Putting a Price on Carbon Pollution Alone Unlikely to Help Reach Climate Goals

A new study by Imperial College London researchers shows that carbon taxes, which are the currently favored system for reaching this target, will not be enough to avoid catastrophic climate change.

They instead suggest that alongside carbon taxes, which put a price on emissions, there also need to be incentives for strategies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere.  They say this will encourage these strategies to be implemented at a commercial scale in order to reach the Paris Agreement goals.  The study is published in Joule.

Study lead author Habiba Daggash, from the Center for Environmental Policy at Imperial, said:  "The current system of penalizing greenhouse gas emissions through carbon taxes is not sufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change, even if very high taxes are enforced.  Therefore, using this strategy alone, the Paris Agreement that most countries have committed to could not be delivered.

"The system needs to be adapted to recognize that not only do emissions need to be penalized, but actions that result in permanent removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere must also be credited."

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