Carbon Abatement Costs and Climate Change Finance (Policy Analyses in International Economics)

Envoys at the recent United Nations meeting in Cancun, Mexico, agreed to a climateprotection package, which included a fund that would manage a significant share; of the $100 billion pledged in 2009 by developed countries for poorer nations. The money pledged begs the very real question of what are the real economic costs of a coordinated international effort to curb global warming? Cline, whose previous work in this area has garnered a number of awards, develops a framework that helps determine these costs. He defines an emissions baseline for each of the 25 largest emitting nations (the European Union is treated as a single entity in this study) and looks at trends in population growth, per capita GDP growth, growth in the energy efficiency of output, and how much carbon dioxide emission can be reduced going forward. Carbon Abatement Costs and Climate Change Finance also investigates the policy paths needed to not only abate carbon dioxide emissions growth but also decrease it.