About the Price Carbon Project
contact us at PriceCarbon@gmail.com
Who: The Price Carbon Project is a collective effort by many scientists and policy experts to shift international climate negotiations to a productive path. The ideas come from many sources. Peter Cramton and Steven Stoft initiated this web site. We are grateful to Axel Ockenfels, Director of the Cologne Laboratory for Economic Research and to David MacKay, Chief Scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, UK, for their encouragement and suggestions.
Mission: The Kyoto approach started out towards a common carbon commitment—a 5.2% emissions reduction below 1990 levels. When this failed, Kyoto abandoned the common-commitment path in favor of altruistic “political will.” As a consequence, it now covers only 15% of global emissions. In addition to altruism, countries need to have self interests that have been better aligned with the common good by the use of a common commitment — a commitment to a single global price.
With regard to the rich-poor divide, the individual quantity-commitment approach actually creates antagonism. The Price Carbon Project is designed to expose the incentive problems inherent in this approach, and replace it with an approach designed to motivate cooperation.
Strategy: A powerful force will be needed to shift the current approach onto a common-commitment path. For these ideas to gain recognition, they must be presented simply and with a unified voice. And they must be championed by a variety of renowned policy experts, including scientists, environmentalists, negotiators, economists and political scientists. This site is intended to help coordinate such an effort.