This article is taken from World Energy (WE) number 48 – The New Order
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. The science is clear: human activities have already caused approximately 1 degree C of global warming above preindustrial levels, and this is likely to reach 1.5 degree C between 2030 and 2050 if it continues to increase at the current rate. In the Paris Agreement, governments have committed to limiting temperature increase to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 degree C. Keeping global warming below this safer limit will require global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to quickly decline by at least 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050, with negative emissions thereafter. In short, the world has to substantially accelerate climate change mitigation actions to exclude a possibly catastrophic climate scenario. In a recent paper published in Nature, we propose forming a climate club to incentivize countries to decarbonize quickly. It aims to solve a fundamental problem of climate policy, that of freeriding on others’ emissions abatements. Indeed, emissions abatement costs are largely national but the benefits from climate stability are global. The United States under President Trump, for example, dropped out of the Paris agreement, citing “unfairness” as the reason. Dealing with this classical free-riding problem needs to be at the core of a new climate strategy. In our view, a climate club would be an ideal model to solve free riding and decrease global emissions rapidly.