Voluntary climate pledges lack sanctions so compliance depends on political shame

Evidence

The purpose of the 2014 summit in Lima, Peru, was to develop a framework for formalizing a global climate agreement in Paris in 2015. The members abandoned the ambitious goal of adopting a legally binding global climate accord in favor of a more modest voluntary one. Every country would pledge cuts in carbon emissions at an economically and politically feasible level (Davenport, 2014d). There are no sanctions for not submitting a plan to cut emissions or for violating the submitted ones. Compliance is based on “international scorn” (Davenport, 2014a). This frail climate accord is the product of almost two decades of summitry, during which time emissions of greenhouse gases have soared. … Except for India, which refuses to decrease emissions until their poor are lifted from poverty, countries have submitted their pledged cuts. In the view of climate analysts, however, the pledges are insufficient to avert an irreversible catastrophic rise in global warming (Gillis & Sengupta, 2015). As nonbinding promises subject to domestic pressure, they are likely to fall short of what was pledged. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2939