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Home Systemic sustainability: the ultimate frontier Yet black is greener than green War: The elephant in the sustainability room A convenient tale PDCs to advance reductions beyond NDCs COP21: Historic, historical or hysterical? COP20: CBDR or ECBDR? Doha: Gateway or Giveaway? An epic battle in the wrong war What it takes to be sustainable Making the Copenhagen Accord equitable Post-2012 climate regime: equitable, effective, sufficient? An equitable and effective climate regime Are global citizens equal before the Climate Convention? Decarbonising with renewables? Extremely difficult Financial crisis and sustainable development |
PDCs to advance reductions beyond NDCs It is already evident that NDCs under the Paris Agreement will not stabilize the climate system. Further action is required to close the enormous gap (over 26.5 billion tons of CO2 in 2030). Emissions are ultimately caused by individuals when consuming goods and services. Emissions incurred by suppliers are in the end driven by final consumers, and should be attributed to the latter as indirect emissions. Most NDCs today lean toward interventions on the supply side of goods and services. From this perspective, major reduction opportunities beyond NDCs exist at the final consumer level. Following the UNFCCC terminology, further action on final consumers could be implemented via Personally Determined Contributions (PDCs), which could include –inter alia– information, education, voluntary reductions, and emissions allowances. The general public tends to think that governments, utilities and companies will magically achieve the required reductions, but is fully unaware of how much its own personal emissions must be reduced to stabilize the climate. Drive your 1.2-liter car 13.000 km per year, fly from Berlin to Gran Canarias on holiday, and your fair share of sustainable emissions is gone, even without considering indirect emissions from the myriad of goods and services you consume. The above discussion shows how important information and education of individual consumers are. A permanent awareness-raising campaign is the least PDC governments should consider beyond the NDC they have already committed to. Sources:
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