An effective climate regime can only be built on by (i) designing principles of fair allocation of the available carbon space and (ii) agreeing on an appropriate effort sharing formula. The inequitable access to the atmosphere becomes self evident in the fact that average emissions per human year for Annex I Parties in the past has been 13.97 tCO2e and that of Non-annex I Parties is only 1.98 tCO2e. Evidently Annex I Parties have not only used their entitled carbon budgets and exhausted all their entitlements from the future but have also used that have been entitled to the Non-annex I Parties. Implicitly, in a completely fair world and on account of historic responsibility of Annex 1, the Annex 1 need to immediately turn negative emitters. However, given that all Parties will need some time to adjust their economies and hence will need some carbon space to enable such adjustment, irrespective of the fact that they have already utilized it, agreement on entitlements for the future on the basis of available carbon space is essential.A more tortured piece of prose it would be hard to imagine, but someone, somewhere did actually write it. And it will come as no surprise to learn that this is part of an advert for a TERI side event at Can'tcun, written by Manish Shrivastava, Centre For Global Environment Research, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. May God have mercy on its soul, as it goes on to write:
In this context the TERI side-event will discuss TERI’s proposal on how to operationalize the carbon budget approach. Realizing future entitlements into actions, under different scenarios of per capita equity based carbon budget, requires the pragmatic interplay of national and international responses. To enable this, a rethinking of policies, instruments and institutions is essential for an effective global climate regime. The side event will deliberate upon the relevance of, and challenges in operationalizing the carbon budget approach in relation to the limitations of domestic financial capabilities of India to remain within the available carbon budget for the next four decades. It will also discuss the significance of the link between the "historical responsibility" and required net transfer of financial resources from developed countries in achieving the 2 degree target.Don't forget that we the taxpayers are kindly donating £10 million to this institute, to deliver this kind of tosh. I am sure we are all very grateful to our masters for supporting such a worthy enterprise.
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