Climate Ethics and Climate Economics: How to Finance ‘Well Below 2°C’?

The second of six ESRC-funded workshops exploring issues where the ethics and economics of climate change intersect will be held at the University of Nottingham on 13-14 April 2016. The keynote speakers will be John Broome and Armon Rezai.

The spotlight of the workshop will be on the economics and ethics of rapidly increasing the climate finance necessary to meet the Paris Accord mitigation goal of well below 2°C. Estimates of the necessary annual investments in low/zero emissions energy generation to meet this goal are from 1000 to 2000 billion USD. This is three to six times current investment levels. The workshop will address recent proposals from John Broome and others to ‘borrow from the future’ to pay for mitigation. The idea is to use some form of debt financing and investment diverting to achieve mitigation ‘without sacrifice’from the current generation and to break political logjams. We also encourage papers on other topics on increasing climate financing, such as alternative financing proposals, financing the Green Climate Fund, and assessments of the true obstacles to scaling up climate finance. Finally, we are happy to consider other proposals that are at the intersection of climate ethics and climate economics, but not focused on financing.

We have space for up to six additional presentations, and ten discussants. Funds are available to cover accommodation and internal UK travel expenses for three research students and early-career researchers. Papers will be circulated before the workshop.

Those wishing to present a paper should submit a 500-word abstract by 10th March to both Aaron Maltais ([email protected]) and Matthew Rendall ([email protected]). Anyone interested in serving as a discussant should send the organizers an expression of interest by the same date. Applications simply to sit in on the workshop are also welcome. If applying for funding, please indicate that you are a student, or the year that you received the PhD.