The Climate Change Carbon Conundrum: How Fast Should We Decarbonize and Who Should Fund the Abatement Costs?
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Waiting to make substantial investments to decarbonize the economy will result in continued increases in carbon emissions, increasing carbon concentrations in the atmosphere and increasing climate damage as temperatures continue to increase. But investing in decarbonizing the economy is expensive and it diverts resources from other uses such as food production, housing, education and investing to increase future production. So how much should we spend on decarbonizing the economy --- how much is enough? And what is the most appropriate time path for these expenditures. The Climate Change Carbon Conundrum by Robert Kelly tackles these issues by means of an integrated assessment approach based on the DICE model developed by Nobel Prize winning economist William Nordhaus. The Decarbonization Model developed in The Climate Change Carbon Conundrum reviews alternative decarbonization scenarios including Business as Usual Scenario, the Net Zero Scenario, the 2 Degree C Scenario and compares them to an Optimal Scenario which balances the cost of decarbonizing the economy (abatement costs) with future climate damage. The result is a carbon emissions path that should be politically expedient but also controversial both in terms of domestic US politics as well as the international arena. Not only does the author detail the investment required and the time path for decarbonization but also how the international community should fund the costs of decarbonization. An exciting and controversial approach to dealing with one of the most challenging public policy questions of our time.
