Climate change and inequality are critical and interrelated issues. Despite growing empirical evidence on the distributional implications of climate policies and climate risks, mainstream model-based assessments are often silent on the interplay between climate change and economic inequality. Here we fill this gap through an ensemble of eight large-scale integrated assessment models that belong to different economic paradigms and feature income heterogeneity. We quantify the distributional implications of climate impacts and of the varying compensation schemes of climate policies compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement. By 2100, climate impacts will increase inequality by 1.4 points of the Gini index on average. Maintaining global mean temperature below 1.5 °C reduces long-term inequality increase by two-thirds but increases it slightly in the short term. However, equal per-capita redistribution can offset the short-term effect, lowering the Gini index by almost two points. We quantify model uncertainty and find robust evidence that well-designed policies can help stabilize climate and promote economic inclusion.

气候变化和不平等是关键且相互关联的问题。尽管关于气候政策和气候风险的分配影响的经验证据越来越多，但主流基于模型的评估往往对气候变化和经济不平等之间的相互作用保持沉默。在这里，我们通过属于不同经济范式的八种大规模综合评估模型的组合来填补这一空白，这些模型具有收入异质性。我们量化了气候影响的分布影响以及与《巴黎协定》目标相一致的气候政策的不同补偿计划。到 2100 年，气候影响将使不平等平均增加 1.4 个基尼系数。将全球平均温度保持在 1.5 °C 以下可使长期不平等增加减少三分之二，但在短期内会略微增加。然而，相等的人均再分配可以抵消短期影响，使基尼系数降低近两个百分点。我们量化了模型的不确定性，并发现了强有力的证据，表明精心设计的政策可以帮助稳定气候和促进经济包容性。