"Most Americans now accept the basic physics of climate change-that manmade greenhouse-gas emissions are raising global temperatures. Yet the public discussion of climate change is still remarkably broken in the United States. Leaders of one political party frame climate change as an existential emergency that threatens human life and prosperity. Leaders of the other dismiss it as a distraction from economic growth and energy security. Economists like me, trained to think about trade-offs,"
"are uneasy with both camps. But, in practice, we have helped fuel the extremes of this dysfunctional debate. High-profile economic studies claim to quantify the global damages that will be caused by climate change centuries into the future and have produced estimates that range from modest to catastrophic. They have lent a veneer of scientific authority to arguments for both complacency and alarm, even though these studies are far too limited to support either position."
Most Americans accept that manmade greenhouse-gas emissions are raising global temperatures. Public discussion in the United States remains fragmented, with one political party framing climate change as an existential emergency and the other dismissing it as a diversion from economic growth and energy security. Economists trained to weigh trade-offs are uneasy and have helped fuel extremes by producing high-profile studies that estimate global damages centuries into the future, with results ranging from modest to catastrophic. Those studies lend a veneer of scientific authority to both complacency and alarm despite being too limited to justify either. The United States withdrew from the global climate treaty, and administration reports have selectively cited studies, relying heavily on William Nordhaus's modeling that weighs damages against mitigation costs.
Read at The Atlantic
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]