Copy climate change, can it be useful to form a "climate club"?

In June 2022, leaders of many countries attended the G7 summit. One of the main issues of this summit was the global energy crisis. But as early as January this year, Germany had stated that he wanted to promote G7 to become the core of the International Climate Club. If the world's major economic energy establishs a "climate club" to reduce domestic emissions and levy carbon emissions tax on imported goods, this will encourage all countries to reduce carbon emissions.

If it can promote the establishment of the "Climate Club", it is possible to deal with climate change in handling climate change, but is it really so easy to achieve?

Sino -US European and European carbon emission reduction targets

In recent years, a series of catastrophic issues such as glaciers, forest fires, and sea level rising caused by global climate change have intensified. The report from the Special Committee of the UN Government Climate Change pointed out that the global climate has been warming significantly since the mid -20th century, and most of them can be attributed to greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide and methane) discharged from human activities.

2019-2020 Australian forest fire is closely related to the current climate change facing the earth.

Therefore, reducing carbon emissions has become the most urgent task and severe challenge to deal with the current global climate change.

And China, the United States, and the European Union emit half of the world's greenhouse gas each year, and countries hope that the world's largest economic energy can make an example on the issue of emission reduction.

Factory and power stations are a symbol of modern society, but it is also the main picture source of emission greenhouse gases: Asian Development Bank

The EU's original goal was to achieve "climatic neutrality" by 2050, promised to tighten the carbon pricing system, strengthen environmental supervision, and introduce "carbon border adjustment". This policy refers to The import or export high -carbon emission products are required to pay or refund the corresponding taxes or carbon quotas.

These measures will prevent enterprises from transferring production to countries with loose carbon emission law -this process is called "carbon leakage". Previously, such actions were not implemented because they were worried about trade war and political conflicts with the United States.

At the beginning of last year, Biden, who had just replaced Trump as the new US president, also made a similar commitment. The U.S. government will target investment in green projects and strengthen supervision to promote decarbon. Local enterprises need to bear cost for carbon emission in production, and goods imported from those in countries that fail to fulfill their climate and environmental obligations will implement "carbon border adjustments".

my country also announced in 2021 that China will achieve the goal of carbon peaks before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060. In the fourteenth five -year planning outline of the national economic and social development, the Chinese government has also proposed specific measures such as cleaning and low -carbon safe and efficient energy systems, in -depth promotion of low -carbon transformation in the fields of industrial, construction, and transportation Essence

A positive factor for forming a climate club

The world is good at all; Because China, the United States and the European Union ’s GDP (GDP) accounted for 61%of the world’ s global, the import volume of goods accounted for 43%of the world ’s worldwide, and there was no common participation of the above three. In fact, any form of global climate coordination mechanism is of little significance.

If it can form a situation with China, the United States and Europe as the core, it will have the motivation to join the mechanism with the three countries that trade with the three. For example, the trade agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom includes a common commitment to reduce emissions and implement carbon pricing. As the main exporter of exporting carbon -intensive products to the United States, Canada may also seek to join.

In addition, with the decline in emission reduction costs, the cost of joining this club will also decline. In the past ten years, the price of wind power has dropped by 70%, the cost of photovoltaic power generation has decreased by 90%, and photovoltaic and wind power have been the cheapest way to power generation in many countries.

Solar power generation picture source: wikipedia

At the same time, research also shows that the global land wind speed has been further increased recently, which will be a major benefit for the development of wind power.

Of course, public opinion supports the government to adopt strong and powerful climate actions, which is also a positive factor. A polls from the European Commission show that 93%of citizens believe that global warming is a serious problem.

The European Investment Bank's 2019-2020 climate survey shows that nearly three-quarters of Chinese people believe that climate change is the biggest challenge facing society. About half of the American people believe that responding to global climate change should be the primary task of president and Congress. Therefore, the establishment of a climate club and reaching the target of emission reduction is the choice of the public opinion of various countries.

What kind of challenges are facing?

Just like a coin will have two sides, of course, there will be a lot of challenges to set up a climate club.

For example, carbon border adjustment measures have never been implemented nationwide. So far, only California has adopted this method. In the California power market, power importers should be responsible for the emissions generated by other states. However, due to the low price of California and the loose environmental protection regulations, many enterprises are not willing to reduce emission reduction.

The current carbon price only covers 22%of the world's emissions, with an average of only $ 2 per ton. So far, other measures are only used to prevent carbon leakage, such as distributing emission limits to the European carbon market discharge. This system limits the cost of the carbon market industry. To achieve a more ambitious climate goal, climate policies need to be tightened, and control over cross -border trade also needs to be tightened. In addition, high -income countries have discharged more greenhouse gases in the past few decades, which requires that high -income countries have more responsibility for emission reduction than other countries. Therefore, how to define the responsibilities of various countries in emission reduction is a major challenge facing the "Global Climate Club".

In addition, in addition to carbon dioxide emissions in industrial production, a large amount of methane will also be released from the soil. This also requires club members to play a greater role. Corresponding technology can be encouraged, such as carbon -remove technology, curbing permanent frozen soil melting, etc., but these require a lot of capital investment.

This figure shows the global methane budget diagram from 2008 to 2017. The left side is methane emissions. Methane is mainly derived from the factory, agriculture and soil microorganisms. The right side is the absorption of methane. Seeing that the emissions of global methane are also positive, the greenhouse effect of methane is much stronger than carbon dioxide, so you must also control methane emissions. Image source/ The Global Carbon Project

Since the beginning of the year, major countries in the world have paid more and more attention to energy security issues. As an importer of energy in almost fully, the Japanese government said: "Energy security cannot be compromised." The European Union has even conducted fierce discussions on whether it is eligible for nuclear energy and fossil fuel gas to obtain green funds support for EU.

In June of this year, China and India announced their plans to increase domestic coal production to meet the surging market demand. In the next few decades, coal consumption will still be one of the core pillars of the two countries' economies.

How to achieve? Four steps

Everything is predefined and not abolished. Economy needs to take four important measures to form or join the "Climate Club".

First, various economies must strengthen and adjust domestic goals. Each economy can choose its own method -levy carbon tax, emission transaction plan or strengthen environmental supervision. However, regardless of the way, countries should formulate short -term commitments to achieve the common goal of carbon neutrality, and the time node should be roughly similar to avoid carbon leakage.

Secondly, the economies must be agreed on the methods of different climate tools. Researchers should develop reliable methods to evaluate carbon prices hidden in environmental regulations. When comparing these measures with carbon taxes, this is very important, and the common level of carbon border adjustment will be finally determined.

Third, the standards of various economies need to measure the standards of carbon content of complex commodities. To understand the carbon footprint of any product, you can collect the "carbon surcharge" (CAT) similar to VAT. Each production stage can be taxed, so that end users can pay all the carbon costs of the product.

Fourth, the tax and regulatory system must be transparent. The carbon border adjustment is important to comply with the WTO (China, the United States, and the European Union is a member of the WTO), which is very important. These rules allow economies to levy "equivalent" domestic taxes for imported products. If the charges adjusted by the carbon border are not closely consistent with the national climate goals, it may be considered protectiveism.

Realizing rapid emission reduction can prevent human society from encounter more global climate disasters. At the moment when the crossroads of the fate of human beings are standing, no matter what the form of the cross, countries need to work together.

Produced: Popular Science China

Author: Zhang Gangfeng (Ministry of Emergency Management-Ministry of Education Disaster Subtulation and Emergency Management Research Institute, Beijing Normal University's surface process and resource ecological country key laboratory)

Producer: China Science Popularization Expo

Edit: Wang Tingting

references:

1. IPCC. Climate Change 2014 – IMPACTS, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Regional

Aspects [m]. Cambridge university press, (2014).

2. Tagliapietra, S. & Wolff, G. B. Form A Climate Club: United States, EUROPEAN Union and China. Nature 591, 526–528 (2021).

3. Xinhua News Agency, the 14th five-year planning of the National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and the outline of the 2035 vision target, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2021LH/2021-03/13/1127205564.htmmm Essence

4. ZENG, Z. Et Al. A Reversal in Global Terrestric Stilling and ITS IMPLICATIONS for Wind Energy Production. Nature Climate Change 9, 979–985 (2019).Hosted, relying on the high -end scientific resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it is committed to spreading cutting -edge scientific knowledge and providing interesting science and education services.

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