Climate discussions like those we’ve just been seeing at the UN summit in Katowice, Poland tend to focus on working together to deliver existing climate commitments and raising ambition—getting countries to reduce more GHG emissions, faster. But there’s an equally important issue that gets far less attention: ensuring climate action is delivered in a way that doesn’t leave anyone behind, particularly the world’s most vulnerable people.
See Helen Mountford and Molly McGregors’ latest blog post on how carbon pricing can benefit the poor and reduce emissions.
The Arab Gulf States – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE –are highly vulnerable to oil price shocks due to their high economic reliance on oil and gas export revenues. Historically, oil price shocks have been a source of pressure on the Arab Gulf States economies. However, only since mid-2014 have oil prices seemed to pressure on political regimes to consider domestic economic reforms and development of alternative sources of income (i.e. economic diversification).
To avoid long-term negative implications – such as increasing total CO2 emissions and deterioration of air quality associated with increasing downstream petrochemical energy intensive industries, fossil fuel subsidy reforms, enhancing energy efficiency and the use of clean energy technologies are indeed instrumental to tackle such issues. In this article, carbon pricing is proposed as a useful instrument to complement the aforementioned tools.
To address the global development risks posed by climate change, a major technological shift leading to a substantial reduction in the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be necessary. In parallel, the substantial global economic and development distortions - that lead to inequality - do not enable the technological and financial transfers needed for a sustainable and equitable global economy. This brings us to a fundamental question: when climate change only imposes an additional threat of unseen scale, how can we change the economic status-quo?
Statoil has been operating in a market where an external carbon price has existed since the early 1990s. Due to CO2 tax and other regulatory measures the oil and gas industry in Norway has adopted emission-reduction measures corresponding to more than five million tonnes of CO2 per annum since 1996. Consequently, Norwegian oil and gas production is in the global premier division for low GHG emissions and the average amount emitted per unit produced is about half the world average.
Welcome to Sweden. We can serve you a beer or a glass of milk with a very low carbon footprint, thanks to our carbon tax. This tax dates back to 1991. It was one of the earliest carbon taxes, and it is today the highest imposed by any government.
New CPLC Partner Svebio takes a deeper look at the Swedish carbon tax’s positive impact on the food industry.
Putting a price on carbon pollution is recognized as an effective, transparent and efficient policy approach to reducing GHG emissions. Indeed, pricing carbon emissions is much more beneficial than paying its developmental, economic, and health costs! The good news is: more and more countries are taking advantage of this economic instrument and the number of carbon pricing initiatives (such as Carbon Tax or Emission Trading Scheme - ETS) has tripled in the last decade
Read Chandni Dinakaran’s blog post on how the World Bank Group is mapping carbon pricing initiatives around the world.
The Intergovenmental Panel on Climate Change this month published its special report on what action is required to keep global temperature increases to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But real demand for change is growing at ground level. Consumers around the world are paying greater attention to the environment and the climate, and making changes to their own lifestyles. Alexis Leroy, the CEO and Founder of Allcot Group, makes the case for bottom-up action.
Dominica, a small-island state in the Caribbean, is among the countries most exposed to natural hazards. In response, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has expressed “plans to make Dominica the first climate resilient nation in the world”. This includes through strengthening the resilience of Dominica’s physical infrastructure and natural environment, but also through building greater fiscal resilience, flexibility and ability to cope with climate events and shocks. Read more in David Cal MacWilliam’s post.
Nathaniel Keohane, Senior Vice President for Climate Change at the Environmental Defense Fund, emphasizes how, in his words, we can no longer discuss our economic future without considering the enormous costs of climate change. Building off the recent Nobel prize in economics awarded to his former teacher and colleague William Nordhaus, Keohane highlights the costs of climate change, but also the real opportunities a low-carbon economy presents. A case Nordhaus has made for the last quarter century.
The 12th edition of the Latin America and Caribbean Climate Week, which took place this year in Montevideo, Uruguay from August 20-23, concluded its program with showcasing groundbreaking action underway in the region to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build climate resilience to improve sustainability and readiness to tackle the impacts of climate change.
The landmark Paris Agreement to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy marked a sea change in the global fight against climate change. A swelling tide of carbon-limiting regulations has since emerged, shifting the narrative from what once was a largely ethical debate about the sustainability of our planet for future generations, to a material set of risks and opportunities for the global economy and financial markets, today.
Earlier this month, a new kind of player emerged on carbon pricing: colleges and universities. They are not only implementing carbon prices; they are researching and sharing their work. Casey Pickett provides a recap from the launch of the Toolkit for Internal Carbon Pricing in Higher Education and calls for greater engagement from leaders in higher-education.
The impacts of the changing climate are becoming increasingly evident, especially for the most vulnerable people in the world. We must limit the carbon and other greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, as outlined in the Paris Agreement. There is no Plan B because, as President Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has said, “There is no Planet B.”
