Climate Policy

Climate Policy 5 (2006) 639–645

Commentary

Interim targets and the climate treaty regime

Brian C O'Neill12*, Michael Oppenheimer3 and Annie Petsonk45 1International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria 2Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, RI 02912, USA 3Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs and the Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA 4Environmental Defense, Washington, DC 20009, USA 5George Washington University Law School, Washington, DC, USA

Received 9 March 2005 ; received in revised form 15 February 2006 ; accepted 17 February 2006

We propose that international climate change policy would be strengthened by the development and adoption of targets for atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases 25–50 years in the future in addition to near- and long-term targets. ‘Interim concentration targets’, which could be accommodated under the current Convention/Protocol framework, would provide several advantages over the current focus on either the short term (e.g. Kyoto Protocol) or the long term (e.g. ultimate stabilization targets). Interim targets would help constrain rates of climate change (which are not sufficiently addressed by short- or long-term targets, even when paired together). They would also provide a means for keeping open the option of achieving a range of long-term goals while uncertainty (and political disagreement) over the appropriate goal is resolved. We substantiate a number of rationales for such an approach, discuss the use of interim targets in other contexts, and illustrate how such targets for climate change policy might be set.

Keywords: Climate change; Stabilization; Targets

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