HOW MUCH DAMAGE WILL CLIMATE CHANGE DO? RECENT ESTIMATESRichard Tol, Sam Fankhauser (), Richard Richels and Joel Smith No FNU-2, Working Papers from Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University Abstract: Two reasons to be concerned about climate change are its unjust distributional impact and its negative aggregate effect on economic growth and welfare. Although our knowledge of the impact of climate change is incomplete and uncertain, economic valuation is difficult and controversial, and the effect of other developments on the impacts of climate change is largely speculative, we find that poorer countries and people are more vulnerable than are richer countries and people. A modest global warming is likely to have a net negative effect on poor countries in hot climates, but may have a net positive effect on rich countries in temperate climates. If one counts dollars, the world aggregate may be positive. If one counts people, the world aggregate is probably negative. Negative impacts would become more negative, and positive impacts would turn negative for more substantial warming. The marginal costs of carbon dioxide emissions are uncertain and sensitive to assumptions that partially reflect ethical positions, but unlikely to be larger that $50/tC. Keywords: climate change; impacts; valuation; marginal cost (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published, World Economics, 1 (4), 179-206 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sgc:wpaper:2 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University Contact information at EDIRC. |
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