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In search of social democratic foreign policy.
Many social democratic parties adopted the aim of 'sustainable' economic growth in the 1980s, implicitly acknowledging the green critique of economic orthodoxies (Callaghan, 2000). The need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions had been an element in this green critique since the 1970s, and the first detailed proposals for carbon taxes made their appearance in the same decade (Baumol and Oates, 1975). The discovery of damage to the Antarctic ozone layer in 1985 and the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in April 1986 provided additional evidence that environmental problems have global impact and demand international collaboration between states if they are to be addressed effectively.
Social democratic parties in Scandinavia, Germany and Austria were quicker than the other established parties (for example the left parties in Britain, Spain, Italy, France and Greece) to acknowledge that a problem existed. All of them were dedicated to working in the institutions of government to get things done, but real progress obviously required action at a trans-national level. In 1988 the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Programme established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The latter's first report in 1990 confirmed the scientific basis for climate change and argued that human activity in the production of greenhouse gases would probably cause a rapidly deteriorating environment for humans. A succession of intergovernmental conferences followed and the Second World Climate Conference in 1990 called for a global treaty on climate change. A Convention on Climate Change came into force in March 1994 pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. The Berlin Mandate adopted in April 1995 called on developed countries to set quantified targets for future reductions within specified time frames. A treaty was negotiated in Kyoto in December 1997 to support these pronouncements, though it was not until February 2005 that it came into force (expiring in 2012). The Kyoto Protocol, with 169 signatories--though not ratified by them all--required industrialised countries to cut their collective greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 per cent compared to the year 1990 (a 29 per cent cut compared to the level that would otherwise be reached by 2010). It represents, according to its supporters, the most ambitious international carbon trading scheme extant. Yet it was painfully slow to construct and well short of what was required, according to many scientists (while also completely unnecessary, according to the s...See the full content of this document
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