Governments are, among other things, responsible for managing the way humans utilise the natural environment. Their laws, regulations, taxes and other measures can, when effective, both enable and prohibit people’s activities in ways consistent with environmental goals. Globally, one of these goals is to keep the average global atmospheric temperature to below 2ºC above pre-1800 levels. This goal was agreed by most members of the United Nations (UN) at a climate summit held in Paris in late 2015.
By the start of 2017, over 125 national governments had signed the so-called Paris Agreement (see Climate Change Update in GEOGRAPHY REVIEW Vol. 30, No. 1). The agreement acknowledges that ‘global warming’ of the atmosphere is caused by the emission of ‘greenhouse gases’ from power stations and other sources. It allows countries to set their own emission-reduction targets and to meet the targets in whatever ways they see fit, provided they report how close to meeting (or possibly exceeding) targets they are.
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