Prospects for Paris 2015: do major emitters want the same climate ?

Simon Buckle (), Mirabelle Muûls (), Joerg Leib and Thierry Bréchet
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Simon Buckle: Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London
Joerg Leib: Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London

No 2014008, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: International negotiations have failed to achieve an ambitious outcome to limit climate risks. A Cournot outcome where countries determine their mitigation commitments in the full knowledge of those by others could be an important step. It would avoid a Stackelberg (leader-follower) outcome where one or more major emitters impose a level of climate risk on the rest of the world. This requires these countries to have sufficiently similar preferences over global cumulative emissions. We develop a novel stylised economic growth model to analyse the dynamics of international negotiations. Economies can be classified according to their committed emissions and the initial level of atmospheric CO2. We define a new metric, the desired mitigation effort, which provides an empirical methodology for comparing and evaluating countries’ mitigation commitments. A numerical calibration suggests a degree of convergence between the major emitters that might allow a Cournot-style agreement at the Paris Conference in 2015.

Keywords: climate change; climate damages; economic growth; game theory; international climate negotiations; mitigation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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