Designing Climate Mitigation Policy

Global warming is one of the most critical, and also most daunting, challenges facing policymakers in the twenty-first century. Assessing a globally efficient time path for pricing or controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is difficult enough, with huge scientific uncertainties, disagreement over the ultimate goals of climate policy, and disagreement over which countries should bear most responsibility for emissions reductions. On top of this, domestic policy design is inherently difficult because of multiple, and sometimes conflicting, criteria for policy evaluation. And at an international level, there are multiple approaches to coordinating emissions control agreements. What should be a rational policy response for such an enormously complex problem.