Round Up

Harvard Project on Climate Agreements Discussion Paper Summaries

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements prepares two-page summaries of many of its discussion papers, with the goal of making these papers more accessible to policy makers, leaders in business and non-governmental organizations, and other interested readers. The two-page summaries generally provide an overview of the paper, background on the topic, key findings, and conclusions.

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Policy Brief - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Belfer Center

Breaking the Climate Impasse with China: A Global Solution—Summary

| November 2009

International climate negotiations are at an impasse because the world's two largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, the United States and China, are unwilling to accept binding emission-reduction commitments. At the same time, each blames the other for its inaction. This paper proposes a global "deal" for breaking the deadlock in a way that reconciles both countries' economic concerns with the imperative of reducing emissions. The deal has two core elements: (1) All major emitting countries agree to reduce GHG emissions by implementing significant, mutually agreeable, domestic policies and (2) The largest industrialized-country emitters agree to establish a global Carbon Mitigation Fund that would finance the incremental cost of adopting low-carbon technologies in developing countries.