by Chiara Candelise, Università di Torino e OEET
For this issue of the Newsletter “Emerging Economies” we have asked to experts on China-US relationships, geopolitics and economics to comment on a recent and controversial proposal of the Noble Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz for Europe and China to consider climate-related trade sanctions against the US, due to Trump’s administration refusal to support the Paris Agreement and related climate change mitigation strategies.
The Agreement had been adopted by 195 nations at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in December 2015 and had highlighted the need of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”
Moreover, in fall 2018 a Special Report on global warming produced by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) as follow on to the Paris Agreement has further stressed the urgency of acting to mitigate global warming. The report argued that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching ” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050.
Limiting warming to 1.5°C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III.
In the 2017 the US President Donald Trump has indeed decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. And, since 2018, the US has become the world’s larger crude oil exporter, surpassing the likes of Russia and Saudi Arabia for the first time in more than two decades on the back of looser environmental regulations adopted under the Trump administration.
The Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz has therefore called on Europe and China in March 2019 to join forces against the United States at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), while they have been emerging as the biggest supporters of the Paris accord. Stiglitz proposal has been for Europe and China to consider climate-related trade sanctions against the US, suggesting that there has been a legal precedent at the WTO to provide them with the legal grounds to do so.
The proposal comes in a context of heated geopolitical relationships and of an escalating trade war between US and China. Therefore we asked Professor Ignazio Musu, Professor Giovanni Graziani and Professor Alessia Amighini to comment on the feasibility and potential implications of such type of action from Europe and China against US.
