissions stay at a very high level. The G20, responsible for some 80 per cent of CO2 emissions, do nothing, concentrating on traditional interstate issue like the Middle East, North Korea, the Ukraine and the South China Sea. Whereas all new data indicate the dire consequences of climate change, business goes on as usual: more cars, bigger engines, more aeroplanes and airports, bigger ships and larger container vessels, longer routes, new coal power stations, closing of nuclear plants, etc.