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Abstract This paper analyzes alternative pricing schemes for funding investment in climate policies. This paper proposes a new policy scenario, explicitly disentangling the issue of burden sharing of financing new investments from the issue of taxation energy consumption and therefor emissions. We compare traditional allocation schemes with an optimal Ramsey pricing by applying demand elasticity values, derived from empirical estimations of household behavior for the 106 leading countries in the world, representing around 90% of total world energy consumption and carbon emissions in 2014. We calculate country-specific alternative taxation options: uniform, equitable and Ramsey pricing schemes, applied to households, assessing the related welfare effects. Our results show that the optimal pricing scheme, for a given investment need, can improve world welfare at the expenses of equitable considerations. In addition, the aggregate societal benefit outweighs the losses associated with specific group of countries, paving the way for easier political agreement, using compensation schemes to redistribute the proceeds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

In this paper, I set out some of the key aspects of the Paris COP 21 Climate Change Agreement. The Paris Agreement was initially reported as a major success. However, this was in so far as many thought any kind of agreement at all was unlikely, and because the Agreement includes Article 2: an aspiration to maintain average global temperature increases to significantly less than 2°C. I then ask the question: if the Paris Agreement is a success of sorts, has anything fundamental changed in order to translate the conditional success of achieving an agreement into an actual success that will realise the goals of the Agreement? I address this in terms of early assessment of trends and the Nationally Determined Contributions, how responsibility is positioned in the Agreement, and the political economy context, which has called forth the need for an agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] more...

UN Climate talks have become an annual fixture on the global diplomatic calendar since 1995. Some have been praised, others denounced, but the levels of greenhouse gas emissions have risen regardless year-on-year. This essay and eyewitness account argues that the Paris COP 21 talks like its predecessors failed to deliver a meaningful result, judged from either a scientific or social justice point-of-view. However it did reveal the presence of a growing and increasingly sophisticated and powerful climate justice movement that heralds the most hope for a just response to the global climate crisis [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] more...

At this time, most climate researchers are only using a limited range of futures approaches: for example, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) future scenarios have been developed primarily with empirical predictive methods that extrapolate trends. These seriously underestimate the risk of nonlinear developments and critical failures. This article examines the Paris Climate Conference (COP) 21 agreement on climate mitigation; explains why current efforts are based on false assumptions and likely to fail; argues that holistic, integrative methods are needed to avoid disaster; and uses these methods to develop a practical strategy for accelerating systemic transformation. Despite the impressive diplomatic achievements of the Paris Agreement, there is a dangerous lag between the pace of political, economic, and technological change and the rapid (nonnegotiable) rate of climate change. The challenge is to find ways to manage the conflict between the need to work within existing institutional frameworks and the reality that they are not (and may be structurally incapable of) acting quickly enough to prevent catastrophic outcomes. This dichotomy may be resolved by using a three-track strategy: the first track will focus on accelerating existing climate mitigation efforts by encouraging decision-makers to use holistic, critical-safety risk management methods. The second track will counter ideological opposition with constructive alternative narratives. The third track will help catalyze the global movement needed to empower structural transformation and the emergence of a sustainable global system. It will not be possible to resolve many complex global socioecological problems (climate, water, food, energy, growing inequality, etc.) without transformational change. Integrative, whole-systems methods are now needed to accelerate the evolution of a sustainable global system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

The 2015 UN climate negotiations in Paris resulted in an inclusive, binding treaty that succeeds the Kyoto Protocol. In contrast to the failure at Copenhagen in 2009, the Paris negotiations are therefore seen as a major diplomatic success that has regenerated faith in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as a forum for dynamic multilateralism. The Paris Agreement provides a robust framework for ratcheting up efforts to combat global warming. However, the Agreement’s value will remain unclear for some time. The historical path to the Paris accord is outlined, and a preliminary assessment is offered of its key elements and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

The text deals with a research project, on international networks, which is concomitantly carried out in schools of São Paulo, in Brazil and in twelve other countries. The guiding reference point is Edgar Morin's epistemolgy of complexity and the multidimensional methodology consists in bibliographic and field research: observation, focus groups, interviews and seminarswith pupils of three Secondary Schools of São Paulo. In the final phase, the research has duration of four school years and the first phase, culminating in the presentation of the results in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21), in Paris, in the year of 2015.On the basis of an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinaryapproach of the knowledge about climate change, we understand that school can sensibilise the pupils to the broadening of the ecological view of reality. The purpose of this text is to present the first results of observations of this study, the primordial objective of which is to establish responsible actions for the exercise of planetary citizenship, among Secondary School pupils. We wish young people to become conscious citizens in their choices and in their social, ethical and political commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

This article offers a comparative reading of two books: Gouverner le climat ? 20 ans de négociations internationales, by Stefan Aykut and Amy Dahan, and This changes everything. Capitalism vs the climate, by Naomi Klein. Both works acknowledge the same fact: climate change governance has not yet broken the deadlock. But, since the actors selected as the key elements of these analyses are different, the dynamics described and the strategies prescribed differ somewhat. In the end, a joint reading of these two books provides a wide insight into recent changes in the balance of power relative to the climate change regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

ClimaCOP is a collaborative research project that focuses on the December 2015 COP21 Climate Conference in Paris. It brings together a diverse group of social scientists all working on environmental issues. The originality of the ClimaCOP project results from its focus on the dialogical movement between the "globalization of the climate" and the "climatization of the world". The climate issue has become a global one in the sense that it has "taken on" new issues such as development or energy; issues that transcend the sole environmental framework. Simultaneously, a growing number of actors have started to "climatize" their discourses. They are re-framing their primary areas of work (for instance agriculture or biodiversity) in "climate terms". The ClimaCOP project's originality also stems from its collaborative methodology. This should enable us to better apprehend a transnational mega-event such as the COP21, characterized by the number and diversity of actors involved, the meetings, initiatives, and discussions organized, and the issues addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

A poverty --adaptation --mitigation window within the Green Climate Fund. The stakes for poverty alleviation and the measures required to avoid unbridled climate change are inextricably linked: climate change will slow down and may even reverse trends in poverty reduction while trajectories consistent with a 2°C limitation of climate warming require that strategies for poverty alleviation integrate the constraint of low carbon development. Until now, existing climate funds have failed in targeting poverty alleviation as a high priority strategy for adaptation or as a component of low carbon development. The article proposes the creation of a financing window within the Green Climate Fund focusing on synergies between poverty alleviation, adaptation and mitigation. This financial mechanism is based on indicators of satisfaction of basic needs. It could offer an answer to developing countries that consider poverty alleviation as their first priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...