Design national framework climate laws to enable low-carbon resilient transformation.

Climate change, as noted by the recently released technical report of the "stocktake" under the United Nations negotiation process, is an "all of economy, all of society" problem. To induce change consistent with the scale and scope of this challenge, countries are increasingly creating "framework laws" on climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that by 2020, 56 countries had passed laws with the objective of limiting greenhouse gases, covering 53% of emissions.

Rebalance attention from global target setting toward national climate politics and policy.

Is the process of ramping up greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets as part of an "ambition cycle" working to address the global climate crisis? The first Global Stocktake (GST) of progress recently submitted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) confirms that progress in reducing emissions is well behind what is required by science to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. What is to be done? Part of the answer may lie in rebalancing attention away from generating global pressure for ambitious target setting and toward the detailed work of shifting politics and building policies at the national level.

National climate institutions complement targets and policies.

Institutions can affect coordination, consensus, and strategy.

Climate change research and the search for solutions: rethinking interdisciplinarity.

Growing political pressure to find solutions to climate change is leading to increasing calls for multiple disciplines, in particular those that are not traditionally part of climate change research, to contribute new knowledge systems that can offer deeper and broader insights to address the problem. Recognition of the complexity of climate change compels researchers to draw on interdisciplinary knowledge that marries natural sciences with social sciences and humanities. Yet most interdisciplinary approaches fail to adequately merge the framings of the disparate disciplines, resulting in reductionist messages that are largely devoid of context, and hence provide incomplete and misleading analysis for decision-making. For different knowledge systems to work better together toward climate solutions, we need to reframe the way questions are asked and research pursued, in order to inform action without slipping into reductionism. We suggest that interdisciplinarity needs to be rethought. This will require accepting a plurality of narratives, embracing multiple disciplinary perspectives, and shifting expectations of public messaging, and above all looking to integrate the appropriate disciplines that can help understand human systems in order to better mediate action.

Utilitarian benchmarks for emissions and pledges promote equity, climate and development.

Tools are needed to benchmark carbon emissions and pledges against criteria of equity and fairness. However, standard economic approaches, which use a transparent optimization framework, ignore equity. Models that do include equity benchmarks exist, but often use opaque methodologies. Here we propose a utilitarian benchmark computed in a transparent optimization framework, which could usefully inform the equity benchmark debate. Implementing the utilitarian benchmark, which we see as ethically minimal and conceptually parsimonious, in two leading climate-economy models allows for calculation of the optimal allocation of future emissions. We compare this optimum with historical emissions and initial nationally determined contributions. Compared with cost minimization, utilitarian optimization features better outcomes for human development, equity and the climate. Peak temperature is lower under utilitarianism because it reduces the human development cost of global mitigation. Utilitarianism therefore is a promising inclusion to a set of benchmarks for future explorations of climate equity.