numbers, not adjectives — D. J. C. MacKay
Climate Cooperation
June 5, 2025
Understanding climate change is difficult if your
lifestyle depends on your not understanding it.
— adapted from Upton Sinclair, 1935
Digest
These pages address the question: “Is it possible to avoid buring all recoverable fossil fuels, and if so, what are the practical mechanisms by which we can achieve it?”
Let me break down the question. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing climate change. The most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. Once emitted into the atmosphere carbon dioxide stays for hundreds of years, and no scalable method of extraction exists. Therefore, to limit climate change we must stop burning fossil fuels. By now (2025) we’ve burned about a third of all recoverable fossil fuels. If they are all burnt the climate consequences will be dramatic, far in excess of +1.5°C or +2.0°C sometimes discussed. Therefore, whether we can stop burning fossil fuels is the cardinal question. People are regularly sidetracked by secondary issues such as increased solar panel deployment, reduced price of battery storage or growing sales of electric vehicles. But these are only secondary considerations, because their primary importance would be to help decrease emissions. By “possible” I mean feasible by changes to the current status quo which could plausibly be implemented. It is clear that we’re currently not on a trajectory to stop using fossil fuels, on the contrary, global fossil fuel use is increasing year on year (with a brief respite caused by covid). So something will have to change. But I don’t consider ideas like a global benevolent dictator, abolishing capitalist underpinnings or everyone converting to rampant altruism either plausible or practical. The “we” in the question refers to all of humanity. But care has to be taken. While “we” refers to 8 billion humans, in practice we are organised into ~200 sovereign nations, each with individual economic circumstances and priorities and varying exposure to climate change. I will be discussing cooperation, ie working together for mutual benefit. Extra care has to be taken in this context: who are the “we” who are cooperating, and who are the “we” who are benefitting? Cooperation by nations is a powerful tool which we can use to benefit our own personal goals, and does not require us all to become altruists.
There are only two possible routes to terminate the use of fossil fuels: either a pure economic route or through cooperation. The pure economic route requires that renewable energy sources become cheaper than fossil fuels for every possible use. Otherwise we will have to reach mutual agreement not to use fossil fuels, even if their immediate cost is smaller than alternatives.
While it is certainly true that the price of renewable energy systems, such as solar panels and electric battery storage has reduced dramatically, it is far from clear whether this will continue or be sufficient to eliminate fossil fuels. Renewable solutions would have to exist for all possible uses, including difficult to decarbonise activities such as cement production and air travel. It is sometimes suggested that these activities be supplemented by various forms of carbon capture. But this won’t be possible through the pure economic route to decarbonisation, because carbon capture costs money, and simply not doing it will always be cheaper in the immediate term. Although renewables are becoming cheaper it seems highly unlikely that the pure economic route on its own will be able to stop our use of fossil fuels, and simply hoping that it will, is a very risky strategy. The bottom line is, that we need to deploy mechanisms which can stop fossil fuel use, even it their immediate costs are lower. People are unlikely to want to do this out of their good hearts, but they might if they could join strong cooperative agreements which would be beneficial to them personally.
We have a single common shared atmosphere. The governance of this atmosphere therefore has to be global. The real world is governed by ~200 sovereign national governments. People sometimes comment, that we can’t address climate change because we lack a global government. But this is not true. Whereas it might have been easier to deal with the problem if we did have a global government, this is entirely beside the point, because it doesn’t correspond to the problem that we are actually facing. The problem is that we need large numbers of governments to cooperate. Voluntarily, as we can’t force other countries to do things against their will. In other words, we need to create a cooperative mechanism by which a majority of nations will benefit by joining. Notice that I speak not about universal membership, but a majority. Although unanimous membership may sound desirable, it is in fact a dangerous notion because it gives individual members far too much leverage. Nations who chose to be cooperative members will have rights and responsibilities towards their fellow members, but they will retain full autonomy as far as how they chose to implement these nationally. For example, a democracy may chose to tax their rich or exploit their poor; this is of no direct (climate) concern to other cooperative members, as long as the cooperative agreements are honoured.
Before talking more about cooperative agreements, we need to form a baseline for what people may find beneficial. It is impractical to ask everyone, and inevitably nuances may differ. However, a large proportion of us probably do share certain basic ethical notions, which can form a strong basis of fair cooperative agreements. For example, we all share our common atmosphere. But how exactly do we share the rights and responsibilities to our common atmospheric resource? Well, we don’t currently, in a meaningful way. I suggest that Simple Equity to the atmosphere could be the foundation of cooperative climate agreements. By simple equity, I mean that rights and responsibilities to the atmosphere are divided equally between all humans. I suggest that simple equity would have global appeal, to the extent that could be taken as a Natural Law. Simple Equity is a straightforward notion, universally applicable across nations globally. It is not suggested here that everyone necessarily shares these values, only that a large enough proportions of humans do that it can form the basis of climate cooperation.
These pages contain a concrete, practical proposal for addressing climate change. The proposal is called the Themis Mechanism. If you prefer to go directly to a one-pager. But even the best proposal can’t stand on its own. Background and context is provided, which explains what exactly a climate mechanism needs to achieve, why our current systems aren’t going to deliver that, and what properties a successful mechanism must poses.
What is new in the Themis Mechanism? Themis is not a radical novel suggestion. It is also not just a collection of principles without context. Instead, it is a careful application of some well understood measures into a specific practical framework. Such a framework must necessarily be applicable globally, across nations with different cultures, in different states of economic and technological development. This requires it to be based on simple explicit economic and ethical principles.
The Themis Mechanism is a proposal for an international mechanism to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in a fair and effective way; one-pager.
The Equitable Atmosphere Climate Cooperative (EACC) is a practical proposal to address the climate crisis.
Why will we reach long term average +1.5°C by October 2033 ± 18 months?
The Degree Person Day (DPD) is a unit measuring the consequences of emitting greenhouse gases: one DPD causes 1 person having to endure 1°C warming for 1 day. A ton of CO2 equals 500 DPD.
How good is the Paris Agreement? Unfortunately, the Paris Agreement will fail, since it bears none of the hallmarks necessary for a cooperative agreement to succeed.
What reasoning do we employ to justify greenhouse gas emissions?
A short note on paying for carbon.
Who owns the atmosphere, and why is it important?
There are two types of green investment, which differ in goals, motivation and requirements. Confusing the two prevents clarity in thought and action.
Mechanisms against Climate Change are the slides from a recent talk, discussing necessary properties of strategies against climate change, and a concrete proposal of how to achieve it.
What is the growth rate of atmospheric CO2? For the past 10 years, the growth rate of CO2 has been close to 2.5 ppm per year, the fastest rate of growth in modern times. The temperature will likely reach the Paris Agreement limit of +1.5°C at 450 ppm CO2, between summer 2032 and summer 2035. Techincal details.
International Cooperation against Climate Change. Effectively addressing climate change requires international cooperation. Unfortunately it is easy to understand why the Paris Agreement will fail, and what effective cooperation would look like.
Sustainable growth is much talked about by economists and politicians and at first sight may sound like an awesome idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't correspond to anything real in a finite physical world.
Pages, mostly about the UK
The UK Climae Change Act and Actual Greenhouse gas emissions We compare the past and future legal limits with actual greenhouse gas emissions for the UK.
Are current UK greenhouse gas emission limits fit for purpose?
The UK government's Jet Zero Strategy is not Net Zero. A quantitative look at the Jet Zero Strategy shows that it is entirely unrealistic.