Regional efforts to mitigate climate change in China: A multi-criteria assessment approach

The task of mitigating climate change is usually allocated through administrative regions in China. In order to put pressure on regions that perform poorly in mitigating climate changes and highlight regions with best-practice climate policies, this study explored a method to assess regional efforts on climate change mitigation at the sub-national level. A climate change mitigation index (CCMI) was developed with 15 objective indicators, which were divided into four categories, namely, emissions, efficiency, non-fossil energy, and climate policy. The indicators’ current level and recent development were measured for the first three categories. The index was applied to assess China’s provincial performance in climate protection based on the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. Empirical results show that the middle Yangtze River area and southern coastal area perform better than other areas in mitigating climate change. The average performance of the northwest area in China is the worst. In addition, climate change mitigation performance has a negative linear correlation with energy self-sufficiency ratio but does not have a significant linear correlation with social development level. Therefore, regional resource endowments had better be paid much more attention in terms of mitigating climate change because regions with good resource endowments in China tend to perform poorly

Safe vs. Fair: A formidable trade-off in tackling climate change

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 tradeoff is less severe but remains formidable. Finally, we explore very large deployment of engineered carbon sinks and show that roughly 1,000 Gt CO2 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

Gesamtwirtschaftliche Beurteilung von CO_2 Minderungsstrategien

In Germany, a comprehensive pogramme was launched in the past years for the purpose of achieving a 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2005 as compared to the reference year 1990. The catalogue of measures ranges from legal regulations to economic incentives and to information and consulting. This investigation investigates the reduction effects to be expected from these measures as well as the sectoral and general economic cost effects. The interdependences between clean air policy on the one hand and sectoral and general economic goals like acceptable economic growth, stable prices and a level foreign trade balance are to be defined. (orig./RHM)In Deutschland wurde in den letzten Jahren ein umfassendes Minderungsprogramm auf den Weg gebracht, mit dem eine Verringerung der CO_2-Emissionen bis zum Jahr 2005 gegenueber 1990 um 25 vH erreicht werden soll; das Massnahmenbuendel reicht von ordnungsrechtlichen Ge- und Verboten ueber oekonomische Anreize bis hin zu Information und Aufklaerung. Die vorliegende Untersuchung stellt die mit diesem Massnahmenkatalog verbundenen Reduktionswirkungen wie auch die sektoralen und gesamtwirtschaftlichen Kostenimpulse im Detail dar. Ziel ist es, den Zusammenhang zwischen Klimaschutzpolitik einerseits, sektoralen und gesamtwirtschaftlichen Zielen wie angemessenes Wirtschaftswachstum, stabiles Preisniveau oder aussenwirtschaftliches Gleichgewicht andererseits sichtbar zu machen. (orig./RHM)Available from TIB Hannover: RR 2401(19) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Historical responsibility for climate change : science and the science-policy interface

Since 1990, the academic literature on historical responsibility (HR) for climate change has grown considerably. Over these years, the approaches to defining this responsibility have varied considerably. This article demonstrates how this variation can be explained by combining various defining aspects of historical contribution and responsibility. Scientific knowledge that takes for granted choices among defining aspects will likely become a basis for distrust within science, among negotiators under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and elsewhere. On the other hand, for various reasons, not all choices can be explicated at all times. In this article, we examine the full breadth of complexities involved in scientifically defining HR and discuss how these complexities have consequences for the science–policy interface concerning HR. To this end, we review and classify the academic literature on historical contributions to and responsibility for climate change into categories of defining aspects. One immediately policy-relevant conclusion emerges from this exercise: Coupled with negotiators’ highly divergent understandings of historical responsibility, the sheer number of defining aspects makes it virtually impossible to offer scientific advice without creating distrust in certain parts of the policy circle. This conclusion suggests that scientific attempts to narrow the options for policymakers will have little chance of succeeding unless policymakers first negotiate a clearer framework for historical responsibility