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Just Economics: Conservator not hegemon
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February 24, 2022
Volume XXIX, Number 25
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Conservator not hegemon
by Tom Mayer
How can the United States achieve lasting greatness? I claim that the best way of gaining really durable eminence is by dismantling our pernicious military-industrial complex and becoming a comprehensive environment conservator. Evidence about climate change, reviewed below, provides strong support for this contention. e Paris Climate Accords (PCA) is an international treaty on climate change adopted at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held near Paris, France. e Accords have been accepted by 193 countries. e United States left the PCA under Trump but returned in 2021 under Biden. Iran is the only major carbon emitter that has not accepted the Paris Climate Accords. e purpose of PCA is to keep mean global temperatures well below 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. Preferably, mean global temperatures would be limited to 1.5 degrees centigrade above preindustrial levels, but this would require global carbon emissions to be cut in half by 2030. A related goal of PCA is to achieve global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. e Paris Climate Accords require that each country set carbon emission targets and report regularly on progress toward reaching these targets.
Every ve years new and more stringent emissions should be established. e Accords also encourage developed (i.e. rich) countries to provide nancial support to developing countries enabling the latter to reach their emissions targets.
Environmentalists have criticized the PCA on several grounds. First, countries are free to set whatever emissions targets they wish. Second, there is no enforcement mechanism requiring that countries actually meet their emission targets. ird, the targets actually chosen are entirely insu cient for reaching even the 2 degree centigrade objective. Supporters of the PCA acknowledge the validity of these criticisms but interpret the Accords as a valuable base from which progress can be made.
Every two years the United Nations Environment Program, in collaboration with the Stockholm Environment Institute, publishes a comprehensive Production Gap Report that “tracks the discrepancy between governments’ planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent