Consumption Based Responsibility for GlobalWarming and the Distribution of Impacts of SwissClimate Policy

Different consumption patterns have been linked to different levels of responsibility forcurrent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and it is well established that the affluent are re-sponsible for higher levels of global ghg emission than are the poor. Here I couple a lifecycle assessment of consumer goods with household survey data about consumption pat-terns to arrive at household level responsibility for global ghg emissions by consumptioncategory. This allows me to provide a detailed analysis of how different consumption cat-egories contribute to this responisibility. From this, I offer some insights into how thisinformation can be used for the design of policies that create equitable outcomes. I conclude that the distributional impacts of ghg pricing with revenue recycling willremain unproblematic as climate policy continues to cover more ghgs from more regions.If it is desired that high-income households make a bigger contribution to the emissionsreduction effort than others, focusing climate policy on transport (high confidence), eatingout, and clothing (both with lower confidence) may provide avenues for achieving that.This is the case, since responsibility for ghg emissions from these consumption categoriesincreases faster with income than it does for other goods.