全球变化知识资源中心

The distinction between subsistence emissions and luxury emissions was originally devised in 1992 to guard people so poor as to be able to afford only fossil fuels from being priced out of energy by market mechanisms like cap-and-trade that were proposed to assist with limiting climate change. Non-carbon energy can now be made as affordable and accessible as fossil fuel, but tensions remain between measures to support sustainable development and measures to control climate change. Consequently, the distinction between subsistence energy and luxury energy continues to be surprisingly relevant to current international political struggles. The most fully justified method for normative assessment of Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, the Climate Equity Reference Framework, presupposes the distinction. Normative evaluation of the choice between maximally ambitious ratcheting-up of Nationally Determined Contributions in the immediate future and lazy reliance upon hoped-for carbon dioxide removal in future decades depends on it.