A Proposed Alternative Measure for Climate Change Potential

No comprehensive metric currently exists to measure anthropogenic changes in carbon flux. We propose changes in carbon state residence time as a metric to assess anthropogenic changes in carbon flux, and the term ‘carbon quality’ (cq) be used to describe such changes. Carbon state residence time is the inverse of carbon flux; as carbon flux increases, cq decreases, and vice versa.

In essence, cq measures the climate change potential for any carbon as the temporal distance from inorganic atmospheric CO2.

CO2 emissions is an inadequate measure of anthropogenic activity. It ignores the fungible characteristics of carbon that are crucial in both the biosphere and the worldwide economy. The ubiquitous carbon molecule enables enormous diversity in the biosphere, and widespread, strategic economic utility in the world economy. Focusing on a single form of inorganic carbon as a proxy metric for the plethora of anthropogenic activity will prove unmanageable. A more comprehensive metric is needed to capture the breath and scope of anthropogenic activity.

We propose a logarithmic vector scale for cq to assess anthropogenic carbon flux. The distance between the starting and ending state residence times represents the change in cq. A base-10 logarithmic scale would allow the simple addition and subtraction of exponents to calculate changes in cq.

As carbon moves between carbon states, the change in cq is measured as: cq = b ( log10 [mean carbon state residence time] ) where b represents the country coefficient. The greater the carbon fees for a country, the larger the b coefficient, and the greater the import fees to achieve carbon parity on imports from countries with lower carbon fees.

By assessing embodied carbon within imports for carbon parity with domestic production, cq eliminates incentives for spatial shifts in carbon emissions to avoid carbon fees, and tempers incentives for temporal displacement of carbon emissions, such as with biomass or CCS, to reduce carbon fees.