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GHGs as a common property

16 December, 2015 - 15:14

A critical characteristic of GHGs is that they are what we call in economics a ‘common property’: every citizen in the world ‘owns’ them, every citizen has equal access to them, and it matters little where these GHGs originate. Consequently, if economy A reduces its GHG emissions, economy B may simply increase their emissions rather than incur the cost of reducing its emissions also.

Hence, economy A’s behaviour goes unrewarded. This is the crux of international agreements – or disagreements. Since GHGs are a common property, in order for A to have the incentive to reduce emissions, it needs to know that B will act correspondingly.