Thread by @Noahpinion

1/Today's @bopinion post is about how to address the international aspect of climate change.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

2/Hopefully the spectacle of the burning Amazon has made people realize that this problem transcends borders.

cnn.com/2019/08/22/ame…

3/The U.S. absolutely does need to reduce its carbon emissions drastically.

But this will not be enough. Not even close to enough. If other countries don't follow suit in a big way, we're doomed.

4/The U.S. is not the world-straddling hyperpower we were in the 90s.

It's frightening to realize how much of the problem is out of our direct control at this point. But it's something we must face, and something we must deal with.

nationalinterest.org/feature/chinas…

5/The classic approach has been international agreements like Kyoto and Paris.

But it's time we recognized that these, too, are insufficient to the task.

washingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/…

6/But there ARE things the U.S. can do to reduce global emissions, even as we curb our own.

My post outlines four basic approaches.

7/First, we can transfer green technology to less technologically advanced nations.

8/Second, we can subsidize exports of green technology and low-carbon products.

This idea sometimes goes by the name of Green Marshall Plan.

medium.com/@teamwarren/my…

9/Third, we can pay for other countries to build green infrastructure - solar and wind plants, electrical grids, energy storage, car charging stations, etc.

This could be done through the Green Climate Fund, or through other development agencies.
jayinslee.com/issues/global-…

10/Another idea is for America and other rich countries to buy up coal deposits around the world and leave the coal in the ground, as proposed by @bardharstad.

sv.uio.no/econ/personer/…

11/And finally, there are punitive measures.

Carbon tariffs are one.

But beyond that, we could threaten trade cutoffs and other sanctions against governments like Bolsonaro's that willingly destroy the environment.

12/Note that in order to have the moral authority to enact such punitive measures on other countries, the U.S. must also be aggressively pursuing our own program of deep decarbonization - which we are not yet doing.

13/Keep in mind that NONE of these approaches is going to be politically possible while Trump is president. But we need to be thinking about them for the time after Trump. The world can't afford to wait.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

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