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Politically Feasible Emissions Targets to Attain 460 ppm CO2 Concentrations

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  • Frankel, Jeffrey A.
  • Bosetti, Valentina

Abstract

A new climate change treaty must address three current gaps: the absence of emissions targets extending far into the future; the absence of participation by the United States, China, and other developing countries; and the absence of reasons to expect compliance. Moreover, to be politically acceptable, a post-Kyoto treaty must recognize certain constraints regarding country-by-country economic costs. This article presents a framework for assigning quantitative emissions allocations across countries, one budget period at a time, through a two-stage plan: (a) China and other developing countries accept targets at business-as-usual (BAU) levels in the coming budget period, and, during the same period, the United States agrees to cuts below BAU; (b) all countries are asked to make further cuts in the future in accordance with a formula that includes a Progressive Reductions Factor, a Latecomer Catch-up Factor, and a Gradual Equalization Factor. An earlier proposal (Frankel 2009) for specific parameter values in the formulas achieved the environmental goal that carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations plateau at 500 ppm by 2100. It met our political constraints by keeping every country’s economic cost below thresholds of Y = 1 percent of income in Present Discounted Value, and X = 5 percent of income in the worst period. The framework proposed in this article attains a stricter concentration goal of 460 ppm CO2 but only by loosening the political constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Frankel, Jeffrey A. & Bosetti, Valentina, 2012. "Politically Feasible Emissions Targets to Attain 460 ppm CO2 Concentrations," Scholarly Articles 8705904, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
  • Handle: RePEc:hrv:hksfac:8705904
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    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Biden’s Modest Multilateralism
      by Jeffrey Frankel in Project Syndicate on 2020-11-27 14:20:43

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    Cited by:

    1. Carraro, Carlo & Massetti, Emanuele, 2012. "Energy and climate change in China," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(6), pages 689-713, December.
    2. Schleich, Joachim & Dütschke, Elisabeth & Schwirplies, Claudia & Ziegler, Andreas, 2014. "Citizens' perceptions of justice in international climate policy: Empirical insights from China, Germany and the US," Working Papers "Sustainability and Innovation" S2/2014, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI).
    3. Valentina Bosetti & Jeffrey Frankel, 2014. "Sustainable Cooperation In Global Climate Policy: Specific Formulas And Emission Targets," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(03), pages 1-34.
    4. Joachim Schleich & Elisabeth Dütschke & Claudia Schwirplies & Andreas Ziegler, 2016. "Citizens' perceptions of justice in international climate policy: an empirical analysis," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(1), pages 50-67, January.
    5. John Weyant, 2017. "Some Contributions of Integrated Assessment Models of Global Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(1), pages 115-137.
    6. Frédéric Branger, Philippe Quirion, Julien Chevallier, 2017. "Carbon Leakage and Competitiveness of Cement and Steel Industries Under the EU ETS: Much Ado About Nothing," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    7. Aldy, Joseph Edgar, 2015. "Evaluating Mitigation Effort: Tools and Institutions for Assessing Nationally Determined Contributions," Scholarly Articles 23936083, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    8. Joseph E. Aldy & William A. Pizer & Keigo Akimoto, 2017. "Comparing emissions mitigation efforts across countries," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 501-515, May.
    9. Aldy, Joseph E. & Pizer, William A. & Akimoto, Keigo, 2015. "A natural outcome of the emerging pledge and review approach to international climate change policy is the interest in comparing mitigation efforts among countries. Domestic publics and stakeholders w," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-32, Resources for the Future.
    10. Aldy, Joseph Edgar & Pizer, William, 2016. "Alternative Metrics for Comparing Domestic Climate Change Mitigation Efforts and the Emerging International Climate Policy Architecture," Scholarly Articles 22808338, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    11. Gilbert E. Metcalf & David Weisbach, 2012. "Linking Policies When Tastes Differ: Global Climate Policy in a Heterogeneous World," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 6(1), pages 110-129.
    12. Riahi, Keywan & Kriegler, Elmar & Johnson, Nils & Bertram, Christoph & den Elzen, Michel & Eom, Jiyong & Schaeffer, Michiel & Edmonds, Jae & Isaac, Morna & Krey, Volker & Longden, Thomas & Luderer, Gu, 2015. "Locked into Copenhagen pledges — Implications of short-term emission targets for the cost and feasibility of long-term climate goals," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 90(PA), pages 8-23.
    13. Todd Sandler, 2017. "Environmental cooperation: contrasting international environmental agreements," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(2), pages 345-364.

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    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

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