The Obama administration’s lead climate change negotiator predicted Tuesday that a worldwide price on carbon emissions would be set at some point.
It was rumored during the Paris climate talks that a carbon price was being bandied about by some countries as a necessary part of the deal. While that didn’t come to pass, it’s something Todd Stern sees as necessary in the future.
“Pricing carbon is a big, big, big, big deal,” he said, speaking Tuesday morning at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, which has close ties to the White House. “We sort of have implicit prices on carbon … but some day that’s going to happen. One would hope it happens sooner rather than later.”
Now that the climate talks in Paris have concluded, countries from around the world must take action implementing their plans to reduce their emissions, and that means attracting private investment, he said.
Stern discussed the events that led up to the Paris climate deal and what needs to happen next. While the Paris Agreement saw 196 countries from around the world agree to take action on climate change, it’s up to the 186 nations that have submitted emissions reduction plans to actually implement them. Many scientists blame carbon emissions for warming the Earth’s climate.
“A tremendous amount of what needs to happen now is at national levels or cooperative levels,” he said. “The name of the game now is that countries have to take the steps, which are almost always at a national level, to meet the targets that they put forward.”
Stern led the U.S. team in Paris that played a major role in finalizing the deal, which was approved Saturday. The deal sets the goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius with an eye toward limiting the rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The Paris Agreement has no legally binding enforcement or penalties for countries that don’t meet their goals. However, Stern said he believes the agreement will signal to the private sector that the world is ready for more investment in green energy, which will lead to significant emissions reductions.
“The steps that need to be taken to make that possible are key, and the capacity to get private-sector finance flowing around the world is critical,” he said. “That requires the right kind of investment environments around the world.”
The deal also provides non-legally binding funding provisions from developed countries to developing countries.
Stern said the transparency measures in the deal were the top measure U.S. diplomats wanted to get from the agreement. He said he believes those measures will hold nations accountable in a significant way, even if there is no formal punishment in the deal.
“Those will be important to make sure the world is still watching,” he said. “That’s where people who are trying to pull back will try to do their work.”
