Pickle #2 - The Keya Identity & The Iron Rule

By Wayne Brown
The Kaya Identity tells us exactly what families of tools we have in the policy toolbox to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to some desired level. Specifically, carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere can be reduced only by influencing the following four levers. 

1. We could reduce the population. 
2. We could reduce per capita GDP.
3. We could become more efficient. 
4. We could switch to less carbon-intensive sources of energy. 

These are the four—and the only four—means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. All policies being discussed as climate policies must influence these levers if they are to have an effect. So debates about carbon taxes, cap-and-trade programs, offsets, energy innovation, personal carbon allowances, and on and on, must eventually arrive exactly the same place. 

Kaya Identity (1) Carbon Emissions = Population * Per Capita GDP * Energy Intensity * Carbon Intensity

a. P = Total Population b. GDP/P = Per capita GDP (2) GDP = Economic Growth (Contraction) = P * GDP/P = GDP a. Energy Intensity (EI) = Total energy (TE)/GDP = TE consumption/GDP b. Carbon Intensity (CI) = C/TE=Carbon emissions/total energy consumption (3) Technology = “Carbon Intensity of the Economy” = EI * CI = TE/GDP * C/TE = C/GDP

Pielke Jr., Roger. The Climate Fix (p. 71). Basic Books. Kindle Edition. Pielke Jr., Roger. The Climate Fix (pp. 70-71). Basic Books. Kindle Edition

Piekle combines this with his "iron rule" that people will not accept a significant reduction in growth (GDP), let alone "de-growth." There is a very low threshold for the acceptable cost of de-carbonization.

Understanding these rules helps us understand why political pledges never become practical action programs nor to such programs get implemented. In fact, China and India have explicitly said that GDP trumps any effort to de-carbonize.

The Keya identity helps us understand what it would take, for example, to eliminate a given amount of carbon from the world. We can plug in actual numbers and get out actual reductions in specific areas.

I will spare you the details*. Bottom line, we're stuck.

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* See "Climate Fix" or any analysis of an actual program to make a measurable impact on the climate i this century.

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