Cumulative carbon emissions and economic policy: In search of general principles |
| |
| Institution: | 1. ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK;2. Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK;3. Oxford Martin School and Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford UK;4. Department of Micro-economics, Waroqué School of Economics and Management, University of Mons, Belgium |
| |
| Abstract: | We exploit recent advances in climate science to develop a physically consistent, yet surprisingly simple, model of climate policy. It seems that key economic models have greatly overestimated the delay between carbon emissions and warming, and ignored the saturation of carbon sinks that takes place when the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide rises. This has important implications for climate policy. If carbon emissions are abated, damages are avoided almost immediately. Therefore it is optimal to reduce emissions significantly in the near term and bring about a slow transition to optimal peak warming, even if optimal steady-state/peak warming is high. The optimal carbon price should start relatively high and grow relatively fast. |
| |
| Keywords: | Carbon price Climate change Cumulative emissions Peak warming Social cost of carbon Q54 H23 |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
