Global Warming Economics

Under the recent revision of the Kyoto Protocol at Bonn, Germany, countries decided to move ahead with policies to slow greenhouse warming without the United States. Using the RICE-2001 model, the author of this Policy Forum shows that the revised protocol will have little impact on greenhouse-gas emissions and that the economic burden shifts sharply toward Europe. The Kyoto-Bonn Accord will nonetheless be a useful experiment in institutional innovation as the protocol9s international market mechanism for the environment is untested up to now.