Mitigation options in a sustainable development world

Abstract

A sustainable world has often been assumed to be a world in which climate change will be dealt with automatically. But even in a future which emphasizes sustainability, there will still be limited resources and the need to balance competing demands on these resources. As the list of objectives for a sustainable world is quite long, climate objectives will need to compete with many other policy goals for resources. So it is of relevance to understand what the climatic outcomes of a sustainable world might be, what additional options to control emissions might be in place in this world, and how the costs might vary as additional policies are implemented, or assumptions about critical determinants of emissions vary. In this analysis, we focus on how a generic carbon tax varies as alternative assumptions about energy demand, the effectiveness of carbon sequestration, and climate goals are made. The result that emerges is that uncertainty is pervasive in the climate mitigation problem, and that despite the political difficulties of revisiting decisions on a regular basis, there is no way out of the need for adaptive policies which require constant reassessment of the goals and the effectiveness of the policies in place to reach these goals.