An Agent-Based Model of Global Carbon Mitigation Through Bilateral Negotiation Under Economic Constraints: The Key Role of Stakeholders’ Feedback and Facilitated Focus Groups and Meetings in the Development of Behavioral Models of Decision-Making

International agreements such as those developed under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) clearly aim at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and emphasize the need for a strong international collaboration to build a global framework to be agreed on and implemented in the face of competing national interests has not emerged to date; an assumption has been that if policies were shown to be effective at reducing GHG emissions and reducing climate risk while preserving economic growth once introduced, nations involved in the climate policy process would implement those policies. This raises a central question: What set of conditions would be effective in moving nations, regions, and the global economy onto the energy transformation and emissions reduction pathways necessary for significant emissions reduction in the aggregate? The current article explores this question through the use of an agent-based model. It seeks, through this modeling, to examine if global carbon mitigation is achievable with no global unitary framework but through bilateral negotiation and to explore what mitigation level can be reached in three different mitigation schemes. Three mitigation scenarios (low/medium/high ambition, see Table 5) are compared and contrasted, and key highlights/conclusions point to that reduction of absolute emissions even after the carbon intensity target is reached must be introduced.