Source of difficulty climate agreement lies in ignoring simple economic principles

Comments on Peter Drysdale “Regional movement on the global problem of climate change”, 14/032011, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/03/14/regional-movement-on-the-global-problem-of-climate-change/

The fundamental weaknesses of the approaches to international climate change agreements in recent years are the lack of application of sound economic principles of "users pay".

It is strangely incredible that there are well agreed economic principles in dealing with pollutions and the negative externalities of local pollutions that are equally applicable to global pollutions such as emissions, but they have been ignored in this global issue.

Most economists including mainstream economists in industrialised countries especially in the US have been silent on this. It is a remarkable display of international political economy in which even most respected economists are well aligned with their national interests at the expense of the global climate.

Imagine that the users pay principle was applied, the heavy polluters have to pay for their emissions and those less users will receive their benefit from the compensation of those who damaging their property rights. Then there is no need for any industrialised countries to be acting like a donor in favour of developing nations. No need even for them to mention such a thing.

It should not be too difficult to reach an acceptable international agreement and control emissions levels, by all countries.