Person:

Frankel, Jeffrey

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.

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 reason 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: (i) China and other developing countries accept targets at business-as-usual (BAU)levels in the coming budget period, and, during the same period, the US agrees to cuts belowBAU; (ii) all countries are asked to make further cuts in the future in accordance with a formula which 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 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% of income in Present Discounted Value, and X=5% 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.

We explore a framework that could be used to assign quantitative allocations of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), across all countries, one budget period at a time, as envisioned at the December 2011 negotiations in Durban. Under the two-part plan: (i) China, India, and other developing countries accept targets at Business as Usual (BAU) in the coming budget period, the same period in which the US first agrees to cuts below BAU; and (ii) all countries are asked in the future to make further cuts in accordance with a common numerical formula to all. The formula is expressed as the sum of a Progressive Reductions Factor, a Latecomer Catch-up Factor, and a Gradual Equalization Factor. This paper builds on our previous work in many ways. First we update targets to reflect pledges made by governments after the Copenhagen Accord of December 2009 and confirmed at the Cancun meeting of December 2010. Second, the WITCH model, which we use to project economic and environmental effects of any given set of emission targets, has been refined and updated to reflect economic and technological developments. We include the possibility of emissions reduction from bio energy (BE), carbon capture and storage (CCS), and avoided deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) which is an important component of pledges in several developing countries. Third, we use a Nash criterion for evaluating whether a country’s costs are too high to sustain cooperation.

A new climate change treaty must plug three gaps: the absence of emission targets extending far into the future, the absence of participation by the United States, China, and other developing countries, and the absence of reason to expect compliance. To be politically acceptable, it must obey certain constraints regarding country-by-country economic costs. We offer a framework to assign quantitative emission allocations, across countries, one budget period at a time. The two-part plan: (i) China and other developing countries accept targets at BAU in the coming budget period, the same period in which the US first agrees to cuts below BAU; (ii) all countries are asked in the future to make further cuts in accordance with a formula which sums a Progressive Reductions Factor, Latecomer Catch-up Factor, and Gradual Equalization Factor. An earlier proposal for specific parameter values in the formulas achieved the environmental goal that CO2 concentrations plateau at 500 ppm by 2100. It obeyed our political constraints: keeping the economic cost for every country below thresholds of Y=1% of income in Present Discounted Value, and X=5% of income in the worst period. In this paper we attain a concentration goal of 460 ppm CO2, but only by loosening political constraints.