While I am very happy to hear about the agreement between China and the United States to reduce GHG in the medium term, there appears to be a fashionable "boosterism" among academic environmental economists and NGO economists to seize this "momentum" to try to claim that there will be self fulfilling prophesy that the World is about to take a united step forward on this issue. While I want a credible global cap on emissions to take place in France next year, will it? What does it mean to lead a coalition? Will other nations such as India join the party? What is the causal effect of the joint Xi and Obama Announcement? What is the control group to answer this question? What is the business as usual path for emissions and what will it now be because of this agreement? What are the penalties if either nation misses their targets? What will be the causal effects on the power generation sectors and transportation sectors for both nations?
Yesterday, I participated in two interviews related to this subject;
1. Article #1 in Foreign Policy
2. Article #2 on CBS.Com