Climate Action Plan

President Obama: I am open to all sorts of new ideas,
 maybe better ideas, to make sure that we deal with
 climate change in a way that promotes jobs and growth. 

June 25, 2013. Sam Carana:

The Climate Action Plan set out below could be implemented immediately in any country, without the need for an international agreement to be reached first. This avoids complicated negotiations and verifying implementation and progress in other nations.

In nations with both federal and state governments, such as the United States of America, the Climate Action Plan could be implemented as follows:

1. The President directs federal departments and agencies to reduce their emissions for each type of pollutant annually by a set percentage, say, CO2 and CH4 by 10%, and HFCs, N2O and soot by higher percentages.
2. The President demands states to each make the same cuts.  
3. The President directs the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to monitor implementation by states and to act step in where a state looks set to miss one or more targets, by imposing (federal) fees on applicable polluting products sold in the respective state, with revenues used for federal benefits.

Federal benefits (under 3 above) could include building interstate High-Speed Rail tracks, adaptation and conservation measures, management of national parks, R&D into batteries, ways to vegetate deserts and other land use measurements, all at the discretion of the EPA. The fees can be roughly calculated as the average of fees that other states impose in successful efforts to meet their targets.

This way, the decision how to reduce targets is largely delegated to state level, while states can similarly delegate decisions to local communities. While feebates, preferably implemented locally, are recommended as the most effective way to reach targets, each state and even each local community can largely decide how to implement things, provided that each of the targets are reached.

Similar targets could be adopted elsewhere in the world, and each nation could similarly delegate responsibilities to local communities. Additionally, it makes sense to agree internationally to impose extra fees on international commercial aviation, with revenues used to develop ways to cool the Arctic.

See also: Climate Plan