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What does it cost to destroy
– Almost nothing. Although more and more countries are taxing carbon dioxide emissions, according to the World Bank's latest report, only 4 percent have the tax rate required to achieve the temperature targets in the Paris Agreement, says Åsa Löfgren. She is an environmental economist, conducts research on climate and behavioural economics, and was an observer at the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg
– Being out with Lily is one of the best things there is, says Åsa Löfgren, who is on a lunch time walk with her dog in the December snow when the GU Journal catches up with her. She has recently returned from Glasgow, and most of her thinking revolves around what was achieved there, including the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact. – During the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009, work commenced on a bottom-up model, which was then formalized in the Paris Agreement in 2015. It means that the countries themselves set goals for their contribution to reducing climate change, something I was initially very hesitant about. Now in Glasgow, we also saw that the level of ambition was nowhere near sufficient. In the new Climate Pact, the countries have therefore committed themselves to updating their targets as early as by 2022. In the new Climate Pact, the countries have therefore committed themselves to updating their targets as early as by 2022. I try to be optimistic and hope that it will mean more ambitious plans. Other stakeholders, from cities to industrial and financial stakeholders, also seem to have been impressed by the bottom-up process, and are now coming up with goals and commitments themselves, Åsa Löfgren points out.
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GUJOURNAL DECEMBER 2021
– However, it remains to be seen how much difference these initiatives make. We know from the IPCC report that we must reduce global emissions by 40–50 percent in the coming decade; and for some countries the situation is already acute, such as for the Maldives, whose islands are at risk of being submerged by the sea.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is another
important but sensitive issue, says Åsa Löfgren. – The article concerns the countries' trade in emission reductions. For example, Brazil wanted to be able to sell emission reductions through the replanting of rainforest, but at the same time also wanted to be able to include the reductions themselves, i.e. a kind of double-entry bookkeeping. After intense discussions, however, they backed down. However, not only countries, but also private companies, want to trade in
