AI4GCC-Team -- Below Sea Level: Score and Real World Relevance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a negotiation protocol for climate-economic simulations that aims to address carbon leakage and promote fair, effective climate policies, with considerations for ethical and political feasibility.

Contribution

It proposes a novel negotiation protocol integrated into RICE-N to improve climate policy modeling and addresses ethical, political, and economic challenges.

Findings

Achieves temperature rise comparable to RCP 3.4/4.5 and SSP 2 scenarios.

Demonstrates protocol's compliance with WTO and political feasibility.

Highlights ethical concerns and suggests corrective measures for developing countries.

Abstract

As our submission for track three of the AI for Global Climate Cooperation (AI4GCC) competition, we propose a negotiation protocol for use in the RICE-N climate-economic simulation. Our proposal seeks to address the challenges of carbon leakage through methods inspired by the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and Climate Clubs (CC). We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by comparing simulated outcomes to representative concentration pathways (RCP) and shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP). Our protocol results in a temperature rise comparable to RCP 3.4/4.5 and SSP 2. Furthermore, we provide an analysis of our protocol's World Trade Organization compliance, administrative and political feasibility, and ethical concerns. We recognize that our proposal risks hurting the least developing countries, and we suggest specific corrective measures to avoid exacerbating existing inequalities, such as technology sharing and wealth redistribution. Future research should improve the RICE-N tariff mechanism and implement actions allowing for the aforementioned corrective measures.