ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the early framing of climate change as a political problem at the international level and the associated normative debates related to how states should respond. It then evaluates how this process was translated into the domestic political processes of the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Early domestic framing of the problem had profound effects on the political debates in all three countries and played a major role in shaping the degree to which emergent international norms were translated into the domestic policy. Germany, and later the United Kingdom, accepted emission reduction commitments and pursued domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction policies that in many cases could be difficult and costly to achieve. In contrast, the United States denied that climate change was sufficiently well understood to justify costly domestic policy changes. What explains the differences in national responses? Considerations of domestic economic competitiveness and resource transfers resulting from climate policy appear to have shaped the parameters within which the normative debates occurred; however, the logic of appropriateness and associated normative debates in each country placed significant limits on the pursuit of material objectives.
