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The protesters felt a lack of solidarity and agency (because they had little choice in where they lived or how they got around). One of the gilets jaunes’ grievances, for example, was that the unaffordability of French urban life forced many laborers to live outside the cities, where limited public transit options forced them to drive to work. Traditional carbon pricing, for example, has often failed the solidarity test, by creating winners and losers (both economically and socially), as well as the agency test, by ignoring people’s voices in the process. By broadening the scope beyond GDP growth, SAGE allows us to recouple the links between economic policies and social well-being.Īs a new way to discuss and evaluate climate policies, the SAGE model can help us understand why some past climate policies have not worked. A solidarity score increases when there is more social trust, generosity, and so forth, and an agency score increases when people report greater confidence in their ability to achieve worthwhile goals. Here, solidarity refers to the extent of social inclusion and cohesion, agency refers to people’s ability to shape their own lives, and gain and environment refer to traditional measures of economic output and environmental sustainability, respectively.

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To that end, one of us (Snower) and Katharina Lima de Miranda have proposed a metric with the acronym SAGE: solidarity, agency, gain, environment.Įnjoy unlimited access to the ideas and opinions of the world’s leading thinkers, including long reads, book reviews, topical collections, short-form analysis and predictions, and exclusive interviews every new issue of the PS Quarterly magazine (print and digital) the complete PS archive and more.

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While the two-dimensional world of economic models can be measured in terms of GDP and carbon prices, the real world requires different metrics to account for the full meaning of any policy. To acknowledge these potential ramifications is to move from an abstract two-dimensional world to a three-dimensional one that is closer to the reality we inhabit. Low- and middle-income countries resent being asked by rich, industrialized countries – the biggest emitters historically – to pay more for the energy they need for development. And a similar problem has long plagued the global climate-policy debate. These were some of the lessons of the 2018-19 French gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests, which erupted in response to a modest increase in the tax on diesel fuel.

Even if the proceeds from a carbon tax are spent on the poor and the displaced, fossil fuel-reliant communities may collapse, and some people may feel as though they are no longer shaping their own futures. Moreover, the costs associated with carbon pricing are not just economic but also social. The problem is that citizens often oppose such policies, especially if there is no mechanism to compensate those who are disadvantaged by the higher costs (such as low-income households that cannot afford basic goods at environmentally friendly prices, or those working in carbon-intensive sectors). The solution therefore is to ensure that polluters pay. Polluters emit excessive amounts of CO 2 into the atmosphere because the costs are imposed on society. This has led to a focus on ideas like global carbon pricing, which makes a lot of sense in strictly economic terms. Historically, we have viewed climate policy in only two dimensions: the climate and the economy. This proposal might sound like a rehash of past policies, but it fundamentally shifts the focus in policy design.

And, lastly, having to compete against cheaper, more carbon-intensive methods should not put “climate policy pioneers” at a disadvantage in the global marketplace. Second, countries should be allowed to pursue these common objectives in their own ways, as long as everyone abides by “a uniform measurement of CO 2 content of products and materials.” Third, developing countries should receive support to achieve the common objective. First, international climate action needs to be broad-based and consistent, with all club members aiming for the same objectives. The Climate Club is the brainchild of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose proposal is based on four premises.