Consistency Between Long-term Climate Target and Short-term Abatement Policy. Attainability Analysis Technique
Abstract
A crucial problem in climate policy decision making is to design mitigation strategies consistent with specified long{term stabilization targets. However due to a deep uncertainty in our understanding of climatic system functioning, it is often impossible to elaborate abatement actions over a long period of time. Therefore the usual policy way is to design actions for a short{term time period only, taking into account current possibilities and information, but keeping the possibility to meet a given long-term target. In this paper we propose a methodological framework based on control theory to tackle the consistency issue comprehensively. Our approach consists of two stages. On the first stage we identify a [consistency] set of all possible short-term states that keep the possibility to meet a given long-term target and on the second stage we assess the 'cost' of achieving a long-term target for every short-term state in the consistency set. To illustrate the approach we run the calculations for the DICE-94 model of the economics of global warming.