Global Environmental Problems

In global environmental problems, each country's own contribution to worldwide emissions is small, so there is little a country can do by itself. To solve global environmental problems one needs coordinated actions between countries. Environmental groups often advocate that in spite of the global character of the problem, a country ought to take unilateral actions to reduce its environmentally harmful emissions. The argument for such unilateral actions is that they at least give a contribution in the right direction (however small), and also that by “setting a good example” of this type one might affect the behavior of other countries, and/or improve the chances of reaching international agreements of coordinated reductions of harmful emissions. The paper gives an analysis of the consequences of unilateral reductions of harmful emissions. It is shown that such a policy will generally affect the outcome of international negotiations about reduced emissions. The outcome of such negotiations may very well imply higher total emissions when one country reduces its emissions unilaterally than if both countries act selfishly.