The Paris climate-change conference needs to be more ambitious

In December talks in Paris involving more than 200 countries may result in a new agreement aimed at reducing carbon emissions. In the months leading up to the conference, The Economist will be publishing guest columns by experts on the economic issues involved. Here, Thomas Sterner of the Univesity of Gothenburg argues that countries attending the Paris talks will need to be more ambitious than they have so far.

WHEN world leaders went to the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, it was with a sense of great optimism that it might result in meaningful progress toward global climate and development goals. Those ambitions quickly proved unrealistic. But sentiment now seems to have moved too far in the other direction. As the climate change conference scheduled to take place in December in Paris draws nearer, the goals being set for the conference are far too modest rather than too ambitious.

Remember the photo with Angela Merkel, Germany's...Continue reading

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