The United States began to change the approach to how they dealt with climate change. The article states, “These tensions involved the priorities of domestic economic stability and environmental protection over both international development…” Therefore, this resulted in divisions in how Europeans and Americans saw how markets should regulate climate change which impacted the hesitance in the Kyoto Protocol being signed due to these changes in governance following the Cold War.
I think the United States resists international agreements on climate change because of the ways in which climate change has become a politicized issue. American culture is heavily based around individual identity and changes in how we regulate businesses strip away some of that autonomy. To regulate business CO2 emissions is to “overly” regulate businesses as well. This is left over from Americans fearing the spread of communism that any attempt to regulate what is produced receives rejection from the otherside. This is seen in the capitalist argument of sustainable development.
Furthermore, I think scientific literacy plays an issue in American views on Co2. Science is an evolving field, and therefore information is going to change. And similarly to historians, scientists can name things in a way that is confusing to the general public. For example, “global warming” is not a day to day phenomenon but an overall change in the Earth’s temperature over time. However, when it’s cold, it disproves what people would consider global warming even if that is not the actual case.
Will Wright 