1AC

Plan
The United States federal government should inaugurate an emissions trading
system for carbon dioxide and methane in the United States.

1AC Warming
Warming is real and catastrophic
McCoy 14 (Dr. David McCoy et al., MD, Centre for International Health and Development,
University College London, Climate Change and Human Survival, BRITISH MEDICAL
JOURNAL v. 348, 4214, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2510)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on
its recent update of the physical science of global warming [1], the

IPCC s new report should leave the world in no

doubt about the scale and immediacy of the threat to human survival , health, and well-being.
The IPCC has already concluded that it is virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global
climate system and that it is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in
global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 is anthropogenic [1]. Its new report outlines the future
threats of further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather
events; rise in sea level ; loss of biod iversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human
migration , conflict and violence. Leaked drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This
month, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) added its voice: the well being of people of all
nations [is] at risk. [2] Such comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL Commission: that climate change
is the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century. [3] The changes seen so farmassive arctic ice loss
and extreme weather events, for examplehave resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89C since 1901.
Further changes will depend on how much we continue to heat the planet . The release of just another 275
gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2Can amount that could be emitted in
less than eight years. [4] Business as usual will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the
current level of 400 parts per million (ppm), which is a 40% increase from 280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a
50:50 chance that this will deliver global mean temperature rises of more than 4C. It is now widely understood that such a rise is
incompatible with an organised global community. [5]. The

IPCC warns of tipping points in the Earths system,

which, if crossed, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural
systems. The AAAS concludes that there is now a real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and
potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on people around the globe. [2] And
this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO) confirmed that extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO
secretary general Michel Jarraud said, There is no standstill in global warming . . . The laws of physics are non-negotiable. [6]

Emissions past climatic tipping elements cause disastrous ecological and social
consequences
Kopp et al 16 Robert E. Kopp, Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary
Sciences and Associate Director of the Rutgers Energy Institute, Ph.D. in geobiology from
Caltech, Rachael Shwom, Associate Professor, Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers
University, Ph.D. in Sociology from Michigan State University, Gernot Wagner, Research
associate and lecturer at Harvard, senior economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, Ph.D.
in Political economy and Government from Harvard, Jiacan Yuan, Post-Doctoral Associate.
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. School of Arts and Sciences, Ph.D. Meteorology,
Peking University (Tipping elements and climate-economic shocks: Pathways toward
integrated assessment, Earths Future,
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1603/1603.00850.pdf)
Nordhaus and Boyer [2000]s list highlighted some potential state shifts in climatic tipping
elements : a rapid sea-level rise driven by West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse or by other sources; shifts
in weather patterns like the Indian Summer Monsoon or the West African Monsoon; shutdown of the Atlantic
Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC); or runaway increases in climate sensitivity . Other
studies have highlighted additional candidates, ranging from a collapse of Arctic summer sea ice, to ecological
regime shifts in the Amazon or the Sahel, to a massive release of carbon from permafrost or
seafloor methane hydrates [Lenton et al., 2008; National Research Council, 2013]. Modeling studies have revealed the
potential for an atmospheric superrotation threshold that rapidly increases climate sensitivity by changing planetary cloudiness
[Caballero and Huber, 2013; Pierrehumbert, 2013], Arctic winter sea ice collapse, and an abrupt drop in the volume of snow on the
Tibetan Plateau [Drijfhout et al., 2015]. Some of these candidate tipping elements may exhibit Gladwellian tipping points, and so we

categorize them as potentially Gladwellian tipping elements; others exhibit a nonGladwellian disconnect between committed and
realized change, and so we categorize them as non-Gladwellian (see Table 1 for an illustrative list). Potentially Gladwellian tipping

elements generally involve components of the Earth systems with response timescales on the
order of a decade or less. These components many of which play an important role in fast
climate feedbacks [e.g., PALAEOSENS Project, 2012] include the atmosphere, the surface ocean, and
sea ice; slower responding components, such as ice sheets or the deep ocean, introduce significant lags between commitment to a
state shift and its realization. We describe some examples in greater depth below.

3.1 Potentially Gladwellian tipping elements

AMOC is perhaps the most iconic climatic tipping element, and paleoclimatic evidence suggests that it can indeed exhibit Gladwellian behavior. Reconstructions based on
Atlantic basin carbon isotopic records [Sarnthein et al., 1994] suggest that AMOC exhibited three modes during the last 30,000 years: a normal mode, similar to today, with
vigorous North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) forming in the Nordic Sea; a slowed down mode, with reduced NADW formed to the south of Iceland; and a collapsed mode, in
which NADW formation ceased and Antarctic Bottom Water filled the Atlantic basin [Alley and Clark, 1999; Rahmstorf, 2002]. Abrupt Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) climatic
oscillations during the last glacial period [Dansgaard et al., 1982] are thought to be expressions of transition between the AMOC modes [Buizert and Schmittner, 2015].
Geochemical proxies from the Bermuda Rise show that slowdowns and collapses of the AMOC occurred during Heinrich events, when icebergs discharge into the North Atlantic
freshened the surface water, with no evidence for lags [Bhm et al., 2015]. While D-O and Heinrich events occur during glacial periods, AMOC has also exhibited instability
during past interglacials. Based on sedimentary carbon isotopes from Eirik Drift, near Greenland, Galaasen et al. [2014] found abrupt, multicentennial reduction in NADW
during the Last Interglacial (~116128 thousand years ago), with the largest and longest NADW reduction immediately following an outburst flood and a marked surface
freshening event.
AMOC stability has also been investigated with numerical models of various complexities [Stommel, 1961; Bryan, 1986; Hawkins et al., 2011; Weaver et al., 2012]. In models, the
existence of stable multiple equilibria for AMOC relies on the salt-advection feedback [Stommel, 1961]: a weakened AMOC decreases salinity in the North Atlantic and thus
reduces the rate of deep water formation, which leads to further AMOC slowdown. In hosing experiments, which add freshwater to the North Atlantic, AMOC transitions to a
collapsed mode once the input freshwater exceeds a threshold (~0.1-0.5 Sverdrups; [Rahmstorf, 2005]). AMOC also exhibits hysteresis: in order to restore the circulation once
the system collapses, freshwater forcing must be reduced below a threshold that is smaller than the threshold originally required to cause the collapse [Rahmstorf, 1996, 2005;
Hawkins et al., 2011]. Although Southern Ocean warming associated with increased radiative forcing may increase the stability of AMOC and the threshold for freshwaterinduced AMOC collapse [Buizert and Schmittner, 2015], North Atlantic surface warming reduces the density of water there, which inhibits deep water formation and weakens
the AMOC in CMIP5 models [Mikolajewicz and Voss, 2000; Gregory et al., 2005; National Research Council, 2013]. Therefore, AMOC strength is projected to decrease by the
end of the century even in the low-emissions RCP 2.6 pathway; the magnitude of the decrease ranges between 5%40% under RCP 4.5 and 15%60% under RCP 8.5 [Weaver et
al., 2012; Cheng et al., 2013]. A full collapse of AMOC in the 21st century is absent in most models except for FIO-ESM [Drijfhout et al., 2015]. Based on model projections,
National Research Council [2013] concluded that an abrupt slowdown or collapse of the AMOC due to anthropogenic forcing is very unlikely to occur in the 21st century.
AMOC transports a large amount of heat northward (up to 1x1015 W) [Ganachaud and Wunsch, 2000], so its changes have large impacts on regional temperature and
precipitation in the North Atlantic and the Northern Hemisphere. The slowdown of AMOC may be an important contributing factor for the global warming hole in the North
Atlantic south of Greenland [Drijfhout et al., 2012; Woollings et al., 2012b; Rahmstorf et al., 2015], where surface temperature displays a cooling trend that contrasts with the
global warming trend [Rahmstorf et al., 2015]. Hosing experiments in coupled climate models [Laurian et al., 2009; Drijfhout, 2010, 2015; Jackson et al., 2015] suggest that full
collapse of the AMOC results in a significant northern hemisphere cooling (~2-5C in the subtropical gyre [Jackson et al., 2015]) and modest southern hemisphere warming
(<1C in most regions; [Jackson et al., 2015]). These asymmetric temperature changes led to a decrease in global mean temperature (~0.7C in the ECHAM5/MPI-OM model
[Laurian et al., 2009]) that offsets about ~15-20 years of global warming and causes a ~40-50 year warming hiatus [Drijfhout, 2015]. AMOC slowdown could also impact
atmospheric circulations in several ways, including strengthening the North Atlantic storm track or reducing the frequency of polar low cyclones in the subpolar North Atlantic
[Woollings et al., 2012a, 2012b]. It could also lead to poleward expansion of Hadley cells [Drijfhout, 2010], which may decrease precipitation over the Northern Hemispheric
midlatitudes and shift the Intertropical Convergence Zone southward [Jackson et al., 2015]. The general cooling and atmospheric circulation changes would result in weaker
peak river flows and vegetation productivity, which may raise issues of water availability and crop production [Jackson et al., 2015]. Slowdown of the AMOC would also cause
large and potentially rapid dynamic sea level changes; a collapse could raise sea level along the North American Atlantic coast by as much as ~0.5 m [Gregory and Lowe, 2000;
Levermann et al., 2005].

Arctic sea ice exhibits

Gladwellian behavior. Observations show a significant decrease in seaice area in response
to recent warming, with linear trends of 54.6 3.7 x103 km2 /year annually and 89.0 9.5 x103 km2 /year in September
Both observational and modeling evidence suggests that, if it is a true tipping element,

between 1978 and 2013 [Stroeve et al., 2011, 2012; Simmonds, 2015]. Using the ECHAM5/MPI-OM GCM, Li et al. [2013] found no
lag between changes in Northern Hemispheric temperature and changes Arctic sea ice area. Arctic sea ice also has the

potential to be a tipping element , as sea-ice loss can be amplified by feedbacks involving

ice albedo , the warming effects of convective clouds, the open-water formation efficiency of thin ice, and
the increased temperature responsiveness of thinner, younger ice [Drijfhout et al., 2015].
Energy balance models and single column models [Rose and Marshall, 2009; Bjrk et al., 2013] suggest that Arctic sea ice
has a critical threshold below which rapid ice-cover shrinkage will occur and lead the Arctic
to be seasonally ice free [Notz, 2009]. Bjork et al. [2013] placed this threshold at an annual-mean ice thickness of 1.72.0

m, but the tipping behavior of Arctic sea ice simulated in comprehensive GCMs is still controversial [Armour et al., 2011; Ridley et
al., 2012; Li et al., 2013; Wagner and Eisenman, 2015]. In ECHAM5/MPI-OM, Li et al. [2013] found that summer sea-ice area
declines linearly in response to increased CO2 concentration, while winter sea-ice area shows a rapid transition (at a temperature
higher than that which causes a complete loss of summer sea ice) to a nearly ice-free state. On the other hand, an abrupt transition
of Arctic sea ice is not found in any season in CCSM3 [Armour et al., 2011] or HadCM3 [Ridley et al., 2012]. There is also no
consensus on the persistence or hysteresis of Arctic sea decline in comprehensive GCMs [Armour et al., 2011; Li et al., 2013; Wagner
and Eisenman, 2015]. In CMIP5 climate models, increasing

greenhouse gas are projected to drive a steady

decrease in Arctic sea ice , with a possibility of ice-free summer within a few decades [Stroeve et al., 2012; Overland
show an abrupt winter Arctic sea-ice abruptly
collapse in the 22nd century in RCP8.5 simulations [Drijfhout et al., 2015]. Overall, the evidence that winter
Arctic sea ice is a tipping element is stronger than for summer Arctic sea ice. However, Bathiany et al. [2016] argue
and Wang, 2013; Overland et al., 2014]. Five CMIP5 models

that the abruptness of winter Arctic sea ice collapse can be explained by a threshold without positive feedbacks, simply from a
basinwide failure to cool sufficiently to allow ice formation; if they are correct, neither winter nor summer Arctic sea ice may be
tipping elements.

A rapid decrease in Arctic sea ice could have far-reaching consequences . Arctic sea ice and
the ice-albedo feedback are an important contributor to Arctic amplification , the

phenomenon that surface warming over the Arctic is more rapid than at lower latitudes. Arctic

amplification may slow

down the mid-latitude jet streams, shift storm tracks over the North Atlantic, and increase the vertical
propagation of energy into the stratosphere, which may lead to more frequent extreme
weather events across the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes [Francis and Vavrus, 2012, 2015; Cohen et al., 2014; Tang et
al., 2014]. However, some studies argue that the chance of mid-latitude cold extremes should decrease in response to future sea ice
loss [Hassanzadeh et al., 2014; Screen et al., 2014]. In addition, this rapid warming over the Arctic due to sea-ice reduction may
consequently increase the emission of methane from high-latitude wetland soils; Parmentier et al. [2015] estimated that methane
emission over high-latitudes for 20052010 are averagely ~1.7 Tg yr1 higher than that during 19811990 due to a sea iceinduced
warming in fall.

The West African monsoon (WAM) may be another example of a Gladwellian tipping element . WAM
contributes the bulk of Sahelian summer rainfall [Dong and Sutton, 2015]. Paleoclimatic evidence suggests that the bistability of the
WAM is characterized by alternating status between long-lasting (decades to centuries) episodes of dry and wet conditions
[Shanahan et al., 2009]. Both paleoclimatic reconstructions [Asmerom et al., 2013] and GCM simulations [Giannini et al., 2003;
Hoerling et al., 2006; Martin et al., 2014] suggests that the

switch between these two quasi-stable states is

driven by changing sea surface temperatures (SST) around Africa. Sediment-core and tree-ring
reconstructions indicate that the WAM variability is coherent and in phase with the Atlantic SST
variability at multidecadal time scale [Shanahan et al., 2009], suggesting Gladwellian behavior. The transition of WAM to its
strong phase is associated with a wind-evaporation-SST positive feedback [Xie, 1999]: warming in SST in the North Atlantic relative
to the South Atlantic drives stronger westerly winds and enhances the WAM, which reduces surface evaporation north of the equator
and enhances it in the south, amplifying the interhemispheric SST gradient. In addition, a switch to strong WAM may also rely on
the Saharan water vaportemperature feedback [Evan et al., 2015]: long-wave radiation of surface water vapor raises the surface air
temperature, which increases the low-level moisture convergence around the Saharan heat low.
An enhanced WAM driven by anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol forcing may have led to the substantial recovery of Sahel rainfall since the 1980s [Dong and Sutton,
2015]. Under RCP 8.5, about 80% of CMIP5 models agree on a modest drying around 20% over the westernmost Sahel (155W), while about 75% of models agree on an
increase in precipitation over the Sahel between 0and 30E, with a large spread on the amplitude [Roehrig et al., 2013]. However, the CMIP5 models may underestimate the
monsoon decadal variability, due to strong biases in simulated SST [Roehrig et al., 2013]. One model, BNU-ESM, found an abrupt increase in Sahel vegetation cover around
2050 in the RCP8.5 simulation [Drijfhout et al., 2015]. The projected WAM strengthening is related to a robust amplification of warming over the Sahel by about 10%50% over
the global mean [Roehrig et al., 2013]. Furthermore, the warming pattern induced by enhanced WAM facilitates the development of African easterly waves (AEWs), which are
westward-propagating weather disturbances over North Africa during summer. In RCP8.5 simulations between 2075 and 2100, the occurrence frequency increased with a
multimodel average of 39% for intense AEWs and of 72% for extremely intense AEWs along the SahelSahara border [Skinner and Diffenbaugh, 2014]. The elevated AEW
activity could further increase the Sahel rainfall, and strengthen Sahara dust transportation over Africa and Atlantic [Skinner and Diffenbaugh, 2014].
3.2 Non-Gladwellian tipping elements
Ice sheet melt provides clear examples of non-Gladwellian behavior. For the Greenland Ice Sheet, for example, feedbacks between ice sheet topography and atmospheric
dynamics and between ice area and albedo give rise to multiple stable states [Ridley et al., 2009; Robinson et al., 2012; Levermann et al., 2013]. Robinson et al. [2012]s coupled
ice-sheet/regional climate model indicated that, at a temperature of 1C above pre-Industrial, the stable states are at 100%, 60%, and 20% of present ice volume. At 1.6C,
however, their model produced only one stable configuration, at ~15% of the Greenland ice sheets present volume; thus, 1.6C warming would represent a commitment to ~6 m
of sea-level rise from the Greenland Ice Sheet. The rate of ice sheet mass loss is, however, limited by the flux at the ice sheet margins [e.g., Pfeffer et al., 2008], leading to a
disconnect between committed and realized change that could persist for millennia, particularly for levels of warming near the threshold [Applegate et al., 2015].
In Antarctica, where about 23 m sea-level equivalent of ice sits vulnerably with its base below sea level [Fretwell et al., 2013], ice sheet mass loss is dominated by ocean/ice
sheet/ice shelf interactions. For parts of the ice sheet sitting on reverse bed slopes, which shallow outward, a positive feedback sets up the marine ice sheet instability [Schoof,
2007; Gomez et al., 2010; Ritz et al., 2015]: as the ice sheet retreats, it thickens vertically, increasing ice sheet discharge and thus the rate of retreat. Such an instability appears
to be occurring in multiple outlet glaciers of the Amundsen Sea Embayment sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, creating a sea-level rise commitment that could equal much
or all of the 1.2 m sea-level equivalent in this sector [Joughin et al., 2014; Rignot et al., 2014]. In Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica, the instability threshold has not yet been
crossed, but removal of an ice plug containing ~8 cm sea-level equivalent could create a 3-4 m sea-level rise commitment [Mengel and Levermann, 2014]. Ice shelf buttressing
can inhibit marine ice sheet instability, however, so some marine-based sectors may not exhibit threshold behavior but instead respond nearly linearly to sub-shelf temperature
[Mengel et al., 2016]. On the other hand, most ice sheet models do not include ice cliff collapse and hydrofracturing, which destabilize ice shelves and may greatly increase the
rate of ice sheet mass loss [Pollard et al., 2015; DeConto and Pollard, 2016]. Overall, the Antarctic ice sheet exhibits a clear separation between realized and committed change,
and individual sectors of the ice sheet can exhibit threshold behavior associated with marine ice sheet instability. It is unclear, however, whether threshold behavior occurs at the
aggregate level of the ice sheet as a whole [Levermann et al., 2013].

large-scale ecosystems can exhibit a non-Gladwellian lag between

committed and realized state shifts. Using the HadCM3LC climate/carbon cycle model, which was one of the first to
include a dynamic vegetation component, Jones et al. [2009] found a precipitous committed collapse in
Amazon forest cover between 1C and 3C warming, even though the realized loss when their simulation reached 3C
Model evidence also suggests that

was minimal. Similarly, they found a committed tripling of boreal forest cover at ~4C warming, even though the realized expansion
was minimal. These results were not consistent across models [Cox et al., 2013]; among model participating in the Coupled Climate
Carbon Cycle Model Intercomparison Project (C4MIP) exercise, only the HadCM3 models showed a net reduction in tropical land
carbon over the 21st century. Conditioning the C4MIP models on the observed inter-annual variations in CO2 growth rate over
1960-2010 suggested that the tropical forests in the HadCM3 models are overly sensitive to warming [Cox et al., 2013], but to our
knowledge no other models have been used to investigate the distinction between committed and realized ecosystem change.

3.3 Common worrisome traits of candidate climatic tipping elements

Some candidate tipping elements exhibit full-fledged Gladwellian tipping points, others exhibit non-Gladwellian critical thresholds,
and some, upon further investigation, may turn out not to be tipping elements at all. But most of these ambiguous candidate

tipping elements unambiguously exhibit other worrisome traits. First, almost all are characterized
by deep uncertainty [Kasperson, 2008; Heal and Millner, 2014; Convery and Wagner, 2015], meaning that there
are multiple plausible probability distributions that could be constructed for how likely they are to
occur, how fast they will occur, and what their consequences could be. This deep uncertainty complicates efforts to
devise policies to minimize negative consequences. Second, and closely related, they are absent from many of
the coupled climate models used to project future changes: some models will generate the tipping

many are ratelimited and so exhibit a committed change significantly larger than the initially
realized change . Fourth, many exhibit hysteresis, so reversing a change in the system may
require a larger forcing and/or more time than causing the change in the first place.
For example, the reservoir of soil organic carbon in the Arctic permafrost may or may not abruptly
tip. Arctic permafrost holds at least ~1300-1600 Gt C [Schuur et al., 2015]; as the Arctic warms, microbes
will transform this organic carbon into CO2 and CH4 . If all of this carbon were
instantaneously released as CO2, it would likely cause a global mean warming of ~1-3C. Thus,
there could be a positive feedback large enough to create a tipping point : the release of
behavior, some will not, and some are missing the element of the Earth system that could generate them. Third,

carbon could warm the planet enough to significantly accelerate the rate of carbon release. Moreover, laboratory incubations show
that some organic-rich permafrost soils can decompose rapidly, with up to ~7% of organic C being lost in the first unfrozen year,
[Schdel et al., 2014] and that abrupt permafrost thaw is common phenomenon in parts of the Arctic [e.g., Jorgenson et al., 2006].
Yet the real-world rate of permafrost carbon release is limited by the annual freeze-thaw cycle, by the rate of thermal diffusion into the deep
permafrost, by the creation of new biomass, and by oxygen availability in water-logged soils [Schuur et al., 2015]. (Anaerobic decomposition creates
methane, but current estimates indicate the higher warming potential of methane is insufficient to offset the decreased decomposition rate in oxygendepleted soils.) A 17-author expert assessment estimated that ~5-15% of permafrost C is vulnerable to decomposition in the 21st century, and model
projections suggested a somewhat larger share vulnerable to decomposition in the 22nd and 23rd centuries [Schuur et al., 2015]. If this assessment is
correct, then the permafrost feedback on warming will be too small to be the principle driver of permafrost melt; there will be no threshold beyond
which the momentum of escalating permafrost emissions carries the world to a permafrost-free state.
Nonetheless, Arctic permafrost carbon still shares the four other traits common to many tipping elements deep uncertainty, incomplete treatment in
climate models, a separation between committed and realized change, and hysteresis. It thus revises our understanding of the coupled climate/carbon
cycle system.
A significant body of work over the last decade has shown that global mean warming increases approximately linearly with cumulative carbon dioxide
emissions, and that global mean temperature is stable for centuries after emissions stop [e.g., Matthews and Caldeira, 2008; Allen et al., 2009;
Solomon et al., 2009]. The IPCC concluded that the principal driver of long-term warming is total emissions of CO2 and the two quantities are
approximately linearly related [Collins et al., 2013, p.1033]. These conclusions gave rise to the carbon budget paradigm now common in policy
discourse. But the models that led to these conclusions did not include permafrost carbon. Some newer Earth system models have incorporated the
permafrost carbon feedback, at least in part. Schaefer et al. [2014]s synthesis found a mean initial carbon pool among thirteen published studies of
~800 Gt C, roughly half the observational estimate. These models found that the permafrost carbon feedback lags anthropogenic emissions, giving rise
to a difference between committed and realized emissions similar to that for ice sheet melt. As a consequence, the approximation that warming is
proportional to cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions fails, and warming may continue after human emissions stop [MacDougall et al., 2012].
Using the UVic ESCM, an Earth system model of intermediate complexity (EMIC), MacDougall et al. [2015] found that incorporating the permafrost
carbon feedback led to a ~10% reduction in the carbon budget for 2C warming. The permafrost carbon feedback similarly led to an increase of ~10% in
the amount of net anthropogenic carbon removal needed to restore a 2C warming after overshooting to 3.2C. Using another EMIC, IAP RAS CM,
Eliseev et al.[2013] demonstrated hysteresis in the permafrost system, showing that permafrost melted faster in a warming world than it regrew in a
cooling world at the same temperature.

3.4 Integrated assessment of climatic tipping elements

Regardless of whether all proposed tipping elements do in fact tip, their potential state
shifts are hazards ; it is therefore worthwhile to identify and assess climate-economic shocks that they might cause.
Indeed, since abstract catastrophic impacts dominate damage estimates in two of the most
commonly used benefit-cost IAMs, DICE and PAGE [Hope, 2013], improving their representation in IAMs may be
critical to more accurate estimates of the cost of climate change [Revesz et al., 2014].

Lenton and Ciscar [2013] outlined one strategy for a stylized improvement of climatic tipping element representation in benefit-cost IAMs. A number
of subsequent studies have focused on the welfare costs of uncalibrated or idealized tipping points. Lemoine and Traeger [2014] examine uncalibrated,
instantaneous changes in climate sensitivity or carbon sinks in a variant of the DICE model; Lemoine and Traeger [2016] expanded this study to
include tipping points that affect the damage function directly and also show interactions between tipping points. Daniel et al. [2015] decompose the
impact of risk aversion to tipping points from climate damages. Lontzek et al. [2015] consider a single idealized critical threshold in the damage
function with a range of transition scales and final damage levels. Cai et al. [2016] implemented five interacting tipping elements (AMOC, West
Antarctic Ice Sheet, Greenland ice sheet, the Amazon dieback, and El Nio-Southern Oscillation) with critical threshold probabilities calibrated to the
expert elicitation study of Kriegler et al. [2009], transition timescales based on literature reviews, and economic consequences based upon the authors
intuition.

We propose an alternative strategy for improving representation of state shifts in tipping elements that draws upon more
disaggregated models of climate change impacts [e.g., Warszawski et al., 2014; Houser et al., 2015]. For risk and impact assessment,

potential climatic tipping elements can be categorized by the physical parameters they affect
that influence human systems. (For simplicity, we will put aside the qualification potential and refer to all potential
tipping elements simply as tipping elements for the remainder of this section.) Some tipping elements affect
global warming , either through planetary albedo (e.g., Arctic sea ice) or the greenhouse effect (e.g.,
permafrost). Some tipping elements influence on regional temperature or precipitation (e.g., changes in
AMOC or Arctic sea ice). Tipping elements involving polar ice sheets affect global mean sea level, and some
tipping elements (e.g., AMOC) influence regional dynamic sea level. Finally, some tipping elements involve
major ecosystems such as the Amazon , which may influence not only the greenhouse effect but also the
regional availability of ecosystem services. Each category is amenable to a different risk assessment strategy. Both benefit-cost IAMs
like DICE and some newer frameworks based on empirical and process model of climate change impacts [e.g., Houser et al., 2015]
use simple climate models (SCMs) to project global mean temperature change. Tipping elements that affect global mean
temperature could be incorporated into these SCMs. Although subject to well-known concerns about the damage functions in

benefit-cost IAMs [e.g., Revesz et al., 2014], two studies have already attempted this for permafrost carbon. Hope and Schaefer
[2016] augmented the PAGE09 IAM [Hope, 2013] with time series of permafrost CO2 and CH4 emissions [Schaefer et al., 2011].
They found that permafrost emissions increased the net present value cost of climate change by ~13%, consistent with the associated
increased in cumulative CO2 emissions. Gonzlez-Eguino and Neumann [2016] conducted a similar study with DICE-2013R. Similar
approaches could be used to study the global mean temperature effect of Arctic albedo changes due to sea-ice collapse or boreal
forest expansion, of a superrotation-induced decrease in cloudiness and increase in climate sensitivity, or of rapid changes in the
land or ocean carbon sinks.

Many tipping elements, however, have regional temperature and precipitation effects that extend beyond a scaling of regional changes with global mean temperature. Arctic sea ice loss decreases the pole-to-equator temperature gradient, which may affect the
frequency of midlatitude weather patterns [Overland et al., 2015]. A reduction or collapse of AMOC has strong cooling effects in Europe, weaker cooling effects more broadly in the Northern Hemisphere, warming effects in the Southern Hemisphere, a southward
shift in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, and sea-level rise in the North Atlantic [Vellinga and Wood, 2002; Levermann et al., 2013; Jackson et al., 2015]. A change in ENSO frequency or intensity would have temperature and precipitation effects around the world
[Power et al., 2013; Cai et al., 2014; Latif et al., 2015; Yuan et al., 2015]. GCMs must be used to identify the spatial and temporal patterns associated with state shifts in such tipping elements. Either direct GCM output or the extracted patterns can then be combined
with empirical [e.g., Dell et al., 2014] or process [e.g., Warszawski et al., 2014] models to estimate regional impacts and damage functions that go beyond temperature impacts.
A number of studies have attempted to assess the economic impact of AMOC collapse. Some [e.g., Keller et al., 2000, 2004; Mastrandrea and Schneider, 2001] have linked simple models of AMOC stability to arbitrary perturbations of the damage function of a
simple benefitcost IAM like DICE. Link and Tol [2010] combined the spatial pattern of AMOC collapse from an experiment with the HadCM3 GCM with the impact functions from the FUND 2.8 IAM, which has temperature-driven damage functions for each of 16
regions and six impact categories. They found a small global effect (a ~0.1% reduction in global GDP in 2100), though larger negative effects (up to ~4% of GDP) in a few, mostly high-latitude countries. Kuhlbrodt et al. [2009] linked the temperature, precipitation,
cloudiness and pressure precipitation projections downscaled from the Climber-3a intermediate-complexity Earth system model to the LPJmL dynamic vegetation model to assess the effect of an AMOC shutdown on European crop production; they found a fairly
limited effect. Link and Tol [2009] linked the ocean temperature and AMOC projections of Climber-3a to a bioeconomic model of the Barents Sea cod fishery. They found that the direct effect of AMOC weakening on survival rates could lead to a fisheries collapse.
Similar studies could be conducted for other tipping elements with regional climatic effects, and the empirical climate impact functions increasingly emerging in the econometric literature could be leveraged to link regional climate changes to their socio-economic
consequences [e.g., Dell et al., 2014].
State shifts in ice-sheet tipping elements are conceptually the easiest to incorporate into risk assessments. Their primary impact is to change rates of sea-level rise, and so they can be assessed in the same frameworks used to assess sea-level rise impacts more
broadly. For example, Nicholls et al. [2008] forced the FUND model with West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse, represented by 5 m of global-mean sea-level rise in a period as short as 100 years. For a centurytimescale collapse, they found a ~40% drop in the length of
the coastlines that it was benefit-cost optimal to protect, and a 15-fold increase in annual protection costs. Diaz [2015] and Diaz and Keller [2016] extended DICE with a stochastic representation of West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse, with collapse probabilities loosely
calibrated against the expert elicitation study of Bamber and Aspinall [2013].
Arguably, the possibility of large-scale ice-sheet collapse is already built into some probabilistic sea-level rise projections [e.g., Kopp et al., 2014], though these may understate the probability of this outcome [DeConto and Pollard, 2016]. For example, the Kopp et al.
[2014] 99.9th percentile projections align with other estimates of the maximum physically plausible level of 21st century sea-level rise (~2.5 m) and require > 95 cm of rise driven by the Antarctic ice sheet in the 21st century. However, risk assessments based on these
projections [Houser et al., 2015] have not examined outcomes that far into the tail of the analysis. Deliberate inspection of such tail risks would provide a natural way of incorporating ice-sheet tipping elements into coastal risk assessments.
Ecological tipping elements may be the hardest to incorporate into economic risk assessments, particularly at a global scale. The difficulty reflects the state of the field of ecosystem services valuation. Generally, assessments of ecosystem services are either narrowly
focused [e.g., Jenkins et al., 2010] or fairly vague [e.g., Costanza et al., 1997; de Groot et al., 2012]. The easiest risks of large-scale ecosystem changes to assess may be those that feedback onto global radiative balance, through either changes in the carbon cycle or
changes in land surface albedo.
In summary, potential climate-economic shocks associated with state shifts in different tipping elements can be independently assessed, for example, by (1) linking simple climate model scenarios for elements that affect greenhouse gas concentrations or albedo to
impact models and (2) incorporating regional spatial-temporal patterns associated with tipping elements with regional climatic effects to impact models. Some tipping elements are driven by naturalsystem variables only partially reflected in current Earth system
models and thus require alternative approaches, such as (3) extending coastal risk assessments into the tail of sea-level rise probability distributions, which should incorporate the possibility of rapid ice-sheet melt; and (4) tallying the net costs of climate impacts on
monetizable ecosystem services. However, tipping elements are not necessarily independent of one another [e.g., Kriegler et al., 2009], so when estimating the economic risks of different elements, it is important to consider the correlations between different
thresholds. For example, rapid Greenland ice mass loss increases the probability of AMOC collapse, which in turn leads to Southern Ocean warming and increases the probability of rapid West Antarctic Ice Sheet mass loss. In addition, the framework laid out above
focuses on how a state shift in a tipping element may cause different individual types of impacts, but it is also important to consider how these impacts interact across sectors [e.g., Warren, 2011]. Severe negative (or positive) impacts on agriculture, for example, will
affect food prices and lead to changes in economic structure. Similarly, migration away from coastlines could have either negative or positive economic effects. It is also important to keep in mind that one effect of a state shift may be to change the temporal and
spatial correlations between extreme events, making once-rare black swan [Taleb, 2007] alignments of extremes much more likely.
4 Climatically sensitive social tipping elements
Given the sociological origins of the modern tipping point concept, it is perhaps surprising that climate change tipping point research has focused almost exclusively on tipping elements in natural systems, leaving climatically relevant social tipping elements mostly
unexplored. Broader social change theory has, however, recognized that change is often not gradual. Moser and Dilling [2007] identified four typical stages of social transformation that together form a S-curve. In the predevelopment phase, the system is in one
stable state. During take off, it begins to accelerate towards a new state. The third stage, which they titled breakthrough, is the tipping point, where the rate of change accelerates until it reaches the fourth stage, stabilization in a new state. Influencing this
accelerating rate of social change is typically a positive feedback mechanism involving network diffusion, by which one actor (e.g., a household, a legislature, or a corporation) changes, and others via social cues exponentially follow suit. Social tipping points can
influence climate change, and climate change can influence social tipping points. Similarly, economic shocks may both cause and be caused by social tipping points.
Like climatic tipping elements, social tipping elements both involve positive feedbacks and exhibit non-linear rates of change. This is a more restrictive definition of social tipping points than what is sometimes applied in the social scientific literature. While there are
robust research fields that recognize thresholds in human-climate systems, they generally lack an explicit focus on positive feedbacks within social systems, instead considering the more generic case of systems with thresholds, like those shown in Figure 2b-d. For
example, Bardsley and Hugo [2010, p.243] define a migration threshold as a point at which the impacts of climate change are so severe or so frequent that the resilience of socio-ecological systems is breached, or that existing in situ adaptation options either fail or
are perceived as inadequate, so that people make use of migration as an adaptation option in a manner that will fundamentally alter the form migration is taking. While migration can be a tipping element, this description does not capture the role of the feedbacks
that make it such. Other researchers have found that as climate change impacts increase in magnitude, there is a threshold where individuals responses change from being adaptive to maladaptive [Niemeyer et al., 2005]. Researchers conducting interviews that
presented worsening climate change scenarios saw an increase in the adaptive response of concern and action for a warming scenario (2.5C). When this scenario shifted to a greater magnitude of climate change (5C), the researchers observed an increase in
apprehension and a decline in trust and perceptions that institutions and other social actors will respond. The researchers saw this as an increase in maladaptation and suggest that there is a threshold between 2.5C and 5C at which people become less adaptive.
This study suggests a threshold in social behavior, but not a positive feedback mechanism through which it occurs. In addition, socioecological studies examine how human actions, climate change, and other factors trigger ecological regime shifts, but the tipping
elements in these studies are ecological, not social [Kinzig et al., 2006].
The term adaptation tipping point [Kwadijk et al., 2010; Werners et al., 2013; Koukoui et al., 2015] has been occasionally used in the literature to refer to sigmoidal changes in the frequency of extreme events above a threshold at which the current management
strategy will no longer be able to meet [its] objectives [Kwadijk et al., 2010, p. 730]. We advise against this use, as it is inconsistent with other uses of the term tipping point. Although tipping points proper do produce sigmoidal changes, the sigmoidal changes
associated with adaptation tipping points do not arise from positive feedbacks and thus lack a crucial characteristic of true tipping points. They are simply a product of extreme value statistics, by which the number of exceedances of a threshold can grow
approximately exponentially in response to a linear increase in the mean of a distribution. For example, the historical 1% average annual probability flood at the Battery tide gauge in New York City is ~1.8 m above mean high water. With 50 cm of sea-level rise, the
expected number of such floods increases about 5 times; with 100 cm, by about 40 times, and with 150 cm, by about 2000 times [Buchanan et al., 2016]. If current management strategies cannot cope with a 1-in-100 year flood occurring with an annual probability
>10%, the adaptation tipping point would occur when sea-level rise exceeded ~70 cm.
Social tipping points can be beneficial, costly, or neutral to human welfare. Beneficial social tipping points increase societal resilience and reduce climate change damages via mitigation or adaptation. Harmful social tipping points are more likely to occur where there
are low levels of societal resilience, under which societal risks increase because of failure to effectively adapt or mitigate. Potential social tipping elements that are relevant to integrated assessment of the costs of climate change include (1) public opinion and policy
change, (2) technology and behavior adoption for adaptation or mitigation, (3) migration, and (4) civil conflict.
In environmental policy, the theory of punctuated equilibrium explains intervals of long-term policy stasis and incrementalism, interrupted by abrupt changes to a new policy state [Baumgartner et al., 2014]. These explosive change[s] for a short while lead to the
establishment of a new policy equilibrium [Baumgartner et al., 2014, p.61]. Unity in public opinion on an environmental issue, decreasing unity in opposition to policy change by negatively affected interest groups, and governmental openness to policy change can
all influence policy change [Shwom, 2011]. These underlying factors are social phenomena that can experience positive feedbacks related to network influencer effects [Watts and Dodds, 2007]. Social scientists use sand-pile models, tipping point models, small
world models and other graph theoretic models, complex adaptive systems models, and models that produce punctuated dynamics via a hierarchy of time scales [Brock, 2006, p.49] to capture the nonlinearity of social change dynamics. Modeling environmental
policy change suffers from the typical modeling challenges for complex social systems, including the identification problem (identifying what variables should be included in the models). Our review did not find any models of public opinion or politics of climate
change, though there are a number of models of punctuated equilibrium and environmental policy change (see [Repetto, 2008] and [Garmestani, 2014] for reviews).

Climate change mitigation and adaptation require adoption of new technologies and
behaviors . For example, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, society will need to adopt
energyefficient and low-carbon energy technologies . Researchers have historically used logistic
substitution models to represent energy technology uptake over time [e.g., Marchetti and Nakicenovic, 1979]. Energy
technologies exhibit a gradual diffusion in the introductory phase, then experience
exponential growth as the learning curve and up-scaling of a technology takes place (the tipping
point), after which growth tapers off as the technology approaches saturation [Grbler et al., 1999]. Wilson [2012] mapped a variety
of energy production technologies and their capacity in the Netherlands over time and found that fossil fuel, nuclear, and

renewable energy technologies all exhibit this general pattern, though length of time in each
phase varies.

The epidemic model of technology diffusion [Geroski, 2000] posits that technology adoption is dependent upon information availability and experience spread through
networks [Rogers, 2003]. For example, farmers in the Philippines used relatives and neighbors as a reliable source of information and credit to help adapt to drought [AcostaMichlik and Espaldon, 2008]. Because proximity influences social networks and cues (e.g., a solar panel is visible on a neighbors roof), spatial agent-based models have been
used to model technology diffusion and adoption processes [Berger, 2001; Noonan et al., 2015]. Many technological adaptations, such as raising houses, adopting airconditioners, or modifying farming techniques, are innovations that experience these network feedbacks and will diffuse following a logistic curve.

Recent models of technology adoption have evolved beyond the diffusion curve to provide system-dynamic accounts. Approaches
like energy innovation systems [Gallagher et al., 2012] and socio-technical systems transitions [Geels, 2005; Geels and Schot, 2007]
embed technology adoption within supply and demand dynamics, sources of technology change, the technology development cycle,
innovation processes, and feedbacks between networks of actors and institutions. Learning and experience curves have been used as
the basis for endogenous technological change in a number of formal models, but not without critique [see Wilson, 2012]. Clarke et
al. [2008, p.413] highlight that although learning-by-doing may be one of the factors underlying these curves, experience curves are
a reflection of all factors that play into the change in technological performance and cost, including research and development,
spillovers and economies of scale. In an analysis focusing on innovation processes of five renewable energy case studies, Hekkert
and Negro [2009] found that actions that turn knowledge into business opportunities (entrepreneurial activities) rise when there is
guidance that positively affect visibility and clarity of specific wants among technology users (e.g., a policy goal aim for a certain

technologies did not tip until

there was market formation , such as the creation of a small protected market (via a subsidy or tax
advantage) or a niche market for a specific application .
percentage of renewable energy in a future year). However, they found that

Another potential social tipping element involves migration , which is generally costly to the source region but
can potentially be beneficial for recipient regions and for overall human welfare. Migration is an adaptation to new
environmental conditions. Climate-related migration can involve forced displacement, where climate change has made it
difficult to stay, or may take place in anticipation of future risks. Moving away from sub-Saharan Africa as
desertification and water scarcity make survival more difficult is an example of climate
displacement [Bogardi and Warner, 2009]. Migration can also be a response to social and economic
destabilization that results from climate change impacts [Warner et al., 2010]. These are examples of migration
as a mass general social response, but, as we discuss below, there can also be positive feedbacks in migration systems.
Migration-systems approaches identify push factors that encourage or enable people to leave their home location

and pull factors that encourage them towards a new location [Mabogunje, 1970; Fawcett, 1989; Jennissen, 2007]. Social
networks are an important pull factor; once a migration stream has been initiated, it tends to grow, as the networks provide a
positive feedback [Boyd, 1989; Fawcett, 1989; Massey and Zenteno, 1999]. Massey and Zenteno [1999] built a dynamic model of
mass migration that account for feedbacks, providing the basis of an approach that could be used to model climate-related migration
tipping points. As people migrate away in large numbers due to environmental change, a feedback

can occur that changes a communitys ability to adapt [McLeman and Smit, 2006].
Civil conflict , and in particular the conflict/development trap, can give rise to a more unambiguously costly
tipping point. The conflict/development trap is a well-established positive feedback cycle , in
which failure to develop increases the likelihood of civil conflict, which in turns decreases the ability to develop and increases the
future risks of conflict [Collier, 2003]. This can give rise to a counter-development tipping point, as has arguably been seen in a
number of strife-torn, low-income countries. Econometric results suggest that warmer temperatures can

slow economic growth [Burke et al., 2015] and increase the likelihood of civil conflict [Hsiang
and Burke, 2013; Hsiang et al., 2013]. Thus, climate change has the potential to make a conflict/development tipping point more
likely, exacerbating the risk that nations may get trapped in a cycle of poverty and conflict that is difficult to break.
Bentley et al. [2014] investigated whether early warning signs, such as a critical slowing down or an increase in variability, are
associated with social tipping points. They found that, historically, many social systems have undergone tipping points without
exhibiting such warning signs. For example, they point to the case of small English banks, which increased in number at about
2.7%/year for 150 years and then suddenly declined in 1810 with no data indicating such a change was impending. While social
scientists can identify potential social tipping elements and associated mechanisms, it is far more difficult to predict when they will
occur, and studies must consider that a range of biophysical, social, cultural, political and economic factors influence social
responses to climate changes [Nuttall, 2012].
Climatic tipping points may be one trigger for social tipping points . Another potential trigger are
increases in the frequency of extreme events . Although the adaptation tipping points of Kwadijk [2010] are
not true tipping points, these dramatic increases in extreme event frequency may force true adaptation tipping points state shifts
in genuine social tipping elements, such as adaptive policies or behaviors, that lead to greater adaptation [Pelling and Dill, 2010].
For example, there may be a critical threshold in the frequency of days over 30C that triggers a technology-adoption tipping point
for air-conditioners. Conversely, increased frequency of extreme events might also lead to costly tipping

points; for example, crossing a threshold in the frequency of crop failures might trigger a
migration or conflict tipping point. Sufficiently large or frequent extreme events might
also trigger an environmental policy tipping point that accelerates greenhouse gas mitigation , or
that leads to the deployment of large-scale climate engineering technologies such as
SRM [Keith, 2013; Irvine et al., 2014].
Extreme events have the potential to serve as focusing events: sudden crises that result in calls for a remedy to reduce impacts of that crisis or chances of a future crisis. Natural
disasters have long been seen as focusing events. Focusing events provide an opportunity for interest groups, government leaders, policy entrepreneurs, the news media, or
members of the public to identify new problems, or to pay greater attention to existing but dormant problems, potentially leading to a search for solutions in the wake of
apparent policy failure [Birkland, 1998]. As recognized by Bentley [2014], the acceleration of a trend towards a social tipping point often entails network feedbacks that amplify
a message or behavior to many people [Gladwell, 2000]. The strength of the network matters: Birkland [1996] found that the expert community of scientists and government
agencies around earthquakes is active and connected enough to keep earthquake safety on the national agenda between focusing events, whereas hurricanes have a sparse
national expert network that results in hurricanes falling off the national agenda between events. In thinking more broadly about shifting U.S. public opinion and action on
climate change, Nisbet and Kotcher [2009] suggested that a network of different types of opinion leaders that could be prepared before a climate-related focusing event and
mobilized after might be effective in pushing public opinion towards a tipping point on climate action. However, to date, the negative feedback provided by groups leveraging
public opinion leaders and networks to maintain policy stasis has generally been more effective [Jasny et al., 2015; Farrell, 2016].
The study of climatically influenced social tipping elements is still in an early phase, but may play an important role in the integrated assessment of the cost of climate change.
Environmental policy and technological tipping points that affect mitigation or climate engineering can influence the climatic trajectory that causes damage, while those that
affect adaptation can influence the system resilience that modulates the translation of physical impacts into human costs. Migration and conflict tipping points, as we discuss
below, may be important drivers of economic shocks. We suggest that it is important for the research community to more broadly survey the landscape of potential climaterelated social tipping elements, to investigate networks and other social mechanisms driving relevant positive feedbacks, and to further develop statistical and systems-dynamic
models characterizing these mechanisms. Statistical and dynamical models of social tipping elements have the potential to bring greater realism to the socio-economic
projections of IAMs and to help move the representation of decision processes within IAMs away from the dictatorship of the infinitely lived representative agent.
5 Economic shocks with potential climate linkages
Tipping point research entered the IAM realm through an explicit though rather tenuous link to economic catastrophes in the DICE-99 model of Nordhaus and Boyer [Nordhaus
and Boyer, 2000]. The previous two sections discussed climatic tipping elements and climatically sensitive social tipping elements, and suggested ways they might be
incorporated into risk assessment. A complementary approach might be to start with the end-point of a large economic shock and work backwards, asking: What sort of
phenomena do we know to cause large economic shocks? Through what pathways might climate change affect the probability of these phenomena? Some of these pathways
involve tipping elements; not all do. We begin with the observation that the specific pathway, in how climate damages affect the economy, matters. We then cover several
potential climate-economy shocks. For some, including capital-destroying meteorological disasters, civil wars, and temperature-linked hits to economic growth, climatic links
are well-established. For some others, like financial crises, international wars on a nations own soil, and large-scale political and economic restructuring, links cannot be
excluded but are much less direct.

Economic damages can be effected through several different channels, including damages to output (as typically represented in IAMs), to capital stock or savings [Fankhauser
and Tol, 2005], to labor productivity [Graff Zivin and Neidell, 2014; Houser et al., 2015], to ecosystem services and other natural capital [Sterner and Persson, 2008], and to
total factor productivity [Moyer et al., 2013]. Some damages affect primarily the level of these factors, which is the standard assumption in most IAMs; others affect growth rates
and could lead to vastly larger long-run damages [Dell et al., 2012; Heal and Park, 2013; Burke et al., 2015; Moore and Diaz, 2015]. Like gradual economic damages, economic
shocks could be effected through any of these channels. For a full accounting of the economic impacts of climate damages, it is crucial to specify the particular channel. Although
Nordhaus [1994] defined an economic catastrophe with respect to global economic output, world GDP has risen nearly continuously since at least 1950, and world GDP per
capita has experienced only a few individual years of stagnation (1975, 1982, 1991, and 2009) [The Maddison Project, 2013; Bolt and Zanden, 2014]. To collect data on economic
shocks, we must therefore narrow our scope to a national level (Table 2).

The large economic shocks with the most direct climate ties are associated with capitaldestroying meteorological disasters . Hsiang and Jina [2014] showed that tropical cyclones cause
a long-lasting (> 20 year) reduction in GDP . Among the countries ever hit by tropical cyclones, a 1-in-100
country-year causes a persistent ~15% output reduction. Although Hsiang and Jina [2014] measured cyclones solely by their wind
speed, a significant fraction of the damage caused by cyclones is flood-related, so it is reasonable to expect that sea-level rise will
lead to more cyclone damage. Moreover, some studies indicate a regional or global increase in the number and

intensity of tropical cyclones with climate change , which would make large shocks more
frequent [Emanuel, 2013; Knutson et al., 2013].
Though less directly influenced by climate than cyclones, civil wars both cause large economic shocks and also have an environmental connection [Hsiang et al., 2011, 2013].
Cerra and Saxena [2008]s analysis of 190 countries for the period 1960 to 2001 found that civil wars caused a ~6 1% output loss after one year, with ~3 3% persisting for at
least a decade. Civil wars that coincided with a strengthening of executive power led to more severe economic crises: an output reduction of ~15 6% that persisted for over ten
years after the crisis started. Moreover, as previously mentioned, econometric results indicate that certain climatic conditions make civic conflict more likely. A meta-analysis of
31 studies indicated that a 1-standard deviation increase toward higher temperatures or more extreme rainfall leads to a ~14% increase in the frequency of civil conflict [Hsiang
and Burke, 2013; Hsiang et al., 2013]. Though this conclusion is not universally accepted, and though much work needs to be done to understand the mechanisms of the climateconflict link [e.g., Hsiang and Meng, 2014; Buhaug, 2015], civil conflicts are a key area for future work assessing potential climate-economic shocks.

Warmer temperatures themselves also have the potential to create a slowly burning climateeconomic shock through temperature-induced effects on economic growth rates .
Empirical work shows that, in mid- and low-latitude countries (with an average annual temperature above ~13C), higher annual
average temperatures reduce economic growth rates [Dell et al., 2009, 2012; Burke et al., 2015]. Under high-end

emissions projections (RCP 8.5) and a slow baseline growth scenario, Burke et al. [2015]s mean estimated growth
effect could make GDP per capita in nearly half of countries lower in 2100 than in 2010 a
genuine economic catastrophe for those countries, though not one tied to a specific triggering event. One possible
pathway for this reduction in economic growth is the effect of extreme heat days on labor productivity [Heal and Park, 2013; Graff
Zivin and Neidell, 2014]. Another contributing pathway is the well-established, nonlinear link between extreme heat and agricultural
productivity [Schlenker and Roberts, 2008, 2009; Roberts and Schlenker, 2011; Feng et al., 2012; Tack et al., 2015].

Warming is the only existential risk the plan is key to adaptation

Romm 16 (2016. Joseph Romm, PhD in physics from MIT, former assistant secretary for
energy efficiency and renewable energy at the U.S. department of Energy, founding editor of
ClimateProgress. Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford University Press, p.
140-145)
Most environmental problems that people, communities, and governments have experience dealing with are reversible. A polluted
lake or river can be cleaned up and then used for swimming and fishing. A city with polluted air can put in place clean air standards
and turn its brown haze into blue skies. However, climate change is different from most environmental problems. The
scientific literature has made it increasingly clear that key impacts

are irreversible on a time scale of centuries

and possibly millennia. This means that climate change creates risks that are unparalleled in
human history. It also means that if we follow the traditional way of dealing with an environmental problem, that is, wait
until the consequences are obvious and unmistakable to everybody, it will be too late" to undo
those consequences for a long, long time. Climate inaction inherently raises issues of equity because it will harm
billions of people who have contributed little or nothing to the problem. However, what makes
the issue unique in the annals of history is that the large-scale harm is irreparable on any timescale
that matters (and that we could avoid the worst of the irreparable harms at a surprisingly
low net cost , as discussed in Chapter Four). Because irreversibility is such a unique and consequential fact
about climate change, the world's leading climate scientists (and governments) took extra measures to emphasize the issue
in the most recent international assessment of climate science by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changethe
November 2014 full, final "synthesis" report in its Fifth Assessment all of the scientific and economic literature. In the IPCC's final
"synthesis" report of its Fourth Assessment, issued in 2007, irreversibility was only mentioned two times and there was minimal
discussion in the Summary for Policymakers. Seven years later, the "Summary for Policymakers" of the IPCC's synthesis report
mentions "irreversible" 14 times and has extended discussions of exactly what it means and why it matters. The full report has an
even more detailed discussion. What do the world's leading scientists mean by "irreversible impacts"? In the latest IPCC report, they
explain that Warming will continue beyond 2100 under all RCP scenarios except RCP2.6 [where emissions are cut sharply]. Surface
temperatures will remain approximately constant at elevated levels for many centuries after a complete cessation of net
anthropogenic CO2 emissions. A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a
multi-century to millennial time scale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained
period It is virtually certain that global mean sea-level rise will continue for many centuries beyond

2100, with the amount of rise dependent on future emissions. In other words, impacts will be much
worse than described in this report after 2100 in every case but the one where we sharply
cut carbon dioxide starting now (to stabilize at below 2C total warming). In addition,
whatever temperature the planet ultimately hits thanks to human-caused warming, that is roughly as
high as temperatures will stay for hundreds of years after we bring total net human-caused
carbon pollution emissions to zero. The "case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere
over a sustained period" means a time far beyond when humanity has merely eliminated total net humancaused emissionsfrom deforestation and burning fossil fuels (and from whatever amplifying carbon-cycle feedbacks we have
caused, such as defrosting permafrost). To start reversing the irreversible, we have to go far below zero net emissions to
actually sucking vast quantities of diffuse CO2 out of the air and putting it someplace that is also permanent,
which, according to a 2015 National Academy of Sciences report (discussed in Chapter Six), we currently do not know how to do on a

One can envision such a day when we might be able to go far below zero if
we sharply reduce net carbon pollution to zero by 2100, as we must to stabilize
near 2C. However, it is much more difficult to imagine when it would happen if emissions are
anywhere near current levels by 2100, and we have started one or more major amplifying carbon-cycle
feedbacks that make the job of getting to even zero net emissions doubly difficult. If we do not get
on the 2C path, then some of the most serious climate changes caused by global warming could last a
thousand years or more. The IPCC explained in 2014, "Stabilisation of global average surface temperature does not imply
stabilisation for all aspects of the climate system." That is to say, as we warm above 2C, then even at a point many
hundreds of years from now when temperatures start to drop, some changes in the climatesealevel rise being the most obvious examplewill likely keep going and going. The IPCC reports are primarily reviews
large scale.

of the scientific literature, so the new focus on the irreversible nature of climate change is no surprise. In a 2009 study titled
"Irreversible Climate Change Because of Carbon Dioxide Emissions," researchers led by NOAA scientists concluded that "the climate
change that is taking place because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions
stop." It is significant to note that the NOAA-led study warned that it was not just sea-level rise that would be irreversible: Among
illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels
near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450-600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall
reductions in several regions comparable to those of the "dust bowl" era and inexorable sea level rise. Recent studies strongly
support that finding for both sea-level rise and Dust-Bowlification of some of the world's most productive agricultural lands, as we
have seen. This 2014 Synthesis report may be the first time the world's leading scientists and governments explain why the

Without
additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the
end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe , widespread , and irreversible
impacts globally (high confidence). Mitigation involves some level of co-benefits and of risks due to adverse
side-effects , but these risks do not involve the same possibility of severe, widespread, and
irreversible impacts as risks from climate change, increasing the benefits from nearterm mitigation efforts. Why is this conclusion so salient? The IPCC is acknowledging that mitigation
efforts taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have risks in addition to their cobenefits"possible adverse side
effects of large-scale deployment of low-carbon technology options and economic costs," as the full report puts it.
However, the risks involved in reducing emissions are both quantitatively and
qualitatively different than the risks deriving from inaction because they are not
likely to be anywhere near as "severe, widespread, and irreversible." The full 2014
"Synthesis" report expands on this point, noting that " Climate change risks may persist for millennia and
can involve very high risk of severe impacts and the presence of significant
irreversibilities combined with limited adaptive capacity. " In sharp contrast, " the
stringency of climate policies can be adjusted much more quickly in response to
observed consequences and costs and create lower risks of irreversible
consequences." Put another way, if some aspect of the emissions reduction strategy turns out to
start having unexpected, significant negative consequences, humanity can quickly adjust to
minimize costs and risks. However, inaction failing to embrace strong mitigation will
lead to expected climate impacts that are not merely very long lasting and irreversible, but
potentially beyond adaptation . For instance, sea-level rise would become so great, so
irreversibility of impacts makes inaction so uniquely problematic. Here is the key finding (emphasis in original):

rapid, and so unstoppable that we simply have to abandon the vast majority of
coastal cities.
Cap-and-trade solves international emissions and sparks a shift to low-cost clean
energy.
Stavins 14 Robert Stavins, Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, Albert Pratt Professor of
Business and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (Cap
and Trade Is the Only Feasible Way of Cutting Emissions, The New York Times, June 2nd,
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/01/can-the-market-stave-off-globalwarming/cap-and-trade-is-the-only-feasible-way-of-cutting-emissions)
A national carbon-pricing regime is the only feasible way for the United States to reach its
goal of reducing emissions to 83 percent below their 2005 level by 2050. Because emission
control costs vary drastically among the millions of diverse emissions sources, conventional
regulations are unfeasible. Only a pricing regime provides incentives for the overall target to be
achieved in the least expensive manner. In the long term it is economical because of incentives to adopt
lower-cost, cleaner technologies. The initial distribution of allowances in a cap-and-trade
system offers a direct means of compensating for the inevitably unequal burdens imposed by a climate
policy. It resists degradation by political forces , because its environmental and economic
performance is unaffected by the initial distribution of allowances . Internationally, it provides a
straightforward means to link with other countries climate policies, which is exceptionally
important for addressing this global problem. Finally, experience favors cap and trade because it
has a history of successful adoption and implementation over three decades. In 1982, the Environmental
Protection Agency put in place a trading program to phase out leaded gasoline. It produced a
more rapid elimination of leaded gasoline from the marketplace than had been anticipated , and at
a savings of some $250 million per year. Later, Congress enacted a law proposed by President George H. W. Bush to
use cap and trade to cut sulfur dioxide emissions (and consequently acid rain) by half, at a savings of $1
billion per year. As climate change has become an increasing concern, cap and trade has most often been the
instrument of choice . The first and largest example is the European Union Emissions
Trading System, which has covered electricity generation and large manufacturing, and is now being expanded. But
external factors in Europe have suppressed allowance prices , lowering incentives to cut emissions. The
economic downturn has curtailed energy and allowance demand. Complementary policies, like Europes aggressive renewable
power initiatives, have relocated emissions from electricity generation to other sectors with no net reduction. In the process,
abatement costs have been driven up and allowance prices suppressed. Also, the anticipated termination of the Clean Development
Mechanism created a temporary flood of offsets on the market. The European Commission is about to lower the

programs cap, bringing higher future allowance prices. In the United States, the Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative, begun in 2009, brought together nine Northeastern states in a cap-andtrade regime controlling electricity sector emissions. The combination of the recession, low natural gas prices
and mild weather lowered emissions below the cap, but the states have now increased the programs stringency .
Californias ambitious cap-and-trade system will soon cover 85 percent of the states economy
and reduce carbon dioxide emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 . Add to these seven pilot
carbon dioxide cap-and-trade systems in China, plus others up and running in Quebec and
Switzerland, and still others planned in South Korea, India, Chile, Brazil and Mexico, and it
becomes clear that cap and trade has emerged as the preferred approach for
meaningful action to address climate change.
The plan realigns incentives and sparks low-carbon innovation
Sussman 15 (Bob, 10/21/15 Co-chair of the Transition Team for the EPA and then as senior
policy counsel to the EPA administrator. Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown Law
https://www.brookings.edu/2015/10/21/the-return-of-cap-and-trade-is-good-news-for-u-sclimate-policy/ DA: 8/7/16)
The successful implementation of Title IV exceeded even the expectations of its
advocates. Multiple studies showed that utilities participating in trading reduced emissions of
sulfur dioxides (SO2) more quickly, and at lower costs, than predicted, and the opportunity to

profit from the sale of allowances was an incentive for innovation in pollution control
technology. Subsequent administrationsRepublican and Democraticbuilt on the success of the acid rain program by
applying cap and trade on a regional scale to reduce interstate transport of both SO2 and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted by power
plants. Robust markets to trade allowances developed rapidly under these programs and

emissions declined significantly without measurably raising electricity costs . Cap and
trade rests on a simple concept: the government should set an overall limit (or cap) on emissions and issue tradable permits (or
allowances) to regulated sources. A POWERFUL TOOL TO REDUCE CARBON EMISSIONS Cap and trade is not the only tool for
GHG emission reduction, but it has important strengths. Placing an absolute cap on emissions provides certainty that they will
remain below levels deemed necessary to avoid or limit harmful atmospheric concentrations of CO2. In this respect, cap and
trade is preferable to a carbon tax, which provides financial incentives to reduce emissions, but
does not guarantee that they will decline to any specific level. The cap can be tightened over time
as reduction targets become more stringent, making allowances more expensive and
incentivizing innovation and deployment of low-emitting technologies. Moreover, since a ton of CO2
makes the same contribution to the atmospheric buildup of GHGs wherever it is emitted, cap and trade programs do not
need to be limited geographically; they can operate at a regional, national, or even
international scale . This enables the creation of large and diverse trading markets which
provide emitters a wide variety of low-cost compliance options. The nine Northeast states in the
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) established a cap and trade program for power plant emissions in 2005. California has
more recently launched a multi-sector cap and trade program under AB-32, its principal climate change law. The European Union
has for some time been implementing an Emission Trading System (ETS) to meet its Kyoto Protocol obligations. Despite startup
glitches, these programs have endured and become stronger over time.

The pricing mechanism of the plan is key it ensures committed emissions

reductions and a stable price level
Murray et al 9 (Winter 2009, Brian C. Murray, Director for Economic Analysis, Nicholas
Institute, and Research Professor, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
Richard G. Newell, Gendell Associate Professor of Energy and Environmental Economics,
Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, a University Fellow at Resources for the
Future, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. William A.
Pizer, Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future. Balancing Cost and Emissions Certainty: An
Allowance Reserve for Cap-and-Trade Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Volume
3, Issue 1, pp. 84103 doi:10.1093/reep/ren016)
Taxes and cap-and-trade are, in some sense, extreme examples of the alternative market-based
approaches that are available to correct an emissions externality. The government stipulates that emitters must obtain the right
to emit. These rights (typically called allowances or permits) are either supplied with infinite elasticity at a fixed price (the tax) or
with zero elasticity at a fixed supply (the cap). A key alternativeinitially suggested by Roberts and Spence (1976) and later
developed in the context of climate policy by Pizer (2002) is the idea of a

safety valve, in which a cap-and-trade system is

coupled with a price ceiling at which additional allowances can be purchased (in excess of the cap). So long
as the allowance price is below the safety-valve price, this hybrid system acts like cap-and-trade, with emissions fixed but the price
left to adjust. When the safety-valve price is reached, however, this system behaves like a tax, fixing the

price but leaving emissions to adjust. Given the importance attached by many stakeholders and policymakers to
containing the costs of any U.S. climate policy, this approach has received considerable attention in the U.S. debate over climate
change regulation (e.g., Samuelsohn 2008), and has come to be known as the cost-containment issue (Pizer and Tatsutani 2008).
Cap-and-trade with a safety valve represents one of many possible mechanisms that lie between the two extremes of a pure price or a
pure quantity instrument. It offers a more malleable supply curve for emissions allowances, containing both vertical and flat
segments. This article discusses a second mechanism that includes features of both price and quantity instruments. We

an allowance reserve, is particularly promising. The basic idea goes one step
beyond the safety valve: while the safety valve stipulates that an unlimited number of allowances be
made available at the specified safety valve price, the allowance reserve stipulates both a ceiling
price at which cost relief is provided and a maximum number of allowances to be issued
in exercising that relief. Much like a safety valve mechanism can mimic either a pure price or pure quantity control,
depending on how the cap and safety-valve price are set, an allowance reserve can mimic a pure price, pure
quantity, or safety-valve approach, depending on how the ceiling price and volume are set. Three
believe this approach, which we call

motivations underlie our interest in this mechanism. The first two are largely practical in nature, while the third hints at a new twist
on the conditions underlying optimality, in contrast to the traditional prices versus quantities perspective. The first motivation is
simple: as we describe below, the safety valve represents a special case of the allowance reserve where the volume of available

allowances is very large or unlimited. Thus, an

allowance reserve has the capacity to do as well if not better

than the safety valve in terms of matching the public interest, described below as a blend of
economic efficiency and political feasibility. That is, political economy conditions suggest
that the public interest may be better served with an allowance reserve because it is more likely
to sustain a coalition that will enable welfare-enhancing policy to be enacted. Second, the reserve
mechanism addresses one problem with a safety valve. Although most cap-and-trade programs permit
allowance banking, which can help equilibrate present value prices across different time periods and increase dynamic
efficiency, allowance banking coupled with a safety valve creates a dynamic problem .
Suppose the cap needs to be tightened and as a result the safety-valve price is expected to
increase dramatically at some point in the future. With an ordinary safety valve, an expectation of
much higher prices in the future would lead rational firms to buy as many
allowances as possible at the current, low safety-valve price in order to save them
for use later when prices are high. Absent a mechanism to limit such purchases, they could
effectively overwhelm efforts to tighten the future cap , thereby undermining long-term
environmental policy goals . An allowance reserve would address this potential problem by
placing an upper limit on the available number of extra allowances. Finally, and most importantly at a
fundamental level, most economic analysis of price and quantity controls under uncertainty does not adequately
capture the dynamic nature of the regulatory process suggested by the preceding paragraph. In
particular, as new information arisesabout the benefits, costs, or global commitment to solving the
problem of climate change expectations about the likely long-term emissions level and
emissions price will evolve . Therefore, in order to achieve dynamic efficiency , prices need to
adjust regularly so that current prices continue to reflect discounted expected future
prices . A cap-and-trade program with banking, borrowing, and eventual adjustment of the cap
can achieve that result if economic agents have sufficient foresight and capacity to form rational
expectations about the longer term (Newell et al. 2005). This factor alone identifies an important advantage of dynamic capand-trade with banking and borrowing over other approaches. Nonetheless, these conditions may not holdor at least are
not assuredparticularly in the early years of a program when cost uncertainty would be high, a significant bank would
not yet have developed, and market actors would still be struggling to understand the new market. An allowance reserve
could be used to help the market toward such an equilibrium by anchoring initial prices near
or below the ceiling price.
The process of allowance distribution maximizes efficient distribution and
eliminates leakage
Borghesi and Montini 16 Simone Borghesi, Assistant Professor at the University of Siena
where he teaches Environmental Economics, Ph.D. in Economics at the European University
Institute, Massimiliano Montini, Associate Professor of European Union Law at the University
of Siena (The Best (and Worst) of GHG Emission Trading Systems: Comparing the EU ETS
with Its Followers, Frontiers in Energy Research, July 29th,
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fenrg.2016.00027/full#note31)
Another desirable feature that most ETSs have introduced is the phasing in of auctioning over
time. While grandfathering can be initially justified by the desire to prevent a rapid increase in
the costs for firms subject to a new ETS, the regulatory authority must clarify from the
beginning that a free allocation of allowances can only be a temporary measure and should
set a clear intertemporal path toward auctioning. This is not to say that auctioning is the
panacea for all problems. Difficulties can arise also in the auctioning design, as is well
documented in the ETS literature (e.g., Cramton and Kerr, 2002; Smith and Swierzbinski,
2007). In our opinion, however, setting a clear time plan for the progressive introduction of
auctioning can provide an important and credible signal that the new ETS is here to stay, which
may induce firms to make plans and investments in eco-innovation in due time.
Another best practice of many ETSs (RGGI excluded) is the introduction of carbon leakage rules.
The choice of adopting carbon leakage rules is somehow related to that of auctioning the

allowances, though the one does not necessarily imply the other. While auctioning can reduce
the risk of windfall profits that may derive from allocating allowances for free, the introduction
of carbon leakage rules can lower the risk of delocalization that occurs in the case of
unilateral environmental policies. Moreover, while auctioning may provoke the opposition of the
industrial sector (that has to pay, differently from what happens with grandfathering), the
existence carbon leakage rules can lower this opposition providing the necessary support of the
industrial sector to the new instrument. These two measures, therefore, can be seen as
complementary instruments that should go hand-in-hand in the design of an ETS. For carbon
leakage rules to be credible, the regulator must set ex ante clear and objective criteria to
identify the sectors at risk of delocalization. In this sense, the criteria adopted by the EU
and California of taking carbon intensity and trade exposure as criteria to exempt from
auctioning the sectors at risk of relocation can certainly be useful, although they might need to
be partially improved in the future.32 What is to be avoided, instead, is a continuous extension
of the sectors included in the list of those at risk of relocation,33 as this would undermine the
credibility of the system inducing the perception that carbon leakage provisions are just an
escamotage obtained by industrial lobbies to keep receiving allowances for free.
This international cooperation solidifies existing commitments and drives
international emissions reductions
Borghesi and Montini 16 Simone Borghesi, Assistant Professor at the University of Siena
where he teaches Environmental Economics, Ph.D. in Economics at the European University
Institute, Massimiliano Montini, Associate Professor of European Union Law at the University
of Siena (The Best (and Worst) of GHG Emission Trading Systems: Comparing the EU ETS
with Its Followers, Frontiers in Energy Research, July 29th,
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fenrg.2016.00027/full#note31)
There are at least three main reasons that may drive countries to link their own ETSs. The first reason
may consist in the political commitment towards a common effort to fight against climate
change. Linking various existing ETSs may represent an effective tool to reduce GHG
emissions beyond domestic borders . In this respect, the ordinary expected mitigation
achievements under a certain national ETS may be potentially increased by widening and
strengthening the system through linking with other ETSs. In such a context, a country wishing to
promote linking may be driven by the will to take the leadership in scaling up the development
of market-based tools to reduce GHG emissions and in acting as a facilitator/guide to adopt these policies at
international level. The second reason may consist in pursuing a higher cost-effectiveness in
fighting climate change. Notably, ETSs are cost-effective market-based tools designed to contribute to halt climate change,
conceived as additional measures to be accompanied by domestic mitigation policies. Linking ETSs offers the
incumbent operators a wider range of compliance opportunities , opening up a broader
reference market . Indeed, linking provides more flexibility and a variety of compliance choices
to the operators subject to their national ETS, by giving them access to a linked market , where
allowances may be offered at a lower price or at better conditions. Thus, linking may offer more cost-effective compliance
opportunities to operators. The

third reason may consist in strengthening international

cooperation with other countries. In this sense, linking a certain ETS with other cap and trade
schemes of other countries may also be part of a broader cooperation policy, expanding also
into other policies , between the countries involved in the linking agreement. In such a scenario,
the main driver for the countries wishing to link their respective ETSs is related to establishing
tighter relationships among them in several sectors, among which climate change, due to geographic
proximity, cultural affinity and other common interests, such as for instance commercial and trade policy
interests . Therefore, the establishment of an ETS linkage may serve as a tool to promote or
consolidate a broader cooperation policy between the given countries. As it can be inferred from
above, the main reasons for linking also help in identifying the main advantages offered by linking
which, unsurprisingly, fall by and large into the same three main categories identified above. The main

advantages for linking, therefore, may be said to refer to the political, economic as well as regulatory and administrative spheres.
With regard to the political pros, considering the difficulties experienced by the climate change

international negotiations in recent years, linking ETSs may provide a viable option, which is
alternative or additional to the conclusion and implementation of a troublesome international
agreement on climate change . In such a case, a bottom-up approach (i.e. linking domestic ETSs) might
prove a more feasible and realistic option to reduce GHG emissions globally as compared to an
international agreement on climate change concluded and implemented under the umbrella of the UNFCCC. As to
the economic pros, there might be several economic benefits provided by linking. Firstly, as already pointed out above, linking may
provide a range of compliance options to the incumbent operators, which may choose the means to comply with their reduction
commitments at the lowest possible cost available on the (enlarged) market. As a consequence, the first and most important
economic benefit of linking ETSs is its potential reduction of the overall abatement costs (cf. Kruger et al. 2007; Jaffe et al. 2009;
Metcalf and Weisbach 2012; Stranlund 2016). Secondly, by ensuring a certain degree of harmonisation in

regulating GHG emission reductions in the jurisdictions involved, it consequently reduces the
risks of leakage of economic activities towards countries with laxer standards and rules. Finally, linking ETSs may
increase liquidity in the carbon market. Finally, with reference to the regulatory and administrative pros, it seems
that linking may spread positive effects over the climate change regulatory frameworks of the
countries involved, since it offers to the regulators the opportunity to exchange lessons learnt
and best practices in the cap and trade sector.

1AC China
A national Chinese cap-and-trade system is coming but itll fail without sufficient
monitoring and verification
Cunningham 15 Edward Cunningham, Ph.D. from M.I.T. in political science, Director of
China Programs at the Harvard Kennedy Schools Ash Center for Democratic Governance and
Innovation (Chinas New Plans for a Cap and Trade System Just Might Work, Foreign Policy,
October 6th, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/06/china-carbon-emissions-climate-changecap-trade-us/)
While it is easy to dismiss Chinas new cap and trade policy as just a partial Band-Aid on hemorrhaging Chinese carbon emissions
or as destined to languish because of poor Chinese emissions data, weak enforcement of rules, corruption and weak market
institutions the timing could not have been better. Announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House on Sept. 25,

Chinas plan is to launch a national emission trading system in 2017, covering key industries
including power generation, iron and steel, chemicals, building materials, paper-making, and nonferrous metals. Political
directives from the top in Beijing are combining with Chinas recent economic slump to produce
a much higher likelihood that China will succeed in creating a cap and trade market that
makes a difference. Past experiments in emissions trading systems (ETS) in China certainly have been difficult. But this one
could be different. First, a rapidly growing energy system often leaves Chinese policymakers little room
for experimentation when the government is simply trying to keep the lights on and underlying
energy prices are high. Fear of grid instability, price volatility, and more dynamic demand curves hindered the scaling of
many of the previous demand-side energy reforms, conservation efforts, emissions trading schemes, and other initiatives. In
addition, high demand and high fuel prices led to a wide gap between the lower state-subsidized prices for things such as electric
power, and the higher liberalized market rate resulting from experiments. In contrast, the recent economic slowdown

to
about seven percent GDP growth and resulting drop in fuel prices has closed this gap, and
enabled reforms such as power pricing reforms in critical markets like the southeastern city Shenzhen,
where high power prices will be reduced. This breathing room in the energy system is important for
emissions trading schemes , which by design seek to place a price on emissions and therefore raise
costs to reflect social costs. Second, the strategic inclusion of a $3.1 billion fund to aid developing
countries in the fight against climate change, also announced on Sept. 25, signals a growing and
important psychological shift among Chinese policymakers. Providing funds, even if limited, departs
from a Copenhagen era approach in which a fractious developing-world bloc often placed China as a de-facto lead in climate
negotiations, arguing that climate mitigation technology and infrastructure funds should flow from the developed to the developing
world. Instead, China is committing to fund climate efforts in the world itself, thus breaking from

this unproductive negotiating dynamic. Perhaps most importantly, Chinas move has implications for
U.S. domestic climate legislation. Beijings recent cap and trade announcement directly
undermines U.S. policymakers who have long argued that Chinas participation in climate
mitigation policy is a prerequisite for U.S. action in this arena. With China attempting to blanket
larger swathes of its industrial economy in carbon policy, the United States will find it harder to
not follow suit and is instead likely to expand beyond actions covering only the domestic power
sector. The trading of any commodity requires buyers and sellers. Break-neck economic growth limited the supply of sellers from
previous Chinese attempts to start regional sulfur dioxide markets and more recently, pilot carbon dioxide markets. With power
generators trying to keep up with demand, few were in a position to have any excess emissions credits to sell. The result was stilted,
forced trades with only symbolic value. With slowing economic growth, Chinas expanded fleet of more efficient power plants and
renewable assets, along with stagnating iron, steel, and coal plants, represent a growing cadre of real potential credit sellers. To be
sure, significant

carbon accounting challenges will now finally need to be addressed, rather than
of monitoring, reporting, and verification must be

delayed, and equally vexing governance problems

resolved. Measuring GDP in China has proven difficult enough, let alone the carbon content of varying coal feedstocks and
emissions in fragmented industrial uses. The potential for major market power of state-owned enterprises
(SOEs) in a carbon market is also a real concern, should SOEs with a generally lower capital cost compete with
private companies that often are shouldered with a higher capital cost. There are also solutions to such
challenges , including holding limits. These are all welcome challenges, however, given the centrality of
government policy in these approaches and the political will represented by Xis recent policy
move. While Europes decade-long cap and trade experiment has been difficult, we should keep in mind that Chinas pilots were a
mere concept five years ago and were launched two years ago. This push occurred during a dark period for cap and trade, during
which the United States failed to pass a nationwide cap and trade policy, Australia reversed its own carbon market plan, and the

UNs Clean Development Mechanism market collapsed. Chinas

coordinated move to reduce emissions through

more efficient credit trading and more efficient electricity dispatch will need to combine with
proactive international diplomacy with the other major emitters. Supporters of climate action across
the globe are placing much hope on the upcoming COP21 climate conference in Paris this December. Fortunately, Chinese
leaders in this respect have also shifted to a more active stance . Historically Chinese negotiators were often
caught between the demands of other developing nation coalitions, such as the Group of 77 focused on supporting adaptation
funds for smaller emitters, and the demands of developed economies to focus efforts and the majority of funds towards climate
mitigation. China itself is rather unique in this regard, as a major emitter with both gleaming modern cities of the 21st century and
deeply impoverished areas and populations. Funding from the developed world to the developing world in

the form of green technology transfer funds or climate adaptation funds were one of the many
bones of contention between China and U.S./EU parties. Here China has transformed .
President Xis announcement of the $3.1 billion fund to aid developing nations , while not particularly
large, reflects the same shift evident in Chinese Premier Li Keqiangs historic visit to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) earlier this summer, the first of its kind of any senior Chinese leader. Li signed Chinas joining
of the OECD Development Centre and related assistance programs. On the private sector side of the ledger, a growing number of
sectorial green technology funds have begun to emerge that leverage Chinese finances to deploy

energy efficiency, new materials, renewable energy, and energy service technologies from the
U.S. and EU in China and the developing world. China consumes just over half of the worlds
coal, emits twice the carbon of the United States, yet is aiming to build a carbon trading market
twice the size of Europes by far the largest in the world. While critics cite the exclusion of transport in this
initial phase of the market, inclusion of the fragmented and critical industrial sectors of iron and steel, chemicals, and construction
represents a critical step towards bending the carbon intensity curve downward. As one useful Chinese saying goes, beyond the
mountains are yet taller mountains. While challenges are clearly ahead, the timing of the most recent cap and trade

policy provides another major lift above a mountain range that has stymied serious Chinese
commitment for some time. The resulting view is impressive, and a cause for realistic hope
heading into Paris this winter.

Recent announcements builds momentum for US-China climate cooperation, but

effective implementation is key to successful emissions reduction in China
Aldy et al 16 Joseph Aldy, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University, PhD in economics from Harvard University,
Thomas Brewer, Senior Fellow, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development,
Chen Ji, Assistant Researcher, International Cooperation Department, National Center for
Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC), Fu Sha, Assistant Researcher,
International Cooperation Department, NCSC, Qi Yue, Assistant Researcher, International
Cooperation Department, NCSC, Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and
Government, Harvard Kennedy School; Director, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements,
Robert Stowe, Executive Director, Harvard Environmental Economics Program, Wang Pu,
Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School, Zhang Xiaohua, Senior Policy Officer on Climate
Cooperation, Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary General, Zheng Shuang,
Researcher and Director, CDM Management Center, NCSC, Zou Ji, Professor and Deputy
Director General, NCSC (Bilateral Cooperation between China and the United States:
Facilitating Progress on Climate-Change Policy, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements,
National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation in Beijing, China,
February 2016, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/harvard-nscs-paper-final-160224.pdf)
The seven ETS pilots have achieved multiple policy goals since their establishment. They have
covered major emission sectors and enterprises in the pilot regions, and have played important
roles in reaching local carbon intensity targets and controlling GHG emissions. The various characteristics
of legislation, technical standards, and market operation that have been tested in different pilot programs
have helped accumulate empirical experience for future ETS programs . The operation of the
programs helps build technical foundations and institutional capacities, and also shaped the first
carbon markets and revealed market carbon prices in China. The capacity of enterprises for emission
reduction and public awareness of climate change issues have been enhanced through these
programs. Finally, emissions trading has provided the foundation for reducing the difficulty of corporate

financing for energy conservation and emission reduction . There are, however, also noticeable
shortcomings with the pilot ETS programs. The disparities among the pilots in terms of registry and
trading standards, MRV rules , and other aspects have yielded significant challenges for
linkage between and among systems and implementation of the future national program. The pilots have also
featured weak legal enforcement, lack of basic data and scientific methods, and lack of supervision on market operations. More
importantly, the effectiveness of the programs was to a certain extent paralyzed by policy uncertainty and

lack of transparency. For example, the restriction on using CCERs from hydropower projects was announced suddenly and
was unanticipated, which caused volatility in the market. The transition from pilot programs to a national
program is also unclear, which discourages enterprises from actively trading in carbon markets. Despite all the problems,
the seven pilot programs have accumulated rich experience for a national ETS. The ChinaU.S. joint announcements on climate change mitigation in November 2014 and September 2015 lend
considerable momentum to Chinas efforts to design and launch a national ETS. The
national system will cover key industry sectors such as iron and steel, power generation, chemicals, building
materials, paper-making, and nonferrous metals. Once established, the national ETS is likely to become the
cornerstone of Chinas climate policy architecture . Its design , implementation , and
outcomes will to a considerable degree determine whether China can achieve its INDC.
The plan solves by cementing cooperation it enables collaboration on
implementation and facilitates bilateral linkage to maximize efficient emissions
reduction
Aldy et al 16 Joseph Aldy, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University, PhD in economics from Harvard University,
Thomas Brewer, Senior Fellow, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development,
Chen Ji, Assistant Researcher, International Cooperation Department, National Center for
Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC), Fu Sha, Assistant Researcher,
International Cooperation Department, NCSC, Qi Yue, Assistant Researcher, International
Cooperation Department, NCSC, Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and
Government, Harvard Kennedy School; Director, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements,
Robert Stowe, Executive Director, Harvard Environmental Economics Program, Wang Pu,
Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School, Zhang Xiaohua, Senior Policy Officer on Climate
Cooperation, Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary General, Zheng Shuang,
Researcher and Director, CDM Management Center, NCSC, Zou Ji, Professor and Deputy
Director General, NCSC (Bilateral Cooperation between China and the United States:
Facilitating Progress on Climate-Change Policy, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements,
National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation in Beijing, China,
February 2016, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/harvard-nscs-paper-final-160224.pdf)
Given their similarities and differences, substantial opportunities for ChinaU.S. cooperation
exist at both the micro and macro levels. China has strong political will and the ability to quickly put that
will into action, but lacks experience, institutional capacity, and research and technical support
from academia. The United States can help China overcome these deficits by collaborating on the
design of a national trading system , including detailed rules to handle issues such as
allowance allocation, entry and exit from the ETS, price ceilings and floors, and allowance banking and
borrowing. China also needs to improve its market environment at the macro level and reform policies that
prevent market mechanisms from functioning as intended. Close communication between scholars in the two countries can also help
China build its research capacity in a field that has been unfamiliar to many Chinese academics until recently. Other forms of
collaborationfor example, to accelerate the transfer of low-carbon technologies and expertise can help Chinese

enterprises comply with new climate policies. (There has been considerable collaboration
between the two countries on energy-technology innovation in the past ; see bibliography at the end of this
paper.) Meanwhile, quick action by China to launch regional and national ETS programs can help
motivate the United States to initiate more cap-and-trade systems and speed progress
toward a more comprehensive national approach to climate mitigation. There has already been
considerable collaboration between the state of California and the various Chinese jurisdictions that

are implementing the pilot ETSs discussed in the previous section, as well as some interaction between the national
NDRC and California.23 This collaboration has been useful, given that there are a number of similarities between
the ETSs in China and the United States. The programs in both countries have shaped initial carbon
markets and achieved certain policy goals, but are also imperfect in some respects. In both countries,
issues have emerged with respect to specific design features and impacts (e.g., in terms of leakage, competitiveness, and barriers to
linkage). Finally, an important area for longer-term ChinaU.S. cooperation is direct linkage that
is, establishing trading connections between different national and sub-national policy systems that allow emission reduction efforts
to be recognized and redistributed across systems. Linkage

brings several potential benefits. It can reduce

abatement costs across linked regions by allowing regions with higher abatement costs to
take advantage of abatement opportunities in regions with lower costs. By expanding the geographic scope of an
emissions trading system, linkage can also effectively reduce the influence of local market power in
carbon markets and mitigate price volatility . Finallyby creating opportunities for regions with lower-cost
abatement opportunities to benefit from investment from higher-cost regions linkage can advance the goal of
distributional equity, as exemplified by the UNFCCCs principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, without
sacrificing cost-effectiveness. However, effective linkage also requires coordination on a number of
key issues, such as the definition of key terms and standards and procedures for emissions accounting.24
Success in climate mitigation is crucial for sparking investment in low-carbon
innovation and ensuring Chinese energy security
Matsumoto 15 Kenichi Matsumoto, Professor at Nara Institute of Science and Technology
(Energy Structure and Energy Security under Climate Mitigation Scenarios in China, PLoS
ONE, 10(12), http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?
id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144884#sec007)
The results suggest that energy structure, for both primary energy and final energy, changes markedly under
climate mitigation scenarios. In addition, energy security is improved under the scenarios by
reducing fossil fuel imports and increasing energy self-sufficiency, a consequence of a reduction
in total primary energy demand and a shift in energy structure from fossil fuels. However, the impact on diversity of energy
sources differs by scenario, depending on which types of energy sources are selected when shifting from fossil fuels, how fast such a
shift proceeds, and to what extent such a shift moves the country toward a low-carbon society by 2100. Paradoxically, diversity
measured by the HI declines when the dependence on fossil fuels declines, because the three types of fossil fuels contribute to the
diversity of energy sources and the use of a specific non-fossil energy source increases. However, such declines in diversity

are derived from a decrease in the use of fossil fuels, most of which are imported in China . Thus,
overall, it is demonstrated that climate mitigation alters energy structure and contributes to
improved energy security , although the diversity of energy sources appears to suggest otherwise. In this study,
global-scale emission trading is taken into account , meaning that world GHG emissions are
reduced in a cost-efficient manner. If it is not assumed, and emissions reduction are implemented in each
country or emissions trading is introduced at the regional level, such as emissions trading in the European Union, GHG
emissions in China will increase, since China acts as a seller of emissions permits in the global-scale emissions trading
system. This is due to its lower marginal abatement cost as compared to the global average. Thus, the demand for fossil fuels will
increase, while the share of renewables and nuclear energy will decrease in this situation. From this perspective, it is expected that
fossil fuel imports will increase during this century, while the influence on the diversity of energy sources can be different by
scenario (more diversified in the case that the share of fossil fuels is relatively small and less diversified in the case that the share is
relatively large). Consequently, energy security can be somewhat worse when not introducing global-scale emissions trading.
Concluding Remarks In this study, the impact of climate mitigation policies on energy structure and energy security was analyzed by
using a CGE model. In the analysis, the author used RCP-based scenarios for the policy scenarios and compared them with a
reference scenario. To

reduce GHG emissions, China needs to shift its energy structure from
fossil fuel dominance to nuclear power and renewables, including biomass power. Among fossil fuels, coal
must be significantly reduced , followed by oil and natural gas. The lower the target of
allowable emissions, the larger the shifts from fossil fuels must be . The study also reveals that such
shifts will improve energy self-sufficiency and are consequently effective from the
viewpoint of energy security . However, the impact on diversity of energy sources under climate mitigation scenarios
differs by scenario. China was a net exporter of coal in the base year, but it soon became a net importer. The diversity of
energy sources, as measured by the HI, worsened in the reference scenario because of a large increase in fossil

fuel use, particularly coal. Introducing the policy scenarios to reduce GHG emissions resulted in significant improvement in the
diversity index in response to an increasing share of renewables and a decreasing share of coal. A decrease in fossil
fuel imports was also observed . The main purpose of climate mitigation is obviously to reduce GHG emissions
and avoid further climate change. This study indicates that energy security improvement is achieved
simultaneously under climate mitigation policies. Although introducing climate mitigation policies has a negative
effect on economic growth in general [56], energy security improvements will contribute to the
economy by reducing procurement risks.
Chinese dependence on energy imports causes escalating war with the United
States. Perceived vulnerability to supply shocks drives militarization
AT reduce military presence CP 1. Political statements prove the US perceives Chinese actions
to secure SLOCs as militarization and will spark American power projection 2. Territorial
disputes with American allies
Glaser 13 Charles Glaser, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director
of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, at
George Washington University, Ph.D. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University (How Oil Influences U.S. National Security, International Security, Vol. 38, No. 2,
pp. 112-146, Fall 2013, Available to Subscribing Institutions)
Oil dependence might be most dangerous for the United States if it brings the country into conflict with another major
power. An underappreciated path along which this could occur is an oil-driven security
dilemma between China and the United States . U.S. oil supplies are not vulnerable to interruption by
China, but, as described above, Chinas imports are vulnerable to the U.S. Navy. Consequently, both
China and the United States face this type of security dilemma, with the onus for the next move
which has arguably already begunlying with China. This military competition and the associated
political signals have the potential to generate a variety of peacetime and crisis dangers.70 The
United States does not face other important cases in which this security dilemma mechanism plays a role; indeed, it does not have
sufficiently strained political relations with any other oil-importing major power that feels the kind of import vulnerability that could

China has been modernizing its navy for a couple of decades, but remains far
from having the ability to challenge U.S. control of the SLOCs from the Persian Gulf to the Strait
of Malacca, and the forces it could build in the medium term (ten to fifteen years) would still leave this mission well beyond its
reach.71 The near-term focus and top priorities for Chinas naval modernization have been
improving its ability to blockade Taiwan, and to deny and deter U.S. intervention in a Taiwan conflict. Beyond these
top priorities, acquiring the ability to protect its SLOCs to the Persian Gulf is among the key
rationales for Chinas naval modernization .72 Apparently, however, Chinas leaders are still deciding
whether to devote massive resources to this mission.73 Some analysts are concerned that China could start to challenge
U.S. dominance in the Indian Ocean by developing a string of land-based capabilities from
which it could both launch attacks and base naval forces; China has started to develop the type of
base structure required for these capabilities.74 In addition, China could try to weaken U.S. naval dominance by
fuel military competition.

deploying sea-based assets that threaten, but do not match, U.S. forcesfor example, a large attack submarine forcebut

eventually it would likely deploy aircraft carriers . Well before Chinas navy can reach effectively into
the Indian Ocean, however, its efforts to protect Taiwan and its territorial claims in the East China and
South China Seas will pose a threat to U.S. allies, including Japan. The early stages of this
security dilemmadriven competition are already playing out in growing concern over what the United States
terms Chinas antiaccess/area-denial capabilitiesforces designed to prevent the United States from
operating close to Chinas shores that could provide China with the ability to protect oil traveling through the sea lines in
the South China and East China Seas. The first aspect to note about this competition is that the two states want control of the same
geographical spaceChina wants to reduce the U.S. ability to project power into the Western Pacific, especially near its coasts, and
the United States wants to preserve its current capability; both cannot succeed. The United States views its power

projection capabilities as strategically defensivedesigned to meet its alliance and SLOC commitments
although they are operationally offensive. To ensure its access to oil, China needs to defeat
these U.S. capabilities , and plans to achieve this objective with a mix of offensive and
defensive operational capabilities. This is how a security dilemma over lines of

communication plays out . As one recent study observes, It will be impossible to separate Chinas desire to achieve
brief overview of Chinas plans and
possible U.S. reactions makes clearer still the incompatibility of these opposing military
strategies.76 The purpose of Chinas antiaccess/area-denial strategy include slowing the deployment of U.S. forces into the
sea control over the SLOCs from a threat to open navigation.75 Second, a

region, preventing the United States (and possibly its allies) from operating effectively from regional bases, and pressuring U.S.
forcesespecially aircraft carriersto operate beyond their effective range. To achieve these purposes, China could rely on, and in
many cases is acquiring the capability for, seizing the initiative and launching preemptive attacks; attacking allied and U.S. airfields
eventually as far away as Guam; and threatening U.S. aircraft carriers with combined attacks by antiship cruise missiles,
submarines, strike aircraft, and eventually ballistic missiles. In response to Chinas development of these capabilities and their
projected improvement over the next couple of decades, the

United States is developing a strategy termed

AirSea Battle. Although AirSea Battle is still taking shape, the concepts that have been
proposed as central components of the U.S. reaction (which we need to remember is in response to Chinas
reaction to U.S. capabilities) consist of a variety of threatening capabilities . These include offensive
missile defense that is, counterforce operations before [the missiles] are launched; a systematic
antisubmarine warfare campaign that would include early operations inside the First Island Chain; targeting of
high-value targets deep in Chinas interior; and interruption of Chinas tradeduring a large-scale
conventional conflict, Chinas seaborne trade flows would be cut off, with an eye toward exerting major stress on the Chinese
economy and, eventually, internal stress.77 It seems obvious that the capabilities the United States is pursuing to offset Chinas
efforts to protect its SLOCs will appear threatening to China. More broadly, if the United States decides, as a recent prominent
report on the South China Sea recommends, that cooperation can best be advanced from a position of strength, a strategy that it
terms cooperative primacy,78 then intensifying U.S.-China competition is the likely outcome. A variety of factors

suggest that the U.S. buildup will not force China to back down . China places high value on
the interests at stakeincluding, importantly, its ability to increase confidence in its access to imported oil. Also, China has
the advantage of competing near its own periphery, and increasingly has the resources to engage in this type of competition. U.S.

reactions to Chinas military buildup include not only concerns about diminished U.S. military
capabilities, but also growing worries about Chinas motives . The result could be a negative
political spiral in which military actions and reactions lead both the United States and China
to conclude that the other is more likely to be a greedy, hostile state. For example, in
congressional testimony , the U.S. admiral who heads Pacific Command noted that Chinas
interest in a peaceful and stable environment that will support the countrys development goals is difficult to
reconcile with the evolving military capabilities that appear designed to challenge U.S. freedom
of action in the region or exercise aggression or coercion of its neighbors, including U.S. treaty allies and partners.79 A recent
report from the Center for Budgetary and Strategic Assessments, characterizing the challenge facing the United States, explained
that [a] roll-back of the PLAs [Peoples Liberation Armys] military power is not the objective here. Nor is containment of China
proposed. Rather, we advocate simply offsetting the PLAs unprovoked and unwarranted military buildup.80 These statements go
beyond what an unbiased observer should impute from Chinas actions. Chinas military buildup would likely be

taken by a state that was seeking only to protect its security and prosperity . Assessments that
overlook Chinas incentives therefore exaggerate the negative information provided by its
actions. Interactions fueled not only by the underlying security dilemma, but also by this type of misperception, have the potential
to be particularly dangerous.81 Especially in combination with other possible strains in U.S.-China relations, a shift toward
more negative assessments of each countrys motives risks increasing the probability of
crisis and war , including conflicts not directly related to oil. Most obviously, China could see the United
States posing a larger threat to its goal of unification with Taiwan, which could further harden Chinas policies, including its
deployment of antiaccess capabilities for preventing U.S. intervention in a China-Taiwan conflict. At the same time, the United

States could become more determined to protect Taiwan, among other reasons because the importance
of preserving its credibility for defending allies would grow with its assessment of Chinas
greed.82 Consequently, although Chinas vulnerable oil dependence helps to drive this security
dilemma, the increased probability of conflict could be over issues not directly related to oil . m4:
oil, alliance entrapment, and the east china/south china seas The combination of alliance commitments and the
increased value of territory could draw the United States into a conflict between Japan and
China in the East China Sea. In this case, energys effect is indirectenergy is not the rationale for the
U.S.-Japan alliance, but could contribute to the outbreak of war between China and
Japan .83 A similar set of factors could draw the United States into a conflict in the South
China Sea , although arguably the risks are smaller China and Japan have an ongoing dispute over their

maritime boundary in the

East China Sea and, related, over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The East China Sea
contains potentially large oil and gas reserves ; estimates of their size vary substantially, with the low end around
100 million barrels and the high end around 100 billion barrels.84 Chinas and Japans divergent views on their
maritime boundary, which reflect self-serving interpretations of ambiguities in the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea, significantly influence how much of the East China Sea falls under
their control and, more specifically, which petroleum reserves each owns. One particular oil and gas fieldChunxiao
has been the focus of much controversy, among other reasons because China is drilling close to the
line that Japan claims divides this field, and Japan worries that Chinas operations could siphon
resources from its side of the divide.85 The maritime boundary dispute is intertwined with the
countries dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands . This dispute is important not only because there
may be substantial amounts of oil near the islands, but also because Japans territorial claim significantly influences the location of

Energy has played a

central role in fueling controversy in the East China Sea. Neither Japan nor China focused much
attention on its claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands until a 1968 UN survey found there could be significant
amounts of petroleum near them .86 The related dispute over the maritime border is long-standing, but did not
the line it believes divides the East China Sea and increases the size of its exclusive economic zone.

become the focus of intense political disputes and military interactions until Japan reacted to Chinas growing oil and gas
exploration in areas that Japan maintains are contested.87 In 2008 China and Japan reached an agreement on joint development of
East China Sea petroleum resources, but since then have failed to work out specific issues required for its implementation.88 Over

low-level confrontations between China and Japan have resulted over

both the island and maritime border disputes, with some increase in their frequency in recent
years. Although the stakes do not appear to justify the risk of a large war, experts have long believed that these disputes are
the most likely flash point between Japan and China and warn about the possibility of
conflict.89 The intensity of confrontation has increase since 2010, following the collision of Chinese
the past couple of decades,

and Japanese boats in the vicinity of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and especially since Japan nationalized three of the islets in the
fall of 2012. Hostile

interactions have escalated , leading the Economist to write in early 2013 that China and Japan
are sliding towards war.90 A conflict in the East China Sea could draw in the United States . Although
the U.S. government does not take a position on these competing sovereignty claims, the U.S.-Japan security treaty
commits it to Japans defense if conflict breaks out over these islands , because they are under Japanese
administration and are therefore covered by the treaty. The United States reiterated this position in the fall
of 2010, as controversy over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands increased.91 Consequently, the credibility of the
U.S. commitment to Japan is now tightly linked to U.S. responses if fighting begins , which
increases the probability of U.S. intervention. The potential for conflict in the South China Sea parallels the
East China Sea in a number of respects. China and its neighbors, including Vietnam and the
Philippines, are involved in territorial and maritime disputes over the Spratly and Paracel Islands,
and the surrounding waters. These disputes have led to military clashes.92 The importance the countries
place on these claims grew substantially as the potential value of their oil and gas
reserves increased .93 The countries believe that the South China Sea contains large amounts
of oil and gas, although estimates vary substantially; Chinas estimates of potential reserves are the largest, exceeding 100
billion barrels.94 China is widely viewed as pursuing a more assertive policy in the South China
Sea, although there is debate among experts over the extent to which this is actually the case.95 Moreover, as in the East China Sea,
disputes have flared recently in the South China Sea, especially between China and the Philippines.96 The United
States has a defense treaty and growing military ties with the Philippines; although there is some ambiguity in the extent of its
commitment, the United States might well get drawn into a conflict between these countries. It
could also get drawn into a conflict between China and Vietnam, although this is judged less likely, because the U.S. commitment is
more limited and China-Vietnam relations are better than those between China and the Philippines.97

Maritime disputes escalate leads to nuclear war

Tan 15 (Andrew, New South Wales social sciences professor, Preventing the next war in East
Asia, in Security and Conflict in East Asia, ed. Tan, p. 228-230)
The absence of effective regional institutions , regimes, norms and laws that could regulate tensions
and conflicts between states has meant that the geostrategic environment in East Asia is

reminiscent of that in Europe before the world wars, characterized by changing power
balances and the outbreak of serious inter-state crises . A regional war in East Asia
would have devastating global consequences . Three of the key players, namely the USA, China and
Japan, are, in that order, the three largest economies in the world. More seriously, any conflict could escalate
rapidly into nuclear war , as the conventional war capabilities of the USA could compel
North Korea and China to resort to weapons of mass destruction , such as nuclear missiles and biological and
chemical weapons. By 2013 the possibility of open warfare in East Asia had been taken seriously, with widespread warnings that tensions between
China and Japan, for instance, had reached the highest levels since the end of the Second World War. Due

to the possibility of
misperception and miscalculation, accidental war could break out - however implausible from a rational

perspective that might sound. What can be done to prevent possible conflict in East Asia? One of the key lessons of the previous two world wars is the
need for strong international institutions, regimes, norms and laws which could better manage the inevitable conflicts of interests between states.
Another important lesson, taken from the Cold War in Europe, has been the need for a long process of confidence and security building measures - such
as the Conventional Forces in Europe process - which would improve transparency and build trust, to accompany the parallel processes of deep
dialogue, engagement and cooperation. This could eventually lead to more intrusive forms of regionalism which could reduce tensions, resolve or
manage disputes without resort to violence, and more generally keep the peace among the main regional powers. While the imperative to take
regionalism seriously is there, it remains to be seen whether there is tar-sighted leadership among the key state actors in East Asia to do so, even when
the terrible consequences of a regional conflict are obvious and no one actually wants such a conflict to occur. Much depends on the two key players in
East Asia, namely the USA and China. While the USA faces serious economic and financial difficulties, and its long-term decline is evident, it remains a
key player in the region. China must thus realize that unless it arrives at an accommodation with the USA as well as its allies in managing regional
security, it cannot hope to maintain regional stability in the long term, which it needs for its economic modernization and development. While it
believes that the balance of power is shifting in its favour, it has to understand that effective regional influence ultimately has to be earned, not
imposed. Similarly, the reality of China's rise means that Washington must learn to accommodate it - the alternative being a dangerous and
destabilizing amis race that would bankrupt the USA and lead to unpalatable outcomes, such as a general conflict. Learning to live with a peer
competitor requires leadership, engagement and dialogue, rather than instinctively reaching out for a Cold War containment strategy. The two
countries must therefore begin a broad-ranging dialogue to manage not just their relations but also regional security, as they are key players in ensuring
stability in the region. In this respect, a glimmer of hope can be discerned from China's unusual silence and lack of open support for its traditional ally.
North Korea, even as it carried out its unprecedented brinkmanship since the young Kim took power. China has also openly criticized North Korea for
its nuclear tests and has supported United Nations sanctions, and there are clear signs of disarray in China's traditional policy of uncritical support for
North Korea, as its behaviour could lead to unpalatable outcomes for China, such as an unwanted war on the Korean peninsula, or the acquisition of
nuclear arms by Japan and South Korea. In April 2013, for instance, President Xi Jinping obliquely criticized North Korea, stating that 'no one should
be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains ... while pursuing its own interests, a country should accommodate
the legitimate interests of others' (Washington Post 2013). Media reports also indicate a flurry of visits by US officials to Beijing in early 2013 to discuss
the situation in North Korea (New York Times 2013a). The surprise purge and execution in late 2013 of Kim Jong-un's powerful uncle, Jang Songthaek, who had been the key interlocutor in China's relations with North Korea, has also demonstrated that China is not in control of events in North
Korea (New York Times 2013b). Thus, there is the possibility that China and the USA could in fact cooperate in managing regional security, such as
over the Korean peninsula. The high tensions and historical animosities between China and Japan are more difficult to resolve, but these require strong
and capable foreign policy leadership on the part of both countries, which appear to be lacking at this time. China, in particular, needs to understand
that the long-term consequences of its promotion of nationalism by arousing anti-Japanese sentiments domestically would lead to an unstable regional
neighbourhood and ultimately conflict with Japan, surely an undesirable outcome given that the two countries are each other's major trading partners
with much to gain from joint cooperation. On Japan's part, the failure by its leaders, particularly conservative right-wing politicians, to come to terms
with its role in the Second World War has led to various controversial statements which have only played to anti-Japanese nationalism in China and
South Korea. As CNN noted in an opinion piece in May 2013, 'nearly 68 years after surrender, some Japanese conservatives are engaged in
counterproductive battles over history- that make Japan appear weak and undignified, unable to take the measure of its history* (CNN 2013a). As an
analyst noted regarding Shinzo Abe's performance as Prime Minister, Abe has in fact undermined Japan's interest by 'preserving redundant renderings
of Japan in the 21st century, negating the positive and responsible record of Japan as a post-war nation-state' (Kersten 2013: 50). The high tensions in
2013-14 between the two countries, which are both now on a quasi-war footing, points to the urgent need for conflict and crisis management
mechanisms to be immediately implemented to hold tensions in check. Ultimately, both governments would need to stop fuelling nationalist
sentiments, and instead focus on maintaining stability as well as preserving the benefits arising from the deep economic interdependence between the
two countries. The long-term decline of the USA's influence in the region, despite the fact that it has pledged to maintain or even increase its military
presence in East Asia, is probably unavoidable. However, an

effective US presence and role in the region

remains essential . Through deterrence as well as engagement as an equal power, China
could be persuaded to take part in dialogue about the management of regional security instead
of making unilateral military moves which raise tensions and might spark conflict. This requires other
states in the region to help to shore up regional stability by becoming more effective security partners, first by investing in their own military
capabilities, and second by providing more effective regional security cooperation. The

reason for this is not, however, to contain

China, given that much greater efforts will have to be made to engage it, but to ensure the
maintenance of a regional balance of power that would channel foreign policy choices
towards more peaceful means of resolving disputes. Ultimately, however, China and the USA will have to find the strategic
wisdom and political will to work out some form of entente cord idle in East Asia if conflict in the region is to be avoided.

Establishing common ground is strategically necessary climate cooperation

spills over to broader trust-building
Hansen 14 Simon Hansen, analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, visiting fellow
at the China Institute of International Studies (The China-US climate change agreement is a
step forward for green power relations, The Guardian, November 14th,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/14/the-china-us-climate-changeagreement-is-a-step-forward-for-green-power-relations)

There is also another climate to consider, the regional strategic environment. In the face of
ongoing strategic competition in the Asia Pacific, its more important than ever for the two most
consequential powers, the US and China, to find common ground on global issues. Climate
change is one of those issues where shared interests and pragmatic action can build trust.
US-China relations have been defined in different ways. Chinas leaders have promoted what
they call a new model of great power relations. That framework was introduced at the
Obama-Xi meeting at Sunnylands, and has at its core the need for mutual respect and win-win
cooperation. China hopes that global leaders can by-and-large, put aside differences,
recognise the problem, and work pragmatically to solve it. China sees itself as an equal player to
the US, and a regionally predominant one. It wants more of a say without causing concern. In
this way, acting on climate change offers clear strategic advantage.
That China and the US have decided to address climate change has broader implications for the
future of the Asia Pacific. So far its a positive sign. Deep dialogue has trumped stonewalling and
China is showing itself a capable regional player. Last week, leading up to Apec, China and
Japan agreed on a four-point agreement to manage tensions
over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. Today, the worlds largest emitters are tackling global
emissions. This type of complementary action will reduce the strategic trust deficit between the
US and China.
Chinas leaders have taken a pragmatic approach to cap emissions and bring China to the table
as a modern, clean nation. In any case, Chinas leadership cannot afford to walk away
from change on climate change anyway; doing so would diminish the China Dream.