The G20 and Green Protectionism: Will We Pay the Price at Copenhagen?

Green protectionism could undermine the collaborative spirit needed to find solutions to systemic environmental threats, such as climate change. Policy makers and opinion leaders in industrialized countries need to appreciate that their ambitions for global environmental reform will be frustrated if they do not successfully resist green protectionism during the crisis. Trading partners in the rest of the world will hardly believe that the discretion abused in existing national environmental regulation will not be abused again when industrialized countries implement border tax adjustments, carbon taxes, or permit allocation schemes to mitigate climate change.