Self-organized global control of carbon emissions

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how different control schemes influence global carbon emissions, revealing that self-organized free-market approaches can outperform top-down regulation in managing pollution peaks and market stability.

Contribution

It introduces a quantitative framework to compare control schemes and demonstrates the potential advantages of self-organized free-market strategies over traditional regulation.

Findings

Self-organized free-market control can reduce pollution peaks.

Self-organized control can lower market volatility.

Trade-offs exist between emissions, health, economy, and stability.

Abstract

There is much disagreement concerning how best to control global carbon emissions. We explore quantitatively how different control schemes affect the collective emission dynamics of a population of emitting entities. We uncover a complex trade-off which arises between average emissions (affecting the global climate), peak pollution levels (affecting citizens' everyday health), industrial efficiency (affecting the nation's economy), frequency of institutional intervention (affecting governmental costs), common information (affecting trading behavior) and market volatility (affecting financial stability). Our findings predict that a self-organized free-market approach at the level of a sector, state, country or continent, can provide better control than a top-down regulated scheme in terms of market volatility and monthly pollution peaks.