ABSTRACT
Scientists and climate protection advocates once expected that rational leaders and institutions would respond appropriately to the common threat of climate change. Climate protection advocates had erroneous expectations because these institutions and leaders were willing to give lip service to climate protection. Neoliberalism is an ideology that argues that global market forces should determine human decisions and that government and other public institutions should act only to support private profit making. Neoliberalism thereby plays a crucial role in preventing effective climate protection. Further, a competitive nation state system generates conflict and antagonism among nation states as it drives states to pursue advantage in the competition with other states. International climate negotiations have come to grief over how the costs and benefits of climate protection should be distributed, while opposition to climate protection in domestic politics often focuses on the demand that 'other countries' cut their emissions first.
