Public Goods, Externality, And Climate Change

Climate change is a common difficulty for human society, which requires converted efforts from international community. Since the industrial revolution, the emitted greenhouse gas has made the global climate system featured with global warming, because people have been overusing the fossil fuels, like coal and petrol, and ect. The governance model roots from the cognitive perspective of climate change. This article attempts to analyze the climate changes from two perspectives:the public goods and externality theory, and we use two cases to exemplify it.Climate change is the combination of climate environment's attributes of public goods and human activity. Public goods can be shared by random people, which have attributes of non-rivalness and non-excludability. Climate stability has the attribute of public goods, which explains why it has been over consumed. Externality refers to the attached influence of one actor's economical activity to other actors. The creation of externality lies in the deviation between the private benefits and social benefits, private cost and social cost. Externality stays not only in the production areas, but also in the entire social activity. The anarchy in the international community aggravates the dilemma of public goods and externality, and proposed challenges to international society.There are good cooperation and existing conflicts in the history of Sino-US cooperation in handling climate change. Several reasons make the good cooperation possible:firstly, both China and America are victims of climate changes. The water resource crisis in China and the high temperature disaster in America made it very clear that two countries should respond simultaneously to climate changes for mutual benefits. Secondly, the cooperation between China and America will bring not only economical and political interests, but also strategically benefits, which is the moving force for this two countries to work together. Obama administration seeks to develop the new resources, clear energy and energy saving industry to promote the economy and reimage the country, and probably try to be "energy independent" in the end. While the reason for China to take the responsibility to handle climate changes is not only due to the international pressure, but also the requirement of its own interests. The thirty years economical developments after reforming and opening-up caused great destruction to the environment, which calls for the Chinese government to face this great challenge between economic development and environment protection.The good points in Sino-US's cooperation in handling climate changes did not make they ignore the disputes, such as the goal of carbon emission reduction, technology transfer and financial support, and finally it can be illustrated in the understanding of "Common but differentiated responsibilities". The contradiction between China and America is concrete, ubiquitous, not special, and it can not affect the cooperation fundamentally. Actually, the cooperation programs have been launched orderly. There are two cases to represent the cooperation and game between China and America:the US-China Partnership for Climate Action and World Climate Conference in Copenhagen, which concludes that cooperation and game are coexisting.