Abstract
The idea of the carbon budget is a powerful conceptual tool to define and quantify the climate challenge. Whilst scientists present the carbon budget as the geophysical foundation for global net-zero targets, the financial metaphor of a budget implies figuratively the existence of a ‘budget manager’ who oversees the budget balance. Using this fictive character of budget manager as a heuristic device, the paper analyses the roles of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM) under a carbon budget. We argue that both CDR and SRM can be understood as ‘technologies of offset’. CDR offsets positive carbon emissions by negative emissions, whereas SRM offsets the warming from positive greenhouse gas forcing by the induced cooling from negative forcing. These offset technologies serve as flexible budgeting tools in two different strategies for budget management: they offer the promise of achieving a balanced budget, but also introduce the possibility for running a budget deficit. The lure of offsetting rests on the flexibility of keeping up an ‘appearance’ of delivering a given budget whilst at the same time easing budget constraints for a certain period of time. The political side-effect of offsetting is to change the stringency of budgetary constraints from being regulated by geophysics to being adjustable by human discretion. As a result, a budget deficit can be normalised as an acceptable fiscal condition. We suggest that the behavioural tendency of policymakers to avoid blame could lead them to resort to using offset technologies to circumvent the admission of failure to secure a given temperature target.
Highlights
To hold global temperature rise relative to pre-industrial levels to well below 2 °C, and pursuing efforts to limit the rise to 1.5 °C, Article 4 of the 2015 Paris Agreement set a mitigation target of achieving a “balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases” in the latter half of the twenty-first century
In the following two sections, we argue that a fictive budget manager could see both carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM) as ‘technologies of offset’ under a carbon budget (Section 4) and that these offset technologies might serve as flexible budgeting tools with regard to two different strategies for budget management (Section 5): they can both help sustain a balanced budget
Whilst CDR and SRM could be seen as flexible budgeting tools, how a budget manager might use these offset technologies for controlling the budgetary balance has yet to be fully realised
Summary
To hold global temperature rise relative to pre-industrial levels to well below 2 °C, and pursuing efforts to limit the rise to 1.5 °C, Article 4 of the 2015 Paris Agreement set a mitigation target of achieving a “balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases” in the latter half of the twenty-first century Since this so-called net-zero emissions target has become a central focal point in scientific and political discussions (Rogelj et al 2015b; Geden 2016a; Fuglestvedt et al 2018; Tanaka and O’Neil 2018; Rogelj et al 2019b, 2021). Such temporary or limited use of SRM is often justified as a supplement to—but not a substitute for—mitigation and CDR (Keith and MacMartin 2015; MacMartin et al 2018)
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