Safe vs. Fair: A Formidable Trade-Off in Tackling Climate Change

28 Pages Posted: 30 Aug 2011 Last revised: 1 Sep 2011

See all articles by Massimo Tavoni

Massimo Tavoni

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM); Princeton University - Princeton Environmental Institute

Shoibal Chakravarty

Divecha Centre for Climate Change, Indian Institute for Science

Robert Socolow

Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University; Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University

Date Written: August 29, 2011

Abstract

Global warming requires a response characterized by forward-looking management of atmospheric carbon and respect for ethical principles. Both safety and fairness must be pursued, and there are severe trade-offs as these are intertwined by the limited headroom for additional atmospheric CO2 emissions. This paper provides a simple numerical mapping at the aggregated level of developed vs. developing countries in which safety and fairness are formulated in terms of cumulative emissions and cumulative per capita emissions respectively. It becomes evident that safety and fairness cannot be achieved simultaneously for strict definitions of both. The paper further posits potential global trading in future cumulative emissions budgets in a world where financial transactions compensate for physical emissions: the safe vs. fair trade-off is less severe but remains formidable. Finally, we explore very large deployments of engineered carbon sinks and show that roughly 1000 GtCO2 of cumulative negative emissions over the century are required to have a significant effect, a remarkable scale of deployment. We also identify the unexplored issue of how such sinks might be treated in sub-global carbon accounting.

Keywords: climate policy, burden sharing, negative emissions

JEL Classification: Q01, Q56

Suggested Citation

Tavoni, Massimo and Chakravarty, Shoibal and Socolow, Robert, Safe vs. Fair: A Formidable Trade-Off in Tackling Climate Change (August 29, 2011). FEEM Working Paper No. 61.2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1918764 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1918764

Massimo Tavoni (Contact Author)

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) ( email )

Corso Magenta 63
20123 Milan
Italy

Princeton University - Princeton Environmental Institute

22 Chambers Street
Princeton, NJ 08544-0708
United States

Shoibal Chakravarty

Divecha Centre for Climate Change, Indian Institute for Science ( email )

IISc Campus
Bangalore, Karnataka 560012
India

Robert Socolow

Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University; Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University ( email )

22 Chambers Street
Princeton, NJ 08544-0708
United States

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