A Desirable Framework for Creating a Carbon-Neutral Society

Climate change is placed at the top among environmental concerns in terms of its impact on nature and humans. Most scholars argue human-induced greenhouse gases, particularly carbon has the most impact on climate change. As an alternative of the Kyoto Protocol having been promoted from 1997 at a global level, UNFCCC has adopted a strategy named carbon neutrality in 2015 and makes it semi-compulsory for all countries to achieve a carbon neutral society by 2050. In such a context, this paper aimed at establishing a desirable framework for creating a carbon-neutral society. In order to achieve this objective, this paper examined first the concept and implication of carbon neutrality, and then established the direction and content for creating a carbon-neutral society including a framework to approach carbon neutrality, approaches towards a policy for achieving carbon neutrality, introduction of governance to policy-making process, and policy effect analysis for deciding what policy has a priority to be launched. The Concept and Implications of Carbon neutrality: Carbon neutrality is defined as removing as much carbon from the atmosphere as we put in. This results in net-zero carbon emissions. The overall goal of carbon neutrality is to achieve a zero-carbon footprint. If carbon neutrality is successful, current climate change will continue, but does not get more serious because no more additional human-induced carbon will be emitted into the atmosphere. A Framework to Approach Carbon Neutrality: The framework should be established in two ways. One is to societal system, and the other one is to climate change impacts. The former is for reducing the driving-force determining climate change impact. The latter is for improving the current status of climate change. Approaches towards a Policy for Achieving Carbon Neutrality: Three approaches should be included. They are the nature-based, the technology-based, and the societal system-based approach. Introduction of Governance to Policy-Making Process: This is a necessary means to ease off the social conflict through internationalization of social conflict in advance. In other words, the introduction of governance is for establishing policies based on social consensus. Policy Effect Analysis for Deciding What Policy Has a Priority to Be Launched: A great number of carbon neutrality related policies can be established in the policy-making process. All of them can’t be implemented because a lot of finances are required to implement policies. Therefore, it is inevitable to implement a limited number of policies within the availability of finance. This is the decision of policy priority that are to be implemented, and the policies with relatively higher priority should be selected and implemented.