The Paul Douglas Institute

Executive Summary for the forthcoming 'Data for the Green New Deal' series

This brief is a summary of a larger report, currently under review, that proposes design components of an International Green New Deal. It discusses the impact of COVID-19 on international climate policy, proposes 5 key policy objectives, and delineates an implementation timeline for U.S. international policy from 2020 onwards.

The underlying report 1) presents a rather expansive review of international climate policy literature, with a focus on using the most up-to-date emissions data and climate projections throughout; there are 200+ unique references; 2) shares a new, more granular dataset on global carbon pricing as a rough proxy for global climate progress. For building the dataset, all emissions pricing initiatives reported in the World Bank Carbon Dashboard6 were individually analyzed, using direct government data where available. The data reveals we are greatly underpricing CO2, but even more substantially underpricing methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), which are 728-86x and 264-298x as powerful as CO2, respectively.