le different countries
produce different volumes the marginal damage of an extra unit is independent of
whether it comes from the UK or Australia.
The impacts of climate change are persistent and develop over time. Once in the
atmosphere, some GHGs stay there for hundreds of years. Furthermore, the climate
system is slow to respond to increases in atmospheric GHG concentrations and there
are yet more lags in the environmental, economic and social response to climate
change. The effects of GHGs are being experienced now and will continue to work
their way through in the very long term.
The uncertainties are considerable, both about the potential size, type and timing of
impacts and about the costs of combating climate change; hence the framework used
must be able to handle risk and uncertainty.
The impacts are likely to have a significant effect on the global economy if action is
not taken to prevent climate change, so the analysis has to consider potentially non-
marginal changes to societies, not merely small changes amenable to ordinary
project appraisal.
These features shape much of the detailed economic analysis throughout this Review. We
illustrate with just one example, an important one, which shows how the dynamic nature of
the accumulation of GHGs over time affects one of the standard analytical workhorses of the
economics of externalities and the environment. It is common to present policy towards
climate change in terms of the social cost of carbon on the margin (SCC) and the marginal
abatement cost (MAC). The former is the total damage from now into the indefinite future of
emitting an extra unit of GHGs now – the science says that GHGs (particularly CO2) stay in
the atmosphere for a very long time. Thus, in its simplest form, the nature of the problem is
that the stock of gases in the atmosphere increases with the net flow of GHG emissions in
this period, and thus decreases with abatement. Therefore, on the one hand, the SCC curve
3
4
Samuelson (1954).
Formally, in economic theory, public goods are a special case of externalities where the effects of the latter are
independent of the identity of the emitters or origin of the externalities.
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GHGabatement in period 0
PART I: Climate Change – Our Approach
slopes downwards with increasing abatement in any given period, assuming that the lower
the stock at any point in the future, the less the marginal damage. On the other hand, the
MAC curve slopes upwards with increasing abatement, if it is more costly on the margin to do
more abatement as abatement increases in the given period. The optimum level of abatement
must satisfy the condition that the MAC equals the SCC. If, for example, the SCC were bigger
than the MAC, the social gain from one extra unit of abatement would be less than the cost
*
It should be clear that the SCC curve this period depends on future emissions: if we revised
upwards our specified assumptions on future emissions, the whole SCC curve would shift
*
thinking about an optimum path over time, rather than simply an optimum emission for this
period, we must recognise that the SCC curve for any given period depends on the future
stock and thus on the future path of emissions. We cannot sensibly calculate an SCC
without assuming that future emissions and stocks follow some specified path. For
different specified paths, the SCC will be different. For example, it will be much higher on
a ‘business as usual’ path (BAU) than it will be on a path that cuts emissions strongly and
eventually stabilises concentrations. It is remarkable how often SCC calculations are vague
on this crucial point (see Chapter 13 for a further discussion). Thus we must be very careful
how we use a diagram that is pervasive in the economics of climate change – see Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1 The optimum degree of abatement in a given period
MAC
SCC,
MAC
SCC
*
x0
In the figure, the SCC and the MAC are drawn as functions of emissions in this period, call it
period 0. As drawn, the SCC curve is fairly flat and downward sloping, since extra emissions
this period do not affect the total stock very much, but nevertheless extra abatement now
implies a slightly lower stock in the future. The MAC curve rises, since we assume that, as
abatement increases in this period, the marginal cost goes up. The optimum path for
* * * *
the indefinite future, and the SCC curve is drawn for each period on the assumption that all
future periods are set optimally.
A number of important points follow from this, in addition to the basic one that an SCC curve
cannot be drawn, nor an SCC calculated, without specific assumptions on future paths. First,
if the SCC rises over time along the specified path then, for optimality, so too must the MAC.
It is very likely that the SCC will rise over time, since stocks of GHGs will rise as further
emissions take place, up to the point where stabilisation is reached. Thus the MAC at the
optimum rises and the intersection of the MAC and SCC curves will imply successively
greater abatement. This is true even though the whole MAC curve is likely to be lower for any
particular degree of abatement in the future because learning will have taken place.
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Social cost of
carbon
Time
Emissions
reductions
Marginal abatement
costs
PART I: Climate Change – Our Approach
Figure 2.2 is thus perhaps more helpful than Figure 2.1 in sketching the nature of the solution
to the problem. The position of the schedule in the left-hand side panel depends on the
stabilisation target chosen for the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, which in
turn depends upon how the expected present values (in terms of discounted utility) of costs
and benefits of mitigation through time change as the stabilisation level changes. Hence the
choice of stabilisation target implies a view about what is likely to happen to abatement costs
over time. The right-hand panel shows the shifts in the MAC curve expected at the time the
stabilisation target is chosen.
Figure 2.2 How the path for the social cost of carbon drives the extent of abatement
Technical
progress in
abatement
lowers the
marginal cost
curve
This illustrates how important it is that the dynamics of the problem are considered. The
conclusion that the MAC rises along an optimum path does not automatically follow from an
analysis that simply shifts the SCC curve upwards over time (with higher stocks) and shifts
the MAC down over time (with learning), without linking to the full dynamic optimisation. That
optimisation takes account of the known future fall in costs in determining the whole path for
the SCC. We are simply assuming that this fall in costs could not be of a magnitude to make it
optimum for stocks to fall, that is, for emissions to be less than the Earth system’s equilibrium
capacity to absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
This analysis raises the second point, about the role of uncertainty. In the above argument,
there is no consideration of uncertainty. If that vital element is now introduced, the argument
becomes more complex. It has to be asked whether the resolution of uncertainty in any period
would lead to a revision of views about the future probability distributions for abatement costs
and climate-change damages. If, for example, there is unexpected good news that abatement
is likely to be much cheaper than previously thought, then a lower stabilisation target and
more abatement over time than originally planned would become appropriate. This would
reduce the SCC from where it would otherwise have been. However, one surprisingly good
period for costs does not necessarily imply that future periods will be just as good. In Figure
2.2, persistently faster technical progress than expected (as opposed to random fluctuations
of the MAC around its expected value) would lead to a downward revision of the stabilisation
target and hence a downward shift in the schedule in the left-hand panel.
Dynamics and uncertainty are explored further in Chapters 13 and 14, while analyses
involving risk are taken further in Sections 2.5 and 2.6 and in Chapter 6.
This important example shows how important it is to integrate the scientific features of the
externality into the economics and shows further that there are difficult conceptual and
technical questions to be tackled. The analysis must cover a very broad range, including the
economics of: growth and development; industry; innovation and technological change;
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institutions; the international economy; demography and migration; public finance; information
and uncertainty; and the economics of risk and equity; and environmental and public
economics throughout.
2.3
Ethics, welfare and economic policy
The special features of the climate-change externality pose difficult questions for the
standard welfare-economic approach to policy.
Chapter 1 shows that the effects of climate change are global, intertemporal and highly
inequitable. The inequity of climate change is examined further in Part II.. Generally, poor
countries, and poor people in any given country, suffer the most, notwithstanding that the rich
countries are responsible for the bulk of past emissions. These features of climate change,
together with the fact that they have an impact on many dimensions of human well-being,
force us to look carefully at the underlying ethical judgements and presumptions which
underpin, often implicitly, the standard framework of policy analysis. Indeed, it is important to
consider a broader range of ethical arguments and frameworks than is standard in
economics, both because there are many ways of looking at the ethics of policy towards
climate change, and, also, because in so doing we can learn something about how to apply
the more standard economic approach. There is a growing literature on the ethics of climate
change: analysis of policy cannot avoid grappling directly with the difficult issues that arise.
These ethical frameworks are discussed more formally in the technical appendix to this
chapter; the discussion here is only summary 5.
The underlying ethics of basic welfare economics, which underpins much of the standard
analysis of public policy, focuses on the consequences of policy for the consumption of goods
and services by individuals in a community. These goods and services are generated by
labour, past saving, knowledge and natural resources. The perspective sees individuals as
having utility, or welfare, arising from this consumption.
In this approach, the objective is to work out the policies that would be set by a decision-
maker acting on behalf of the community and whose role it is to improve, or maximise, overall
social welfare. This social welfare depends on the welfare of each individual in the
community. When goods and services are defined in a broad way, they can include, for
example, education, health and goods appearing at different dates and in different
circumstances. Thus the theory covers time and uncertainty. And, to the extent that
individuals value the environment, that too is part of the analysis. Many goods or services,
including education, health and the environment, perform a dual role: individuals directly value
them and they are inputs into the use or acquisition of other consumption goods. In the
jargon, they are both goals and instruments.
The standard economic theory then focuses on flows of goods or services over time and their
distribution across individuals. The list of goods or services should include consumption
(usually monetary or the equivalent), education, health and the environment. These are
usually the areas focused upon in cross-country comparisons of living standards, such as, for
example, in the World Development Indicators of the World Bank, the Human Development
Report of the UNDP, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed at the UN at the
turn of the millennium. ‘Stocks’ of wealth, infrastructure, the natural environment and so on
enter into the analysis in terms of their influence on flows. Through these choices of data for
central attention and through the choice of goals, the international community has identified a
strong and shared view on the key dimensions of human well-being.
Those choices of data and goals can be derived from a number of different ethical
perspectives (see, for example, Sen (1999)). Most ethical frameworks generally used in the
analyses of economic policy have some relevance for the economics of climate change and
5
Particularly important contributions on ethics are those of Beckerman and Pasek (2001), Broome (1992, 1994,
2004, 2005), Gardiner (2004) and Müller (2006). We are very grateful to John Broome for his advice and guidance,
but he is not responsible for the views expressed here.
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there are some – for example, those involving stewardship and sustainability – that are
particularly focused on environmental issues.
The ethical framework of standard welfare economics looks first only at the consequences of
actions (an approach often described as ‘consequentialism’) and then assesses
consequences in terms of impacts on ‘utility’ (an approach often described as ‘welfarism’, as
in Sen (1999), Chapter 3 and the appendix to this chapter). This standard welfare-economic
approach has no room, for example, for ethical dimensions concerning the processes by
which outcomes are reached. Some different notions of ethics, including those based on
concepts of rights, justice and freedoms, do consider process. Others, such as sustainability,
and stewardship, emphasise particular aspects of the consequences of decisions for others
and for the future, as explained in the technical appendix.
Nevertheless, the consequences on which most of these notions would focus for each
generation often have strong similarities: above all, with respect to the attention they
pay to consumption, education, health and the environment.
And all the perspectives would take into account the distribution of outcomes within and
across generations, together with the risks involved in different actions, now and over time.
Hence the Review focuses on the implications of action or inaction on climate change for
these four dimensions.
How the implications for these four dimensions are assessed, will, of course, vary according
to the ethical position adopted. How policy-makers aggregate over consequences (i) within
generations, (ii) over time, and (iii) according to risk will be crucial to policy design and choice.
Aggregation requires being quantitative in comparing consequences of different kinds and for
different people. The Review pays special attention to all three forms of aggregation. In
arriving at decisions, or a view, it is not, however, always necessary to derive a single number
that gives full quantitative content and appropriate weight to all the dimensions and elements
involved (see below).
Climate change is an externality that is global in both its causes and consequences.
Both involve deep inequalities that are relevant for policy.
The incremental impact of a tonne of GHG is independent of where in the world it is emitted.
But the volume of GHGs emitted globally is not uniform. Historically, rich countries have
produced the majority of GHG emissions. Though all countries are affected by climate
change, they are affected in different ways and to different extents. Developing countries will
be particularly badly hit, for three reasons: their geography; their stronger dependence on
agriculture; and because with their fewer resources comes greater vulnerability. There is
therefore a double inequity in climate change: the rich countries have special responsibility for
where the world is now, and thus for the consequences which flow from this difficult starting
point, whereas poor countries will be particularly badly hit.
The standard welfare-economics framework has a single criterion, and implicitly, a single
governmental decision-maker. It can be useful in providing a benchmark for what a ‘good’
global policy would look like. But the global nature of climate change implies that the simple
economic theory with one jurisdiction, one decision-maker, and one social welfare function
cannot be taken literally. Instead, it is necessary to model how different players or countries
will interact (see Section 2.8 below and Pt VI) and to ask ethical questions about how people
in one country or region should react to the impacts of their actions on those in another. This
raises questions of how the welfare of people with very different standards of living should be
assessed and combined in forming judgements on policy.
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There are particular challenges in valuing social welfare across countries at different
stages of development and across different income or consumption levels.
The ethical question of how consequences for people in very different circumstances should
be aggregated must be faced directly. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, we shall adopt the
perspective of the ‘social welfare function’ approach, as explained in Box 2.1.
Box 2.1
The ‘social welfare function’ approach to ‘adding up’ the wellbeing of
different people.
The stripped-down approach that we shall adopt when we attempt to assess the potential
costs of climate change uses the standard framework of welfare economics. The objective of
policy is taken to be the maximisation of the sum across individuals of social utilities of
consumption. Thus, in this framework, aggregation of impacts across individuals using social
value judgements is assumed to be possible. In particular, we consider consumption as
involving a broad range of goods and services that includes education, health and the
environment. The relationship between the measure of social wellbeing – the sum of social
utilities in this argument – and the goods and services consumed by each household, on
which it depends, is called the social welfare function.
In drawing up a social welfare function, we have to make explicit value judgements about the
distribution of consumption across individuals – how much difference should it make, for
example, if a given loss of consumption opportunities affects a rich person rather than a poor
person, or someone today rather than in a hundred years’ time?6 Aggregating social utility
across individuals to come up with a measure of social welfare has its problems. Different
value judgements can lead to different rankings of possible outcomes, and deciding what
values should be applied is difficult in democratic societies7. It is not always consistent with
ethical perspectives based on rights and freedoms. But the approach has the virtue of clarity
and simplicity, making it easy to test the sensitivity of the policy choice that emerges to the
value judgements made. It is fairly standard in the economics of applied policy problems and
allows for a consistent treatment of aggregation within and across generations and for
uncertainty. The social welfare function’s treatment of income differences can be calibrated by
simple thought experiments. For example, suppose the decision-maker is considering two
possible policy outcomes. In the second outcome, a poor person receives an income $X more
than in the first, but a rich person receives $Y less; how much bigger than X would Y have to
be for the decision-maker to decide that the second outcome is worse than the first?
Aggregation across education, health, income and environment raises profound difficulties,
particularly when comparisons are made across individuals. Some common currency or
‘numeraire’ is necessary: the most common way of expressing an aggregate measure of
wellbeing is in terms of real income. That immediately raises the challenge of expressing
health (including mortality) and environmental quality in terms of income. There have been
many attempts to do just that. These should not be lightly dismissed, since nations often
decide how much to allocate to, for example, accident and emergency services or
environmental protection in the knowledge that a little extra money saves lives and improves
the environment. Indeed, individuals make similar choices in their own lives.
Nevertheless, there are significant difficulties inherent in the valuation of health and the
environment, many of which are magnified across countries where major differences in
income affect individuals’ willingness and ability to pay for them. For example, a very poor
person may not be ‘willing-to-pay’ very much money to insure her life, whereas a rich person
may be prepared to pay a very large sum. Can it be right to conclude that a poor person’s life
6
some of the difficulties and attractions of consequentialism, welfarism, utilitarianism and other approaches, see e.g.
Sen and Williams (1982) and Sen (1999).
7
1963) using his famous ‘impossibility theorem’. It has been examined in a series of studies by Amartya Sen (see, for
example, Sen (1970, 1986 and 1999)).
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or health is therefore less valuable?8 It is surely within the realms of sensible discourse to
think of the consequences of different strategies simultaneously in terms of income, lives and
the environment: that is the approach we adopt where possible. At some points (such as in
Chapter 6), however, we present models from the literature that do embody estimates of the
monetary equivalent of the impacts of climate change on broader dimensions of welfare
(although generally in these contexts increments in income are valued differently at different
levels in income – see Box 2.1). Such exercises should be viewed with some circumspection.
2.4
The long-run impacts of climate change: evaluation over time and discounting
The effects of GHGs emitted today will be felt for a very long time. That makes some
form of evaluation or aggregation across generations unavoidable. The ethical
decisions on, and approaches to, this issue have major consequences for the
assessment of policy.
The approach we adopt here is similar to that for assessing impacts that fall on different
people or nations, and in some respects continues the discussion of ethics in the preceding
section. When we do this formally, we work in terms of sums of utilities of consumption. Again
there is a problem of calibrating the social welfare function for this purpose but, as with
aggregating across people with different incomes at a moment in time, one can use a series
of ‘thought experiments’ to help (see Box 2.1).
Typically, in the application of the theory of welfare economics to project and policy appraisal,
an increment in future consumption is held to be worth less than an increment in present
consumption, for two reasons. First, if consumption grows, people are better off in the future
than they are now and an extra unit of consumption is generally taken to be worth less, the
richer people are. Second, it is sometimes suggested that people prefer to have good things
earlier rather than later – ‘pure time preference’ – based presumably in some part on an
assessment of the chances of being alive to enjoy consumption later and in some part
‘impatience’.
Yet assessing impacts over a very long time period emphasises the problem that future
generations are not fully represented in current discussion. Thus we have to ask how they
should be represented in the views and decisions of current generations. This throws the
second rationale for ‘discounting’ future consumption mentioned above – pure time
preference – into question. We take a simple approach in this Review: if a future generation
will be present, we suppose that it has the same claim on our ethical attention as the current
one.
Thus, while we do allow, for example, for the possibility that, say, a meteorite might obliterate
the world, and for the possibility that future generations might be richer (or poorer), we treat
the welfare of future generations on a par with our own. It is, of course, possible that people
actually do place less value on the welfare of future generations, simply on the grounds that
they are more distant in time. But it is hard to see any ethical justification for this. It raises
logical difficulties, too. The discussion of the issue of pure time preference has a long and
distinguished history in economics, particularly among those economists with a strong interest
and involvement in philosophy9. It has produced some powerful assertions. Ramsey (1928,
p.543) described pure time discounting as ‘ethically indefensible and [arising] merely from the
weakness of the imagination’. Pigou (1932, pp 24-25) referred to it as implying that ‘our
telescopic faculty is defective’. Harrod (1948, pp 37-40) described it as a ‘human infirmity’ and
‘a polite expression for rapacity and the conquest of reason by passion’. Solow (1974, p.9)
said ‘we ought to act as if the social rate of time preference were zero (though we would
simultaneously discount future consumption if we expected the future to be richer than the
8
Notice however that if the valuation of life in money terms in country A is twice that of country B, where income in A
is twice that in B, we may choose to value increases in income in A half as much as for B (see Box 2.1 and Chapter
6). In that case, extra mortality would be valued in the same way for both countries.
9
and quotes beyond those here. And see Broome (1991) and (2004) for an extended discussion. We are grateful to
Sudhir Anand and John Broome for discussions of these issues.
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present)’. Anand and Sen (2000) take a similar view, as does Cline (1992) in his analysis of
the economics of global warming. The appendix to this chapter explores these issues in more
technical detail, and includes references to one or two dissenting views.
However, we must emphasise that the approach we adopt, aggregating utility of consumption,
does take directly into account the possibility that future generations may be richer or poorer,
the first rationale for discounting above. Uncertainty about future prospects plays an important
role in the analysis of the Review. How well off we may be when a cost or benefit arrives does
matter to its evaluation, as does the probability of the occurrence of costs and benefits. Those
issues, per se, are not reasons for discounting (other than the case of uncertainty about
existence).
A formal discussion of discounting inevitably becomes mathematically technical, as one must
be explicit about growth paths and intertemporal allocations. The simple techniques of
comparing future incomes or consumption with those occurring now using discount rates
(other than for ‘pure time preference’) is not valid for comparing across paths that are very
different. Further, where comparisons are for marginal decisions and the use of discount rates
is valid, then, for a number of reasons, particularly uncertainty, discount rates may fall over
time. a formal discussion is provided in the appendix to this chapter: the results are
summarised in Box 2.2.
Box 2.2
Discounting
Discounting, as generally used in economics, is a technique relevant for marginal
perturbations around a given growth path. A discount rate that is common across projects can
be used only for assessing projects that involve perturbations around a path and not for
comparing across very different paths.
With marginal perturbations, the key concept is the discount factor: the value of an increment
in consumption at a time in the future relative to now. The discount factor will generally
depend on the consumption level in the future relative to that now, i.e. on growth, and on the
social utility or welfare function used to evaluate consumption (see Box 2.1).
The discount rate is the rate of fall of the discount factor. There is no presumption that it is
constant over time, as it depends on the way in which consumption grows over time.
•
•
•
If consumption falls along a path, the discount rate can be negative.
If inequality rises over time, this would work to reduce the discount rate, for the social
welfare functions typically used.
If uncertainty rises as outcomes further into the future are contemplated, this would
work to reduce the discount rate, with the welfare functions typically used.
Quantification of this effect requires specification of the form of uncertainty, and how it
changes, and of the utility function.
With many goods and many households, there will be many discount rates. For example, if
conventional consumption is growing but the environment is deteriorating, then the discount
rate for consumption would be positive but for the environment it would be negative. Similarly,
if the consumption of one group is rising but another is falling, the discount rate would be
positive for the former but negative for the latter.
Taking the analysis of this section and that of the appendix to this chapter together with the
discussion of ethics earlier in this chapter, it can be seen that the standard welfare framework
is highly relevant as a theoretical basis for assessing strategies and projects in the context of
climate change. However, the implications of that theory are very different from those of the
techniques often used in cost-benefit analysis. For example, a single constant discount rate
would generally be unacceptable for dealing with the long-run, global, non-marginal impacts
of climate change.
For further discussion of discounting, and references to the relevant literature, see the
technical annex to this chapter.
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This approach to discounting and the ethics from which it is derived is of great importance for
the analysis of climate change. That is why we have devoted space to it at the beginning of
our Review. If little or no value were placed on prospects for the long-run future, then
climate change would be seen as much less of a problem. If, however, one thinks
about the ethics in terms of most standard ethical frameworks, there is every reason to
take these prospects very seriously.
2.5
Risk and Uncertainty
The risks and uncertainties around the costs and benefits of climate policy are large;
hence the analytical framework should be able to handle risk and uncertainty explicitly.
For the moment, we do not make a distinction between risk and uncertainty, but the
distinction is important and we return to it below. Uncertainty affects every link in the chain
from emissions of GHGs through to their impacts. There are uncertainties associated, for
example, with future rates of economic growth, with the volume of emissions that will follow,
with the increases in temperature resulting from emissions, with the impacts of these
temperature increases and so on. Similarly, there are uncertainties associated with the
economic response to policy measures, and hence about how much it will cost to reduce
GHG emissions.
Our treatment of uncertainty follows a similar approach to that for evaluation or aggregation
over space and time. Where we embody uncertainty formally in our models, we add utilities
over possible states of the world that might result from climate change, weighting by the
probability of those states. This yields what is known as ‘expected’ utility.
This is essentially the extension of the social utility approach to an uncertain or ‘stochastic’
environment. As in a certain or ‘deterministic’ environment, it has its ethical difficulties, but it
has the virtues of transparency, clarity, and consistency. Again, it is fairly standard in applied
economics.
The basis of such probabilities should be up-to-date knowledge from science and economics.
This amounts to a ‘subjective’ probability approach.10 It is a pragmatic response to the fact
that many of the ‘true’ uncertainties around climate-change policy cannot themselves be
observed and quantified precisely, as they can be in many engineering problems, for
example.
The standard expected-utility framework involves aversion to risk and, in this narrow
sense, a ‘precautionary principle’.
This approach to uncertainty, combined with the assumption that the social marginal utility of
income declines as income rises, implies that society will be willing to pay a premium
(insurance) to avoid a simple actuarially fair gamble where potential losses and gains are
large. As Parts II and III show, potential losses from climate change are large and the costs of
avoidance (the insurance premium involved in mitigation), we argue, seem modest by
comparison.
The analytical approach incorporates aspects of insurance, caution and precaution directly,
and does not therefore require a separate ‘precautionary principle’ to be imposed as an extra
ethical criterion.
More modern theories embodying a distinction between uncertainty and risk suggest
an explicit ‘precautionary principle’ beyond that following from standard expected-
utility theory.
10 th
th
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The distinction between uncertainty and risk is an old one, going back at least to Knight
(1921) and Keynes (1921). In their analysis, risk applied when one could make some
assessment of probabilities and uncertainty when one does not have the ability to assess
probabilities. In a fascinating paper, Claude Henry (2006) puts these ideas to work on
problems in science and links them to modern theories of behaviour towards risk. He uses
two important examples to illustrate the relevance of a precautionary principle in the presence
of uncertainty. The first is the link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cows
and Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD) in humans and the second, the link between asbestos
and lung disease.
For the first, UK scientists asserted for some time that there could be no link because of ‘a
barrier between species’. However in 1991 scientists in Bristol succeeded in inoculating a cat
with BSE and the hypothesis of ‘a barrier’ was destroyed. Around the same time, a scientist,
Stanley Prusiner, identified protein mutations that could form the basis of a link. These results
did not establish probabilities but they destroyed ‘certainty’. By introducing uncertainty, the
finding opened up the possibility of applying a precautionary principle.
For the second, a possible link between asbestos and lung disease was suggested as early
as 1898 by health inspectors in the UK, and in 1911 on a more scientific basis after
experiments on rats. Again the work was not of a kind to establish probabilities but provided
grounds for precaution. Unfortunately, industry lobbying prevented a ban on asbestos and the
delay of fifty years led to considerable loss of life. Application of the precautionary principle
could have saved lives.
Henry refers to recent work by Maccheroni et al (2005) and Klibanoff et al (2005) that
formalises this type of argument,11 giving, in effect, a formal description of the precautionary
principle. In this formalisation, there are a number of possible probability distributions over
outcomes that could follow from some action. But the decision-maker, who is trying to choose
which action to take, does not know which of these distributions is more or less likely for any
given action. It can be shown under formal but reasonable assumptions12 that she would act
as if she chooses the action that maximises a weighted average of the worst expected utility
and the best expected utility, where best and worst are calculated by comparing expected
utilities using the different probability distributions. The weight placed on the worst outcome
would be influenced by concern of the individual about the magnitude of associated threats,
or pessimism, and possibly any hunch about which probability might be more or less
plausible. It is an explicit embodiment of ‘aversion to uncertainty’, sometimes called ‘aversion
to ambiguity’, and is an expression of the ‘precautionary principle’. It is different from and
additional to the idea of ‘aversion to risk’ associated with and derived from expected utility.
The ability to work with probability distributions in the analysis of climate change was
demonstrated in Chapter 1. But there is genuine uncertainty over which of these distributions
should apply. In particular, the science and economics are particularly sparse precisely where
the stakes are highest – at the high temperatures we now know may be possible. Uncertainty
over probability distributions is precisely the situation we confront in the modelling of Chapter
6. As Claude Henry puts it in the conclusion to his 2006 paper, ‘uncertainty should not be
inflated and invoked as an alibi for inaction’. We now have a theory that can describe how to
act.
2.6
Non-marginal policy decisions
There is a serious risk that, without action to prevent climate change, its impacts will
be large relative to the global economy, much more so than for most other
environmental problems.
11
12
See also Chichilnisky (2000)
Essentially the axioms are similar to those of the standard Von Neumann-Morgenstern theorem deriving expected
utility except the dependence axiom is relaxed slightly. See Gollier (2001), for example, for a description of the Von
Neumann-Morgenstern approach.
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The impacts of climate change on economies and societies worldwide could be large relative
to the global economy. Specifically, it cannot be assumed that the global economy, net of the
costs of climate change, will grow at a certain rate in the future, regardless of whether nations
follow a ‘business as usual’ path or choose together to reduce GHG emissions. In this sense,
the decision is not a marginal one.
Figure 2.3 Conceptual approach to comparing divergent growth paths over the long
term
Path withmitigation
Logof
income
Path without
mitigation
Time
The issues are represented schematically in Figure 2.4, which compares two paths, one with
mitigation and one without. We should note that, in this diagram, there is uncertainty around
each path, which should be analysed using the approaches of the preceding section. This is
crucial to the analysis in much of the Review. Income on the ‘path with mitigation’ is below
that on the path without (‘business as usual’) for the earlier time period, because costs of
mitigation are incurred. Later, as the damages from climate change accumulate, growth on
the ‘path without mitigation’ will slow and income will fall below the level on the other path.
The analysis of Part III attempts to quantify these effects and finds that the ‘greener’ path
(with mitigation) allows growth to continue but, on the path without mitigation, income will
suffer. The analysis requires formal comparison between paths and Part III shows that the
losses from mitigation in the near future are strongly outweighed by the later gains in averted
damage.
2.7
The public policy of promoting mitigation
Having established the importance of strong mitigation in Parts II and III of the Review, Part
IV is devoted to policy to bring it about. The basic theory of externalities identifies the source
of the economic problem in untaxed or unpriced emissions of GHGs.
The externality requires a price for emissions: that is the first task of mitigation policy.
The first requirement is therefore to introduce taxes or prices for GHGs. The Pigou treatment
of externalities points to taxes based on the marginal damages caused by carbon emissions.
In the diagram shown in Figure 2.1, the appropriate tax would be equal to the social cost of
carbon at the point where it is equal to the marginal abatement cost. Faced with this tax, the
emitters would choose the appropriate level of abatement.
However, the modern theory of risk indicates that long-term quantity targets may be the right
direction for policy, with trading within those targets or regular revision of taxes to keep on
course towards the long-run objective (see Chapter 14). Given the long-run nature of many of
the relevant decisions, whichever policies are chosen, credibility and predictability of policy
will be crucial to effectiveness.
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The second task of mitigation policy is to promote research, development and deployment.
However, the inevitable absence of total credibility for GHG pricing policy decades into the
future may inhibit investment in emission reduction, particularly the development of new
technologies. Action on climate change requires urgency, and there are generally obstacles,
due to inadequate property rights, preventing investors reaping the full return to new ideas.
Specifically, there are spillovers in learning (another externality), associated with the
development and adoption of new low-emission technologies that can affect how much
emissions are reduced. Thus the economics of mitigating climate change involves
understanding the processes of innovation.
The spillovers occur in a number of ways. A firm is unlikely to be able to appropriate all the
benefits, largely because knowledge has some characteristics of a public good. In particular,
once new information has been created, it can be virtually costless to copy. This allows a
competitor with access to the information to capture the benefits without undertaking the
research and development (R&D). Patents are commonly used to reduce this problem. In
addition, there are typically ‘adoptive externalities’ to other firms that arise from the processes
whereby technology costs fall as a result of increasing adoption. These spillovers are likely to
be particularly important in the case of low-emission technologies that can help to mitigate
climate change, as Chapter 16 explains.
Other interacting barriers or problem that are relevant include
•
•
•
•
•
asymmetric and inadequate information – for example, about energy-efficiency
measures
policy-induced uncertainties – such as uncertainty about the implicit price of carbon in
the future
moral hazard or ‘gaming’ – for example firms might rush to make carbon-emitting
investments to avoid the possibility of more stringent regulation in the future
perverse regulatory incentives – such as the incentive to establish a high baseline of
emissions in regimes where carbon quotas are ‘grandfathered’
the endogenous price dynamics of exhaustible natural resources – and the risk that
fossil-fuel prices could fall in response to strong climate-change policy, threatening to
undermine it.13
These issues involve many of the most interesting theoretical questions studied by
economists in recent years in industrial, regulatory and natural resource economics.
There are important challenges for public policy to promote mitigation beyond the two tasks
just described. That is the subject of Chapter 16. These include regulation and standards and
deepening public understanding of responsible behaviour.
Standards and regulation can provide powerful and effective policies to promote action
on mitigation.
The learning process for new technologies is uncertain. There are probably important scale
effects in this process due to experience or learning-by-doing and the externalities of learning-
by-watching. In these circumstances, standards for emissions, for example, can provide a
clear sense of direction and reduced uncertainty for investors, allowing these economies of
scale to be realised.
In other circumstances, particularly concerning energy efficiency, there will be market
imperfections, for example due to the nature of landlord-tenant relations in property, which
may inhibit adaptation of beneficial investments or technologies. In these circumstances,
regulation can produce results more efficient than those that are available from other
instruments alone.
13
The economic theory of exhaustible natural resources is expounded by Dasgupta and Heal (1979). A seminal
reference is Hotelling (1931). See, also, Ulph and Ulph (1994), Sinclair (1992) and Sinclair (1994).
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Information, education and public discussion can play a powerful role in shaping
understanding of reasonable behaviour.
Economists tend to put most of weight in public-policy analyses and recommendations on
market instruments to which firms and households respond. And there are excellent reasons
for this – firms and households know more about their own circumstances and can respond
strongly to incentives. But the standard ‘sticks and carrots’ of this line of argument do not
constitute the whole story.
Chapter 17 argues that changing attitudes is indeed likely to be a crucial part of a policy
package. But it raises ethical difficulties: who has the right or authority to attempt to change
preferences or attitudes? We shall adopt the approach of John Stuart Mill and others who
have emphasised ‘government by discussion’ as the way in which individuals can come to
decisions individually and collectively as to the ethical and other justifications of different
approaches to policy.
2.8
International action for mitigation and adaptation
The principles of public policy for mitigation elaborated so far do not take very explicit account
of the international nature of the challenge. This is a global problem and mitigation is a global
public good. This means that it is, from some perspectives, ‘an international game’ and the
theory of games does indeed provide powerful insights. The challenge is to promote and
sustain international collective action in a context where ‘free-riding’ is a serious problem.
Adaptation, like mitigation, raises strong and difficult international issues of responsibility and
equity, and also has some elements of the problem of providing public goods.
Aspects of adaptation to climate change also have some of the characteristics of
public goods and require public policy intervention.
Concerns about the provision of public goods affect policy to guide adaptation to the adverse
impacts of climate change. This is the subject of Part V of the Review. Compared with efforts
to reduce emissions, adaptation provides immediate, local benefits for which there is some
degree of private return. Nevertheless, efficient adaptation to climate change is also hindered
by market failures, notably inadequate information on future climate change and positive
externalities in the provision of adaptation (where the social return remains higher than the
return that will be captured by private investors). These market failures may limit the amount
of adaptation undertaken – even where it would be cost-effective.
The ethics of adaptation imply strong support from the rich countries to the most
vulnerable.
The poorest in society are likely to have the least capacity to adapt, partly because of
resource constraints on upfront investment in adaptive capacity. Given that the greatest need
for adaptation will be in low-income countries, overcoming financial constraints is also a key
objective. This will involve transfers from rich countries to poor countries. The argument is
strongly reinforced by the historical responsibility of rich countries for the bulk of accumulated
stocks of GHGs. Poor countries are suffering and will suffer from climate change generated in
the past by consumption and growth in rich countries.
Action on climate change that is up to the scale of the challenge requires countries to
participate voluntarily in a sustained, coordinated, international effort.
Climate change shares some characteristics with other environmental challenges linked to the
management of common international resources, including the protection of the ozone layer
and the depletion of fisheries. Crucially, there is no global single authority with the legal,
moral, practical or other capacity to manage the climate resource.
This is particularly challenging, because, as Chapter 8 makes clear, no one country, region or
sector alone can achieve the reductions in GHG emissions required to stabilise atmospheric
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concentrations of GHGs at the necessary level. In addition, there are significant gains to co-
operating across borders, for example in undertaking emission reductions in the most cost-
effective way. The economics and science point to the need for emitters to face a common
price of emissions at the margin. And, although adaptation to climate change will often deliver
some local reduction in its impact, those countries most vulnerable to climate change are
particularly short of the resources to invest in adaptation. Hence international collective action
on both mitigation and adaptation is required, and Part VI of the Review discusses the
challenges and options.
Economic tools such as game theory, as well as insights from international relations, can aid
the understanding of how different countries, with differing incentives, preferences and cost
structures, can reach agreement. The problem of free-riding on the actions of others is
severe. International collective action on any issue rests on the voluntary co-operation of
sovereign states. Economic analysis suggests that multilateral regimes succeed when they
are able to define the gain to co-operation, share it equitably and can sustain co-operation in
ways that overcome incentives for free-riding.
Our response to climate change as a world is about the choices we make about development,
growth, the kind of society we want to live in, and the opportunities it affords this and future
generations. The challenge requires focusing on outcomes that promote wealth, consumption,
health, reduced mortality and greater social justice.
The empirical analysis of impacts and costs, together with the ethical frameworks we have
examined, points to strong action to mitigate GHG emissions. And, given the responsibility of
the rich countries for the bulk of the current stock of GHGs, and the poverty and vulnerability
of developing countries that would be hardest hit, the analysis suggests that rich countries
should bear the major responsibility for providing the resources for adjustment, at least for the
next few years. The reasons for strong action by the rich countries are similar to those for aid:
•
•
•
•
2.9
the moral consequences which flow from a recognition of a common humanity of
deep poverty;
the desire to build a more collaborative, inclusive and better world;
common interest in the climate and in avoiding dislocation;
historical responsibility.
Conclusions
Much of the economics we have begun to describe here and that is put to use in the
subsequent parts of this Review is not simple. But the structure of this economics is
essentially dictated by the structure of the science. And we have seen that it is not possible to
provide a coherent and serious account of the economics of climate change without close
attention to the ethics underlying economic policy raised by the challenges of climate change.
The economics of climate change is as broad ranging, deep and complicated as any other
area of economics. Indeed, it combines most of the difficulties of other areas of economics. It
is unavoidably technical in places. It is the task of this Review to explore the economics of
climate change in the depth that is possible given the current state of economic and scientific
knowledge. And it should already be clear that much more research is necessary. In many
ways, the science has progressed further than the economics.
The scope and depth of the subject require us to put the tools of economics to work across
the whole range of the subject. Indeed they point to the importance of tools we wish we had.
Nevertheless, the economics can be very powerful in pointing us towards important policy
conclusions, as we have already begun to see in this chapter. The urgency of the problems
established by the science points to the urgency of translating what we can already show with
the economic analysis into concrete policy actions. In doing so, the international dimension
must be at centre stage.
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References
This chapter touches on many important topics in ethics, social choice and economic theory.
On social choice theory, Sen (1986) is a thorough guide, while Sen (1970) is a classic
analysis of collective choice and social welfare. Broome (2004) examines the complexities of
assessing inter-generational welfare. Henry (2006) considers the distinction between risk
aversion and aversion to ambiguity or Knightian uncertainty. Gollier (2001) also raises many
important issues concerning discounting of the future. Dasgupta and Heal (1979) investigate
the economics of exhaustible resources and its implications for price theory, many of which
are not intuitive.
Anand,S and A.K. Sen (2000): ’Human development and economic sustainability’, World
Development, 28(12): 2029-2049
Arrow, K. (1951): ‘Individual Values and Social Choice’, New York: Wiley.
Arrow, K. (1963): ‘Individual Values and Social Choice’, 2nd edition, New York: Wiley.
Beckerman, W. and J. Pasek (2001): 'Justice, Posterity and the Environment', Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Broome, J. (1992): 'Counting the Cost of Global Warming', Cambridge: The White Horse
Press.
Broome, J. (1994): ‘Discounting the future’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 23: 128–56
Broome, J. (2004): 'Weighing lives', Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Broome, J. (2005): ‘Should we value population?’, The Journal of Political Philosophy. 13(4):
399-413
Chichilnisky, G. (2000): ‘An axiomatic approach to choice under uncertainty with catastrophic
risk’, Resource and Energy Economics, 22: 221-31
Cline, W.R. (1992): ‘The Economics of Global Warming’, Washington D.C.: Institute for
International Economics.
Dasgupta, P.S. (1974): ‘On some alternative criteria for justice between generations’, Journal
of Public Economics, 3(4): 405-423
Dasgupta, P.S. and G.M. Heal (1979): 'Economic theory and exhaustible resources',
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fankhauser, S. (1998): 'The costs of adapting to climate change', Global Environment Facility
Working Paper 16, Washington, DC: Global Environment Facility.
Gardiner, S. (2004): ‘Ethics and global climate change’, Ethics 114: 555-600
Gollier, C. (2001): 'The Economics of Risk and Time', Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Harrod, R.F. (1948): 'Towards a Dynamic Economics', London: Macmillan.
Henry, C. (2006): ‘Decision – Making Under Scientific, Political and Economic Uncertainty’,
Cahier no. DDX-06-12, Chaire Developpement Durable, Paris; Laboratoire d'Econométrie de
l’Ecole Polytechnique.
Hills, J. and K. Stewart (2005): 'A More Equal Society: New Labour, Poverty, Inequality and
Exclusion', Bristol: Policy Press.
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Hotelling, H. (1931): ‘The economics of exhaustible resources’, Journal of Political Economy
39(2): 137-175
Keynes, J.M. (1921): 'A Treatise on Probability', London: Macmillan.
Klibanoff, P., M. Marinacci and S.Mukerji (2005): 'A smooth model of decision-making under
ambiguity’ Econometrica, 73: 1849-1892
Knight, F. (1921): 'Risk, Uncertainty and Profit', New York: Kelly.
Maccheroni, F., Marinacci and A. Rustichini (2005): ‘Ambiguity aversion’, robustness and the
variational representation of preferences’, available from
http://web.econ.unito.it/gma/fabio/mmr-r.pdf
Mueller, B. (2006): 'Adaptation Funding and the World Bank Investment Framework Initiative'.
Background Report prepared for the Gleneagles Dialogue Government Working Groups
Mexico, 7-9 June 2006.
Pigou, A. C. (1912): 'Wealth and Welfare', London: Macmillan.
Pigou, A. C. (1932): 'The Economics of Welfare', (4th ed), London: Macmillan.
Ramsey, F.P. (1928): ‘A Mathematical Theory of Saving’, Economics Journal, 38 (December):
543-559
Ramsey, F.P. (1931): 'Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays', New York:
Harcourt Brace.
Samuelson, P. (1954): ‘The pure theory of public expenditure’. Review of Economics and
Statistics 36(4): 387-389
Sen, A.K. (1970): 'Collective Choice and Social Welfare', San Francisco: Holden-Day.
Sen, A.K. (1986): ‘Social Choice Theory’, Handbook of Mathematical Economics, K.J. Arrow
and M. Intriligator, Vol3. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Sen, A.K. (1999): ‘The Possibility of Social Choice’, American Economic Review 89(3): 349-
378
Sen, A. and B. Williams (eds.) (1982): 'Utilitarianism and Beyond', Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press/Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.
Sinclair, P.J.N. (1992): ‘High does nothing and rising is worse: carbon taxes should keep
declining to cut harmful emissions’, The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies,
60:(1): 41-52
Sinclair, P.J.N. (1994): ‘On the optimum trend of fossil fuel taxation’. Oxford Economic Papers
46: 869-877.
Solow, R.M. (1974): ‘The economics of resources or the resources of economics’. American
Economic Review, 64(2):1-14.
Ulph, A. and D. Ulph (1994). ‘The optimal time path of a carbon tax’. Oxford Economic Papers
46: 857-868
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2A Ethical Frameworks and Intertemporal Equity
2A.1 Ethical frameworks for climate change
The ‘consequentialist’ and ‘welfarist’ approach – the assessment of a policy in terms of
its consequences for individual welfare – that is embodied in standard welfare
economics is highly relevant to the ethics of climate change.
In Section 2.3, we described the standard approach to ethics in welfare economics i.e. the
evaluation of actions in terms of their consequences for consumption by individuals of goods
and services.
We emphasised that ‘goods and services’ in consumption were multi-
dimensional and should be interpreted broadly. In this appendix we examine that approach in
a little more detail and compare it with different ethical perspectives of relevance to the
economics of climate change.
For many applications of the standard theory, the community is defined as the nation-state
and the decision-maker is interpreted as the government. Indeed this is often seen as
sufficiently obvious as to go unstated. This is not, of course, intended to deny the complexities
and pressures of political systems: the results of this approach should be seen as an ethical
benchmark rather than a descriptive model of how political decisions are actually taken.
Nevertheless, questions such as ‘what do individuals value’, ‘what should be their
relation to decisions and decision-making’, ‘what is the decision-making process’ and
‘who are the decision-makers’ arise immediately and strongly in the ethical analysis of
climate change. These questions take us immediately to different perspectives on
ethics.
Economics, together with the other social sciences, has in fact embraced a much broader
perspective on the objectives of policy than that of standard welfare-economic analysis.
Amartya Sen1, for example, has focused on the capabilities and freedoms of individuals to live
a life they have reason to value, rather than narrowly on the bundles of goods and services
they consume. His focus is on opportunities and the processes that create them, rather than
on outcomes only. Similar emphases come from discussions of equity2 (with its focus on
opportunity), empowerment3, or social inclusion4.
While such perspectives are indeed different, in practice many of the indicators arising from
them would overlap strongly with the areas of focus in the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) and other indicators commonly used by international institutions. Indeed, the MDGs
were the outcome of analyses and discussions which themselves embraced a range of ethical
approaches.
Impacts of climate change on future generations and other nations raise very firmly
questions of rights. Protection from harm done by others lies at the heart of many
philosophical approaches to liberty, freedom and justice.5
Protection from harm is also expressed in many legal structures round the world in terms of
legal responsibility for damage to the property or well-being of others. This is often applied
whether or not the individual or firm was knowingly doing harm. A clear example is asbestos,
whose use was not prohibited6 when it was placed in buildings with the worthy purpose of
protecting against the spread of fire. Nevertheless insurance companies are still today paying
large sums as compensation for its consequences.
1
2
3
4
5
Sen (1999).
e.g. World Development Report 2006.
e.g. Stern et. al. (2005).
Atkinson and Hills (1998), Atkinson et al. (2002), Hills and Stewart (2005).
See, for example, Shue (1999) on the ‘no-harm principle’ in the context of climate change and Gardiner (2004) for a
link with John Rawls’ theory of justice. From the point of view of jurisprudence, and for a discussion of links with
notions of retribution, see Hart (1968).
6
not necessarily be generally known by those whose used it.
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This is a version of the ‘polluter pays’ principle that is derived from notions of rights, although,
as we saw, for example, in the discussion of Fig. 2.1 above, it also arises from an efficiency
perspective within the standard economic framework. If this interpretation of rights were
applied to climate change, it would place at least a moral, if not a legal, responsibility on those
groups or nations whose past consumption has led to climate change.
Looking at the moral responsibilities of this generation, many would argue that future
generations have the right to enjoy a world whose climate has not been transformed in a way
that makes human life much more difficult; or that current generations across the world have
the right to be protected from environmental damage inflicted by the consumption and
production patterns of others.
The notions of the right to climate protection or climate security of future generations and of
shared responsibilities in a common world can be combined to assert that, collectively, we
have the right only to emit some very small amount of GHGs, equal for all, and that no-one
has the right to emit beyond that level without incurring the duty to compensate. We are
therefore obliged to pay for the right to emit above that common level. This can be seen as
one argument in favour of the ‘contract and converge’ proposition, whereby ‘large emitters’
should contract emissions and all individuals in the world should either converge to a common
(low) level or pay for the excess (and those below that level could sell rights).
There are problems with this approach, however. One is that this right, while it might seem
natural to some, is essentially asserted. It is not clear why a common humanity in a shared
world automatically implies that there are equal rights to emit GHGs (however low). Equality
of rights, for example to basic education and health, or to common treatment in voting, can be
related to notions of capabilities, empowerment, or the ability to participate in a society.
Further, they have very powerful consequences in terms of law, policy and structures of
society. How does the ‘right to emit’ stand in relation to these rights? Rights are of great
importance in ethics but they should be argued rather than merely asserted. More
pragmatically, as we shall examine in Part VI of this report, action on climate change requires
international agreement and this is not a proposition likely to gain the approval necessary for
it to be widely adopted.
A concept related to the idea of the rights of future generations is that of sustainable
development: future generations should have a right to a standard of living no lower
than the current one.
In other words, the current generation does not have the right to consume or damage the
environment and the planet in a way that gives its successor worse life chances than it itself
enjoyed. The life chances of the next generation, it is understood here, are assessed
assuming that it behaves in a sustainable way, as defined here, in relation to its own
successor generation7.
Expressed in this form, however, the principle need not imply that the whole natural
environment and endowment of resources should be preserved by this generation for the next
generation in a form exactly as received from the previous generation. The capital stock
passed on to the next generation consists of many things, mostly in the form of stocks
covering, for example, education, health, capital equipment, buildings, natural resources and
the natural environment. The standard of living available to the next generation depends on
this whole collection of stocks. A decline in one of them, say copper, might be compensated
by another stock, say education or infrastructure, which has increased.
On the other hand, it seems quite clear that, at a basic level, the global environmental and
ecological system, which provides us with life support functions such as stable and tolerable
climatic conditions, cannot be substituted. The relation between emissions of GHGs and the
risks to these functions is examined in detail in the Review, particularly Part II. The
7
A valuable summary of the analytic background and foundations of sustainability is given by Anand and Sen (2000).
See also Solow (1974).
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commitment of Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) to ‘achieve stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would
prevent dangerous anthropogenic [i.e. human-induced] interference with the climate system’
can be interpreted as just such a sustainability rule.
The notion of ‘stewardship’ can be seen as a special form of sustainability. It points to
particular aspects of the world, which should themselves be passed on in a state at
least as good as that inherited from the previous generation.
Examples might be historic buildings, particular pieces of countryside, such as National
Parks, or even whole ecosystems such as tracts of primary tropical rainforest. This involves a
particular interpretation of the responsibilities of the current generation in terms of a limit on its
rights to property. Essentially, in this approach each generation has the responsibility of
stewardship. Some would see the climate in this way, since it shapes so much of all the
natural environment and is not straightforwardly substitutable with other capital. Others8 might
ask still more basic questions as to how we ought to live, particularly in relation to nature.
These different notions of ethics emphasise different aspects of the consequences of
decisions for others and for the future. Nevertheless, the list of consequences on
which they would focus for each generation are similar: above all consumption,
education, health and environment.
And all the perspectives would take into account the distribution of outcomes within and
across generations, together with the risks involved in different actions, now and over time.
Hence in the Review we shall focus our analysis on the implications of action or inaction on
climate change for these four dimensions.
How the implications on these four dimensions are assessed, will, of course, vary according
to the ethical position adopted. How and whether, in making assessments, we attempt to
aggregate over consequences (i) within generations, (ii) over time, and (iii) according to risk
will be crucial to policy design and choice. When we do aggregate explicitly we have to be
quantitative in comparing consequences of different kinds and for different people. We shall
be paying special attention to all three forms of aggregation. Aggregation across dimensions
poses different kinds of questions and problems, as was discussed in Section 2.3 above.
2A.2 Intertemporal appraisals and discounting9
Introduction: the underlying welfare framework for appraisal and cost-benefit analysis
Different strategies for climate change will yield different patterns of consumption over time.
We assume that a choice between strategies will depend on their consequences for
households now and in the future (see Chapter 2 and 2A.1 above, for a brief discussion of
‘consequentialism’). The households to be included and examined in this weighting of
consequences will depend on the perspective of those making the judgements: we assume
here that the assessment is done from the perspective of the world as a whole. Narrower
perspectives would include, for example, only those households associated with a particular
country or region and would follow similar reasoning except that net benefits would be
assessed for a narrower group. If all the perspectives are from narrow groups, one country,
or just the next one or two generations, it is likely that little action would be taken on global
warming. As is emphasised throughout this Review, this is a global and long-run issue.
An analysis of how to carry out an intertemporal assessment of consequences of strategies or
actions is inevitable if somewhat formal: usually there would be first a modelling of the
consequences, second an aggregation of the consequences into overall welfare indicators for
households, and third an aggregation across households within generations, across
8
9
Jamieson (1992).
This section has benefited from discussions with Cameron Hepburn and Paul Klemperer, although they are not
responsible for the views expressed here. See also Hepburn (2006).
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generations and across uncertain outcomes. We focus here on the second and third
elements, particularly the third.
We can compare the consequences of different strategies and actions by thinking of overall
welfare, W, calculated across households (and generations) as a function of the welfare of
these households, where we write welfare of household h as uh. The joint specification of W
and uh constitutes a set of value judgements which will guide the assessment of
consequences. We think of h as ranging across households now and in the future and can
allow (via specification of W and uh) for the possibility that a household does not live forever.
Then, if we are comparing a strategy indexed by the number 1 with that indexed by zero we
will prefer strategy 1 if
W 1 >W 0
(1)
where W1 is evaluated across the path 1 with its consequences for all households now and in
the future, and similarly W0.
In the above, the two strategies can yield very different patterns of outcomes across
individuals and over time – they can differ in a non-marginal way. There is, however, a major
part of economic theory that works in terms of a marginal change, for example an investment
project. Then we can write, where W1is welfare in the world with the project and W0is welfare
in the world without the project,
?uh
?W
h
?W =W 1 -W 0 =?
h
(2)
where ?uh is the change in household welfare for h as a result of the project. Calculating ?uh
will then depend on the structure of the economic model and the characteristics of the project.
This is the theory of cost-benefit analysis set out clearly by James Meade (1955) and
explored in some detail by Drèze and Stern (1987) and (1990) for imperfect economies.
As we have argued, strategies on climate change cannot be reduced to marginal
comparisons, so we have to examine W1 and W0 (for different strategies) and, for many
climate change questions, we must compare the two without using the very special case of
marginal comparisons as in equation (2).
Nevertheless there will be investment projects that can be considered as small variations
around a particular path e.g. a new technique in electricity generation. In this case marginal
analysis can be appropriate. In this context we can think about comparing benefits occurring
at different points in time, in terms of how we should value small changes around a particular
path. This leads to the subject of discounting and how we value marginal benefits that are
similar in nature but which occur at different points in time. We must emphasise very strongly
that these valuations occur with respect to variations around a particular path. If the path is
shifted, so too are the marginal valuations and thus, discount factors and rates (see below).
An investment carried out now may yield returns which are dependent on which strategy, and
thus which growth paths, might be followed. If we are uncertain about these strategies, for
example, we do not know whether the world would follow a strong mitigation strategy or not,
then we should evaluate the project for each of the relevant scenarios arising from the
strategies. Each of these evaluations would then be relative to a different growth path. The
next step would not be straightforward. We could aggregate across the scenarios or growth
paths using probabilities and relative values of social marginal utilities relevant for the
different paths (i.e. we would have to compare the numeraire used for each path) but only if
we are in a position to assign probabilities. Further, a related discussion over strategies may
be going on at the same time as the projection evaluation.
Discounting: a very simple case
STERN REVIEW: The Economics of Climate Change
44
PART I: Climate Change – Our Approach
Discounting and discount rates have been controversial in environmental economics and the
economics of climate change, because a high rate of discounting of the future will favour
avoiding the costs of reducing emissions now, since the gains from a safer and better climate
in the future are a long way off and heavily discounted (and vice versa for low discount rates).
Our first and crucial point has been made already: discounting is in general a marginal
approach where the evaluation of marginal changes depends on the path under
consideration. If the two paths are very different, a marginal/discounting approach for
comparing the two is unacceptable in logic – we have to go back to an evaluation of the
underlying W for each path.
The discounting approach is, however, relevant for small changes around a given path and,
since some of the literature has been somewhat confused on the issue and because it brings
out some important issues relevant for this Review, we provide a brief description of the main
principles here. To do this, we narrow down the relevant determinants of utility to just
consumption at each point in time and take a very special additive form of W. Thus we think
of the overall objective as the sum (or integral) across all households and all time of the utility
of consumption. In order to establish principles as clearly as possible,
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