Publication
The Paris Agreement relies on the reviewing process of national climate commitments to produce enhanced national pledges by virtue of national comparisons. At present, most reviews are based on equity principles, which countries have little agreement on. The recently published paper “Solely economic mitigation strategy suggests upward revision of nationally
The Paris Agreement relies on the reviewing process of national climate commitments to produce enhanced national pledges by virtue of national comparisons. At present, most reviews are based on equity principles, which countries have little agreement on. The recently published paper “Solely economic mitigation strategy suggests upward revision of nationally determined contributions” (Pu Yang, Zhifu Mi, Yun-Fei Yao, Yun-Fei Cao, D’Maris Coffman, Lan-Cui Liu) provides an alternative perspective to the current discussion and treats emission reduction as a solely economic behavior motivated by avoiding future economic damages from climate change. Assuming no consensus over equity or international cooperation, the RICE model has been used to generate a solely economic mitigation pathway up to 2100. At each term, the national climate damage caused by an additional unit of carbon emission is no higher than the additional mitigation cost. This solely economic emission path can be informative for countries to control their national emissions at an economically favorable level while providing an alternative economic perspective for comparing national pledges.