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This paper describes and analyzes a proposal for a pay-for-cuts carbon treaty and illustrates how it would work with numerical simulations for 186 countries. A treaty board would pay each country’s government an amount P for each CO₂ ton the country cuts by any method. Each government would decide how to get its firms and households to cut CO₂ emissions; the board would encourage a carbon tax or cap-and-trade but not require it. $R_i$ is the number of tons that country i reduces its CO₂ emissions. $R_i$ equals country i’s base emissions minus its actual emissions which are publicly available data. Country i’s government would receive $P{R}_i$ from the board. The board’s $P{R}_i$ payments would be financed by country government contributions to the board. A formula would give each country’s government the amount it must contribute each year. The formula would aim to make government contributions equal to the board’s $P{R}_i$ payments and equitably distribute the burdens from cutting world emissions. Representatives of the countries would have to approve the board’s most important decisions.

The South Korean government aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Here, this study analyzed the economic efforts of the net-zero policy by integrating top-down and bottom-up models; The UNIfied Climate Options Nexus (UNICON) within this study aims to create a link between the 26 sectors from the bottom-up model and the 85 sectors of the top-down model. Positive mathematical programming methods were used to ensure consistency between the top-down and bottom-up models within the base year. The study found that the total reduction rate was slightly higher in the integrated model than in the computable general equilibrium (CGE) stand-alone model. In both models, the reduction rate increased when the carbon tax increased, but the marginal reduction rate was considerably lowered, and the reduction rate did not exceed 80% even with the high level of a carbon tax. The technological change of the linked industries in the integrated model showed that the steel industry had the highest emission reduction. When estimating costs for reducing GHGs, results can vary based on the technological changes under consideration.

Ultrafine particles (less than 100 nm in diameter) are encountered in ambient air and at the workplace. Normal background levels in the urban atmosphere for ultrafine particles are in the range 1−4 × 10⁴cm⁻³; however, their mass concentration is normally not greater than 2 μg m⁻³. At the workplace, ultrafine particles occur regularly in metal fumes and polymer fumes, both of which can induce acute inflammatory responses in the lung upon inhalation. Although ultrafine particles occurring at the workplace are not representative, and, therefore, are not relevant for urban atmospheric particles, their use in toxicological studies can give valuable information on principles of the toxicity of ultrafine particles. Studies in rats using ultrafine polymer fumes of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) (count median diameter ca. 18 nm) showed that (i) they induced very high pulmonary toxicity and lethality in rats after 15 min of inhalation at 50 μg m⁻³; (ii) ageing of PTFE fumes resulted in agglomeration to larger particles and loss of toxicity; (iii) repeated pre-exposure for very short periods protected against the toxic and lethal effects of a subsequent 15 min exposure; (iv) rapid translocation of PTFE particles occurred to epithelial, interstitial and endothelial sites. Since one characteristic of urban ultrafine particles is their carbonaceous nature, exposure of rats to laboratory-generated ultrafine carbonaceous (elemental, and organic, carbon) particles was carried out at a concentration of ca. 100 μm⁻³ for 6 h. Modulating factors of responses were prior lowdose inhalation of endotoxin in order to mimic early respiratory tract infections, old age (22-month old rats versus 10-week old rats) and ozone co-exposure. Analysis of results showed that (i) ultrafine carbon particles can induce slight inflammatory responses; (ii) LPS priming and ozone co-exposure increase the responses to ultrafine carbon; (iii) the aged lung is at increased risk for ultrafine particle-induced oxidative stress. Other studies with ultrafine and fine TiO₂ showed that the same mass dose of ultrafine particles has a significantly greater inflammatory potential than fine particles. The increased surface area of ultrafine particles is apparently a most important determinant for their greater biological activity. In addition, the propensity of ultrafine particles to translocate may result in systemic distribution to extrapulmonary tissues.

This chapter describes how economic models are used to answer questions about policy changes, specifically in the context of a carbon fee-and-dividend system. A carbon fee-and-dividend is a price on carbon dioxide emissions that returns the revenues gained to ordinary households in the form of a monthly check. The chapter describes, in nontechnical terms, the economic models and modeling processes involved and how they are similar and different from climate models…

Wind turbines and Solar Photovoltaic (PV) electric energy generators are the lowest cost producers of electricity available in 2019, costing about half as much as a new coal plant’s electric energy (Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis, 2018). They have the important characteristic of delivering electricity without releasing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO₂). Yet, almost all experts and plans for the future say that wind and solar will not be dominant contributors to electricity generation for the next couple of decades. They say we must continue fossil fuels with their associated greenhouse gases because of problems with renewable generators…

The potential applications for heterogeneous catalysts (supported metallic complexes, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) or polynuclear complexes) in C–H and C–OH activation are tantalizing. In response to the opportunity, novel strategies have been recently developed, which present a critical step toward harnessing the experimental factors, such as yield and selectivity, by enabling new techniques and hence real-world applications. This chapter provides an up-to-date survey (from the past five years) of the most promising novel routes by summarizing the progress made in the use of unconventional activation methods for performing oxidation reactions, highlighting the synergy of these technologies with heterogeneous catalysis. Focus is centered on both usual catalysts activation methods and less usual ones, such as ultrasounds, microwaves, grinding (mechanochemistry), as well as their combined use.