Modeling wrong — BCAs triggers backlash that "leads states to abandon" coop on emissions limits. Roser & Tomlinson 14 — Dominic Roser, Research Fellow at the Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations and at the Law Faculty at Oxford University, a senior researcher and lecturer at the University of Fribourg, Luke Tomlinson, 2014 (“Trade Policies and Climate Change: Border Carbon Adjustments as a Tool for a Just Global Climate Regime,” ANCILLA IUR, ND, Available Online at https://www.anci.ch/articles/347, Accessed on 07-18-23

A fifth fairness concern regarding BCAs relates to the implications for the creation of a universal climate change regime more generally. BCAs are policy measures that become desirable when there is partial compliance or differential commitments in a regulatory regime for climate change mitigation. BCAs are obsolete if there is a universal regime with equal regulatory measures across the globe. Given the trend towards bottom up commitments on a unilateral basis, BCAs offer a way of achieving more effective mitigation measures despite a lack of commitment on a broader scale. But whilst it is necessary to consider how to achieve mitigation commitments in situations of partial compliance, it is important to remember that a universal regime should remain the overall ideal that we should strive to achieve. After all, such a regime avoids the problems of carbon leakage and should be more just by virtue of the fact that it encompasses all actors on a global level. Consequently, we argue that whilst BCAs are an effective policy measure in a second best situation in which states pursue climate mitigation on a unilateral basis, we should always aim for a universal regime as a first best solution to climate change.

But a problem arises when one considers the damaging effects that BCAs might have on the negotiation process to achieve this first best solution. BCAs represent a relatively strong policy measure on the part of the state enforcing them that can easily be perceived as hostile on the part of other states. They also represent a step away from cooperative attempts to implement a policy on a common basis towards an isolationist approach to dealing with climate change mitigation. Pursuing BCAs might lead states to abandon the process of achieving a comprehensive agreement for collective action on climate change and to pursue unilateral measures instead. This could even lead to a backlash in multilateral cooperation more generally, particularly in relation to trade, as states take retaliatory trade measures in relation to other policy areas,75 or by straining relations within the WTO.76 This point becomes particularly important given that unilateral border measures are tools that are typically available only to powerful trading nations and are not available to nations with little market power.77

Those states that are unable to effectively implement BCAs may see these measures as a particularly aggressive action by the enforcing state. There is a further issue concerning the fact that states with insufficient clout to impose BCAs are also those that are worst off in terms of economic welfare. This means that BCAs are unfair in two respects: not only are they limited to certain states or policy regions, but they are also the reserve of those who are relatively well off in terms of economic wellbeing.