Abstract
Peak human-induced warming is primarily determined by cumulative CO2 emissions up to the time they are reduced to zero1,2,3. In an idealized economically optimal scenario4,5, warming continues until the social cost of carbon, which increases with both temperature and consumption because of greater willingness to pay for climate change avoidance in a prosperous world, exceeds the marginal cost of abatement at zero emissions, which is the cost of preventing, or recapturing, the last net tonne of CO2 emissions. Here I show that, under these conditions, peak warming is primarily determined by two quantities that are directly affected by near-term policy: the cost of ‘backstop’ mitigation measures available as temperatures approach their peak (those whose cost per tonne abated does not increase as emissions fall to zero); and the average carbon intensity of growth (the ratio between average emissions and the average rate of economic growth) between now and the time of peak warming. Backstop costs are particularly important at low peak warming levels. This highlights the importance of maintaining economic growth in a carbon-constrained world and reducing the cost of backstop measures, such as large-scale CO2 removal, in any ambitious consumption-maximizing strategy to limit peak warming.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).
Allen, M. R. et al. Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne. Nature 458, 1163–1166 (2009).
Gillett, N. P. et al. Constraining the ratio of global warming to cumulative CO2 emissions using CMIP5 simulations. J. Clim. 26, 6844–6858 (2013).
Nordhaus, W. A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies (Yale Univ. Press, 2008).
Golosov, M., Hassler, J., Krusell, P. & Tsyvinski, A. Optimal taxes on fossil fuel in general equilibrium. Econometrica 82, 41–88 (2013).
Stern, N. Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).
Pindyck, R. S. Climate change policy: what do the models tell us? J. Econ. Lit. 51, 860–872 (2013).
Nordhaus, W. Estimates of the social cost of carbon: concepts and results from the DICE-2013R model and alternative approaches. J. Assoc. Environ. Res. Econ. 1, 273–312 (2014).
Held, H. et al. Efficient climate policies under technology and climate uncertainty. Energy Econ. 31, S50–S61 (2009).
Schmidt, M. G. W. et al. Climate targets under uncertainty: challenges and remedies. Climatic Change 104, 783–791 (2011).
Tol, R. The social cost of carbon: trends, outliers and catastrophes. Economics 2, 2008-25 (2008).
Weitzman, M. On modeling and interpreting the economics of catastrophic climate change. Rev. Econ. Stat. 91, 1–19 (2009).
Hope, C. Critical issues for the calculation of the social cost of CO2: why the estimates from PAGE09 are higher than those from PAGE2002. Climatic Change 117, 531–543 (2013).
Moyer, E. J. et al. Climate impacts on economic growth as drivers of uncertainty in the social cost of carbon. J. Leg. Stud. 43, 401–426 (2014).
Dietz, S. & Stern, N. Endogenous growth, convexity of damage and climate risk: how Nordhaus’ framework supports deep cuts in carbon emissions. Econ. J. 125, 574–620 (2015).
Held, I., Winton, M., Takahashi, K., Delworth, T. & Zeng, F. Probing the fast and slow components of global warming by returning abruptly to preindustrial forcing. J. Clim. 23, 2418–2427 (2010).
Ricke, K. L. & Caldeira, K. Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission. Environ. Res. Lett. 9, 124002 (2014).
Joos, F., Roth, R. & Fuglestvedt, J. S. et al. Carbon dioxide and climate impulse response functions for the computation of greenhouse gas metrics: a multi-model analysis. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 13, 2793–2825 (2013).
Friedlingstein, P. et al. Climate carbon cycle feedback analysis: results from the C4MIP model intercomparison. J. Clim. 19, 3337–3353 (2006).
Herrington, T. & Zickfeld, K. Path independence of climate and carbon cycle response over a broad range of cumulative carbon emissions. Earth Syst. Dynam. 5, 409–422 (2014).
Otto, F. E. L., Frame, D. J., Otto, A. & Allen, M. R. Embracing uncertainty in climate change policy. Nature Clim. Change 5, 917–920 (2015).
Shindell, D. et al. Simultaneously mitigating near-term climate change and improving human health and food security. Science 335, 183–189 (2012).
Clarke, L. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change (eds Edenhofer, O. et al.) Ch. 6, 413–510 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).
van der Ploeg, F. Untapped fossil fuel and the green paradox: a classroom calibration of the optimal carbon tax. Environ. Econ. Policy Stud. 17, 185–210 (2015).
Rozenberg, J., Davies, S. J., Narloch, U. & Hallegatte, S. Climate constraints on the carbon intensity of economic growth. Environ. Res. Lett. 10, 095006 (2015).
Kriegler, E., Edenhofer, O., Reuster, L., Luderer, G. & Klein, D. Is atmospheric carbon dioxide removal a game changer for climate change mitigation? Climatic Change 118, 45–57 (2013).
Nordhaus, W. Climate Clubs: Overcoming Free-riding in International Climate Policy. Am. Econ. Rev. 105, 1339–1370 (2015).
Helm, D. The Carbon Crunch: How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong, and How to Fix it (Yale Univ. Press, 2012).
Adoption of the Paris Agreement FCCC/CP/2015/L.9/Rev.1 (UNFCCC, 2015).
Keith, D. W. Why capture CO2 from the atmosphere? Science 325, 1654–1655 (2009).
Nordhaus, W. & Sztorc, P. DICE2013R: Introduction and Users Manual 2nd edn (William Nordhaus, 2013); http://www.econ.yale.edu/∼nordhaus/homepage/documents/DICE_Manual_103113r2.pdf
Carbon Budget 2015 (Global Carbon Project, 2015); http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/index.htm
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank students on the University of Oxford ‘Physics of Climate Change’ and ‘Environmental Change and Management’ courses for their patience with early versions of the analysis; R. Millar for calculating for the IPCC WG3 scenarios and, with J. Boneham and Z. Nicholls, for checking the algebra; and C. Allen, B. Hahn, C. Hepburn, C. Hope and M. Weitzman for comments. This study was supported by the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship and the Kung Carl XVI Gustaf 50-årsfond.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The author declares no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Drivers of peak warming in a consumption-maximizing world. (XLSX 20 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Allen, M. Drivers of peak warming in a consumption-maximizing world. Nature Clim Change 6, 684–686 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2977
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2977
This article is cited by
-
An empirical study towards air pollution control in Agra, India: a case study
SN Applied Sciences (2020)
-
Simple Rules for Climate Policy and Integrated Assessment
Environmental and Resource Economics (2019)
-
How to spend a dwindling greenhouse gas budget
Nature Climate Change (2018)
-
The safe carbon budget
Climatic Change (2018)