Creating Legal Pathways to a Zero-Carbon Future

• Date: 01 September 2016

46 ELR 10780 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 9-2016

Creating Legal

Pathways to a

Zero-Carbon

Future

John C. Dernbach

John C. Dernbach is a Distinguished Professor

of Law at Widener University.

Summary

An essential part of the decarbonization cha llenge is

proposing, analyzing, and comparing various legal

pathways to that result in each individual country.

ose legal pathways should be capable of reducing

greenhouse gas emissions at a speed and scale needed

to give the world its best chance of keeping the global

average temperature increase below 2°C while also

producing as many economic, social, environmen-

tal, and security benets as possible. is Article,

adapted from Chapter 2 of C  I

 C C L  P (ELI Press 2016),

provides an overview of the challenge of achieving a

zero-carbon future, as well as the way in which sus-

tainable development would frame the decisionmak-

ing process for doing so.

What do we need to do to have a decent chance

of preventing large a nd growing emissions a nd

atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases

from dangerously interfering with the climate system? e

answer, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-

mate Change (IPCC), is that the world needs to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% to 70% by 2050,

and to zero or below by 2100.1 Other scientic reports

would say we must proceed faster.2 e IPCC and others

indicate that the many paths to this reduction should all be

guided by sustainable development.3 at is, nations must

nd ways to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions

that also foster equitable economic and social development

and promote security.

e task, then, can be succinct ly stated as follows:

start ing now, we must rapidly reduce greenhou se gas

emissions to zero or below, creat ing as much social, envi-

ronmental, econom ic, and secur ity benet as we ca n, and

on a n e quitable basis. e IPCC repor ts don’t say so as

succinctly or direct ly, but that is among the most essen-

tial t asks of our time.

is Article provides an overview of the challenge of

achieving a zero-carbon future, as well as the way in which

sustainable development would frame the decisionmaking

process for doing so. It then reviews two major reports that

describe overall approaches at the global and national levels

for meeting the zero-carbon objective. Finally, it describes

ways to identify and create legal pathways to that objec-

tive, building on the insights of these two reports. Creat-

ing legal pathways could help accelerate the transition to a

sustainable energy future.

I. The Challenge of the Carbon Budget

e challenge posed by climate change is both urgent and

enormous. It is also daunting: it requires that the world, as

a whole, move as soon as possible from the current situa-

tion of increasing greenhouse gas emissions to rapid reduc-

tions in greenhouse gas emissions. A recently developed

concept—the ca rbon budget4—provides a way of under-

1. I  P  C C, C C

2013: T P S  B 13 (2013), available at https://

www.ipcc.c h/report/a r5/wg1/ [herei nafter 2013 IPCC P  S-

 R ].

2. See infra notes 16-19 and accompanying text.

3. I P  C C, C C

2014: M  C C , ch. 4 (2014), available at

https://www.ipcc.ch/repor t/ar5/wg3/ [hereinafter 2014 IPCC M -

 R].

4. Fred Pearce,          ,

ENVIRONMENT360, Nov. 6, 2014, http://e360.yale.edu/feature/

what_is_the_carbon_limit_that_depends_who_you_ask/2825/.

Author’         

research assistance.

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