In this month’s article at EconLib, I provide an introduction to the economics of climate change, and discuss some of its major controversies. Follow the above link for the full story, but in a nutshell here are the main issues:
(1) The Discount Rate. Economists give wildly different estimates of the “social cost of carbon” and hence the “optimal” tax on an additional unit of emissions. These differences are not primarily due to the assumptions about climate systems or human vulnerabilities to warming. On the contrary, the main difference between, say, the policy recommendations of the Stern Review (very aggressive) and William Nordhaus’ DICE model (very moderate) is that Stern uses a very low discount rate, while Nordhaus plugs in an estimate of the market’s rate of return on capital.
Efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions impose large, upfront costs on the economy (in terms of forfeited potential output of goods and services), while the benefits will not accrue until decades in the future (in the form of avoided climate change damage).…
Some people argue that we are morally obliged to reduce greenhouse gases aggressively because otherwise the world’s current development path would be unsustainable, and our descendants will be worse off than we are.
But will a warmer world be unsustainable, and leave our descendants worse off?
I have examined these claims out to the year 2200, using the IPCC’s own assumptions regarding future economic development and results generated by the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. Note that both the IPCC and Stern are viewed quite favorably by proponents of drastic GHG reductions (see, e.g., here).
The first figure (see below)…