Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits

times the energy intensity of the economy, times the carbon intensity of the economy, times the fraction of emissions that is vented to the atmosphere.

therefore do not consider other policy instruments,

each W m−2 of SRM shifts the higher temperatures due to elevated GHG concentrations out about thirty years.

transactions between agents within the same economic system. There is no loss of primary resources; therefore only second-order effects (whose sign is a priori ambiguous) affect GDP and income.

Aside from CH4, rice cultivation leads to emissions of other greenhouse gases like N2O and soil CO2

In contrast, careful monitoring of changes of the climate system response would demand a major effort.

Investing in R&D and knowledge can be seen as a peculiar form of anticipatory adaptation.

Moreover, while wastewater mitigation potentials might be significant, most technological options in this sector are related to significant changes of wastewater management and infrastructure – e.g. the installation of sewerage systems in developing countries

Thus, if society sought to avoid the amount of harm that would be caused by reaching a given temperature level, deploying 3 W m−2 of SRM would buy almost 100 years of time in which to develop the less costly low-carbon energy sources needed to reach that goal.