Utilitarian benchmarks for emissions and pledges promote equity, climate and development
- 13 September 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Climate Change
- Vol. 11 (10), 827-833
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01130-6
Abstract
Tools are needed to benchmark carbon emissions and pledges against criteria of equity and fairness. However, standard economic approaches, which use a transparent optimization framework, ignore equity. Models that do include equity benchmarks exist, but often use opaque methodologies. Here we propose a utilitarian benchmark computed in a transparent optimization framework, which could usefully inform the equity benchmark debate. Implementing the utilitarian benchmark, which we see as ethically minimal and conceptually parsimonious, in two leading climate–economy models allows for calculation of the optimal allocation of future emissions. We compare this optimum with historical emissions and initial nationally determined contributions. Compared with cost minimization, utilitarian optimization features better outcomes for human development, equity and the climate. Peak temperature is lower under utilitarianism because it reduces the human development cost of global mitigation. Utilitarianism therefore is a promising inclusion to a set of benchmarks for future explorations of climate equity.This publication has 47 references indexed in Scilit:
- Developed and developing world responsibilities for historical climate change and CO 2 mitigationProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012
- “Decent Living” Emissions: A Conceptual FrameworkSustainability, 2012
- Politically Feasible Emissions Targets to Attain 460 ppm CO2ConcentrationsReview of Environmental Economics and Policy, 2011
- Negishi welfare weights in integrated assessment models: the mathematics of global inequalityClimatic Change, 2010
- Economic aspects of global warming in a post-Copenhagen environmentProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010
- Carbon‐motivated Border Tax Adjustments: Old Wine in Green Bottles?The World Economy, 2010
- Who Should Abate Carbon Emissions? A NoteEnvironmental and Resource Economics, 2006
- The marginal impacts of CO2, CH4 and SF6 emissionsClimate Policy, 2006
- Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate ChangeLeiden Journal of International Law, 2005
- The damage costs of climate change towards a dynamic representationEcological Economics, 1996