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Consequences of the 2008 US Elections for America's Climate Change Policy, Canada, and the World

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 March 2009
Published date01 March 2009
AuthorJohn Kirton
DOI10.1177/002070200906400113
Subject MatterThe 2008 US Election—Challenges for a New President
John Kirton
Consequences of the
2008 US elections
for America’s climate
change policy, Canada,
and the world
| International Journal | Winter 2008-09 | 153 |
On 28 June 1979, at the group of seven summit, the leaders of the world’s
most powerful countries declared: “We need to expand alternative sources of
energy, especially those which help to prevent further pollution, particularly
increases of carbon dioxide and sulfur oxides in the atmosphere.” They thus
acknowledged the need to halt immediately, at 1979 levels, the concentration
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the following five years, they and
their developed country partners moved in this direction, as their CO2
emissions steadily declined.1The G7 consensus came at the initiative of
America’s Democratic President Jimmy Carter, supported by Canada’s Joe
Clark. This far-reaching consensus was driven in part by oil shortages, prices
rising to historic highs, and economic growth falling to new lows.
John Kirton is associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto,where he
also is director of the G8 Research Group. He has written or edited numerous books, notably
on Canadian foreign policy and G7/G8 summits.
1 “Global energy security,” Sustainable Energy Development Centre, 2006, 48.

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