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G20 are trying to hit ambitious greenhouse gas goals while obeying political constraints

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In Brief

National leaders are meeting at the United Nations in New York to discuss climate change negotiations. Talks are continuing at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. But hopes look very bleak for progress sufficient to produce at Copenhagen in December a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. The biggest roadblock is the familiar game of ‘After you, Alphonse.’ The United States will not accept quantitative emission targets unless China, India and other developing countries do the same, at the same time. But the developing countries will not cut their emissions below the Business as Usual path (BAU) unless the rich countries go first.

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In the past I have developed my own proposal for how to break the deadlock, a politically realistic plan to assign emission targets in ways that leaves no country feeling it is being asked to incur an economic cost that is unfair or too large. The targets are derived from a family of formulas The specific detailed example of the plan that I have given in the past attained an environmental target by the year 2100 of CO2 concentrations equal to 500 part per million (ppm). It did so without violating the political constraints, which included that no country is asked to accept an ex ante target that costs it more than 1 per cent of income in present value, or more than 5 per cent of income in any single budget period.

The G-7 leaders, meeting in Italy in June 2009, set a more aggressive collective goal, corresponding approximately to concentrations of 380 ppm. I have been trying to hit that goal, working with Valentina Bosetti, within the same political constraints and framework of formulas. To achieve the more aggressive environmental goal, we advance the dates at which some countries are asked to begin cutting below BAU. We also tinker with the values for the parameters in the formulas (parameters that govern the extent of progressivity and equity, and the speed with which latecomers must eventually catch up). The resulting target paths for emissions are run through the WITCH model to find their economic and environmental effects. We found that it is not possible to attain the 380 ppm goal, subject strictly to our political constraints. We were however, able to attain a concentration goal of 460 ppm with somewhat looser political constraints than 500.

Some may conclude from these results that the more aggressive environmental goals are not attainable in practice, and that our earlier proposal for how to attain 500ppm is the better plan. We take no position on which environmental goal is best overall. Rather, we submit that, whatever the goal, our approach will give targets that are more practical economically and politically than approaches that have been proposed by others.

This article was originally published here on Jeff Frankel’s Weblog.

One response to “G20 are trying to hit ambitious greenhouse gas goals while obeying political constraints”

  1. At the New York G20 summit convened by UN Secretary General, there was no discussion by developed countries about providing financial assistance to poor countries or the transfer of clean technology; rather the occasion was used to make speeches. US president Barack Obama promised to contribute to a road map to protect the planet’s future; but he gave no details.

    Scientists recommend that an 80 per cent cut in emissions by developed countries by 2050 is vital to avert the tipping point in climate change. Of course, the long-run goalpost might be unachievable under present circumstances.
    Together the US and China account for 50 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. But Obama’s climate change legislation for energy reform is unlikely to be cleared by the Senate before the December Copenhagen summit of the UN Framework Convention on climate change.

    Chinese president Hu Jintao has assured the G20 that China will improve its energy efficiency and curb the rise of CO2 emissions per unit of gross domestic product by a notable margin by 2020 from the 2005 level but he did not elaborate further.

    So also Obama did not elaborate if there is a plan for anew era of renewable energy promotion and emissions cuts.
    While the International Panel on Climate change estimates that 50 years down the road, the acceptable safe level of CO2 emissions will be about 14 billion tonnes or 2.3 tonnes per capita per year; the average emission today is about double the limit at 4.8 tonnes per head. In absence of a serious mitigation effort, this will rise further to about 9 tonnes per head of four times the safe limit by 2060.

    Of course, much of the co2 emissions come at present from the developed countries; the US and Canada emit about 20 tones per head.

    Nobel Laureate Michael Spence has a nice strategy for getting around the gridlock. In the Spence solution , much of the mitigation action has to be taken by the developed countries in the form of a carbon Credit trading system ; also there has to be agreement on a global carbon emission mitigation time path leading to average mission levels of 2.5 to 3 tonnes per head in 50 years. Also nations are allowed to exchange these carbon credits between themselves based on national priorities. Then they should be allowed to earn additional carbon credits through mitigation activities. This would establish a price for carbon credits that supports the permissible level of global co2 emissions and is also based on global marginal cost of mitigation. The G 20 nations account for 90 per cent of global output and two-thirds of global population. It is this group plus a few others e.g. Mexico, Egypt that will have to deal with the economic and technical challenges of mitigation.

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