Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Reducing Global Carbon: Creating An American Policy, Cameron Otsuka

Economics Theses

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) first assessment report, released in 1990, calculated that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions had been responsible for more than half of the greenhouse gas effect. As of 2006, the United States, China, and European Union (EU) consume 56% of global CO2 emissions (Brinkley & Less, 2010). Figure 1, below, shows that CO2 levels have continued to rise at basically the same rate since before the 1960s (Tans & Keeling). 23 years later, on September 27, 2013, the IPCC released its fifth assessment report, concluding that climate change is the result of human …