Holistic greenhouse gas management: mitigating the threat of abrupt climate change in the next few decades

Working Paper 2007/01 - Holistic greenhouse gas management: mitigating the threat of abrupt climate change in the next few decades.
Peter Read and Aroon Parshotam, Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ, 2007

The intellectual origins of the Kyoto emissions cap are traced and a potentially alternative holistic greenhouse gas management strategy, addressed to the threat of abrupt climate change in the next few decades, is described. Its first stage is the growth of a large-scale, global bio-energy market involving world trade in bio-fuels, and of a strategic reserve stock of biomass raw material in new plantation forests. Later stages, more costly – as needs may be in response to possible future precursors of imminent abrupt climate change – would involve linking CO2 capture and sequestration to bio-energy, yielding a negative emissions energy system. Illustrative calculations point to the feasibility of a return to pre-industrial CO2 levels before mid-century. This possibility result is subject to caveats, but, prima facie, the first stage can provide several environmental and socio-economic side-benefits while yielding a positive financial return if oil prices remain above 35$/bbl. The ‘vision’ is that the polluter pays principle can be turned to energy sector investments in widespread land improvements that secure large scale biomass raw material supplies and offer some prospect of mitigating abrupt climate change should it become imminent.