Climate Policy References

1. For an overview of the discounting debate, see discussion in Portney, P.R. and J.P. Weyant, eds., 1999: Discounting and intergenerational equity. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 186 p.

2. For example, see references in Rosenzweig, C. and Parry, M., 1994: Potential impact of climate change on world food Supply. Nature, 367, 133-138.

3. For example, Kaiser H. M., Riha S., Wilks D., Rossiter D., Sampath R., 1993: A farm-level analysis of economic and agronomic impacts of gradual climate warming. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 75: 387-398; Schneider S.H., 1996c: The future of climate: Potential for interaction and surprises. In T E Downing (ed.) Climate Change and World Food Security. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, NATO ASI Series 137: 77-113, 1996; Morgan G., Dowlatabadi H., 1996: Learning from integrated assessment of climate change. Climatic Change 34(3-4), 337-68; Kolstad C. D., Kelly, D. L., Mitchell G., 1999: Adjustment costs from environmental change induced by incomplete information and learning. Department of Economics, UCSB working paper.

4. For example, National Academy of Sciences, 1991: Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming: Mitigation, Adaptation, and the Science Base. Panel on Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

5. For example, Rosenberg N.J. (ed.), 1993: Towards an integrated impact assessment of climate change: The MINK study. Climatic Change (Special Issues) 24, 1-173; Rosenzweig and Parry, 1994; Reilly et al., 1996.

6. For example, Mendelsohn et al., 1994; Mendelsohn R., Nordhaus W., Shaw D., 1996: Climate impacts on aggregate farm value: Accounting for adaptation. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 80, 55-66; Mendelsohn R., Morrison W., Schlesinger M., Andronova N., 2000: Country-specific market impacts of climate change. Climatic Change, 45(3-4): 553-569.

7. For example, as recommended by Carter T.R, Parry M. L., Harasawa H., Nishioka S., 1994: IPCC Technical Guidelines for Assessing Climate Change Impacts and Adaptations. Summary for Policy Makers and a Technical Summary. Department of Geography, University College London, UK and the Center for Global environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan. pp 59.

8. For example, as advocated by Yohe, G.W., 1991: Uncertainty, Climate Change, and the Economic Value of Information: An Economic Methodology for Evaluating the Timing and Relative Efficacy of Alternative Response to Climate Change with Application to Protecting Developed Property from Greenhouse induced Sea Level Rise. Policy Science, 24(3): 245 269; Morgan and Dowlatabadi, 1996; Schneider, 1997d.

9. For example, Titus and Narayanan, 1996, combine climate models with expert subjective opinion to derive a statistical distribution for future sea level rise, or Morgan and Dowlatabadi, 1996, present a probability distribution comparing CO₂ emission abatement costs to averted climate damages.

10. The sustainability approach is sometimes also referred to as the Tolerable Windows approach (Toth et al. 1997) and the Safe Landings Approach (Alcamo and Kreileman, 1996).

11. It should be noted that the EU also adopted a maximum of 550 PPM CO₂ equivalent target. It can be seen from the IPCC stabilization scenarios that the concentration target and the temperature targets are compatible, but a 550-PPM concentration would require that the climate sensitivity is low. Thus, the EU negotiating positions and their energy policies need to be cognizant of the possibility that a more stringent concentration target than 550 PPM may be required. The Swedish government recently stated that it supports a global 550 PPM CO₂ equivalent target (which is roughly equivalent to a 450 PPM CO₂ target), and that it will work in favor of such a target.