Climate change mitigation and adaption should leverage an idea from the global public health sphere

According to World Health Organization, climate change is already impacting global public health in a myriad of ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in zoonoses and food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues.

Raghuram Rajan, in this year's Per Jacobsson Lecture, proposes creation of a completely self-financing mechanism - a global fund for climate action. As I was listening to the webcast of the lecture by International Monetary Fund over the weekend, I kept thinking about the continued success of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in the public health sphere; which the Bill Gates Co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation proclaims "will go down in history as one of humanity’s biggest achievements."

Here's the idea in a nutshell (I recommend everyone to listen to the lecture in its entirety though):

- the world per capita carbon emissions is 4.6 tons.

- let's set a global carbon incentive at $10 per ton.

- let the over-emitters, such as the US where per capita carbon emissions is 16 tons, pay into a global fund.

- let the under-emitters, like Tanzania, receive.

So the US would pay (16 - 4.6) tonnes * 325 million US people * $10 per ton, i.e., US would pay 38 billion into this fund. Tanzania, an under-emitter, would receive around 2.4 billion by the same calculation.

When you do the math, it turns out globally, the fund would get about a hundred billion from over-emitters. Why does the number resonate in your ears? That is a number that rich countries promised to pay poor countries to help them deal with climate change.

#cop27 #climatechange