Self-preservation strategy for approaching global warming targets in the post-Paris Agreement era

Abstract

A strategy that informs on countries' potential losses due to lack of climate action may facilitate global climate governance. Here, we quantify a distribution of mitigation effort whereby each country is economically better off than under current climate pledges. This effort-sharing optimizing approach applied to a 1.5°C and 2°C global warming threshold suggests self-preservation emissions trajectories to inform NDCs enhancement and longterm strategies. Results show that following the current emissions reduction efforts, the whole world would experience a washout of benefit, amounting to almost 126.68-616.12 trillion dollars until 2100 compared to 1.5°C or well below 2°C commensurate action. If countries are even unable to implement their current NDCs, the whole world would lose more benefit, almost 149.78-791.98 trillion dollars until 2100. On the contrary, all countries will be able to have a significant positive cumulative net income before 2100 if they follow the selfpreservation strategy.

The 2020 special report of the MJA–Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: lessons learnt from Australia’s “Black Summer”

“…Extensive research has made clear that the benefits of a low carbon transition combined with avoided costs of climate change far outweigh any initial investment costs. One recent study estimated that, compared with current commitments, limiting warming to 1.5°C by 2100 would generate a global accumulated net benefit of US$264–610 trillion; that is, 3.1–7.2 times the 2018 global economy 51 . Recent trends in economic losses due to climate‐related extreme events and economic costs of air pollution (indicators 4.1 and 4.2) are presented in this section, with other indicators of the transition to a zero carbon economy, including investments and employment in zero carbon energy, returning in 2021.…”

COVID-19: Lessons for the climate change emergency

“…Multiple studies have shown that climate-change prevention (mitigation) is also far more economically efficient solution than adaptation, with alarming figures of the economic consequences of not implementing mitigation actions globally (Burke et al, 2015;Glanemann et al, 2020;Wei et al, 2020). Two changes in policy may be useful for the future: (i) Climate change prevention can be communicated as an investment without necessary return, in a similar way that most of us frame personal health insurance, where we accept expenditure to protect from potentially negative outcomes that may never come to pass.…”

Integrating climate action for health into covid-19 recovery plans

“…Phasing out fossil fuels could, for example, avert about 3.6 million premature deaths related to air pollution annually in the near term, and mitigate climate change effects in the medium to long term 17. Global action required to meet the 1.5°C target is estimated to deliver an economic benefit of $264tn-$610tn by 2100 18…”