To Hedge or Not Against an Uncertain Climate Future?

摘要

It has been over a decade since Nordhaus (7) published his seminal paper on mitigation policy for climate change. His question was "To slow or not to slow?"; his answer was derived from a traditional costbenefit approach. He found that a tax levied onfossil fuel in proportion to its carbon content, which would climb over time at roughly the rate of interest, maximized global welfare. Although many more analyses of the same question have since been published, his results are still robust if one assumes a deterministic world in which decision-makers are prescient. However, no decision-maker has perfect foresight, and the uncertainty that clouds our view of the future has led some to argue that near-term mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions would be foolish. Such policy would impose immediate costs, they argue, and have uncertain long-term benefits.