Book contents
- Climate Rationality
- Climate Rationality
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- Part I The Costs of Precautionary Policy
- Part II The Other Side of the Story
- 10 But Is It True?
- 11 “Born in Politics”
- 12 Settling Science and Propagandizing for Action
- 13 Recent Observed Climate Change in Longer-Term Perspective
- 14 Beyond CO2
- 15 Projecting Future Climate from Computer Models and Far, Far Distant Earth History
- 16 The Precautionary Social Cost of Carbon
- Part III Toward Rational Climate Policy
- References
- Index
16 - The Precautionary Social Cost of Carbon
from Part II - The Other Side of the Story
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2021
- Climate Rationality
- Climate Rationality
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- Part I The Costs of Precautionary Policy
- Part II The Other Side of the Story
- 10 But Is It True?
- 11 “Born in Politics”
- 12 Settling Science and Propagandizing for Action
- 13 Recent Observed Climate Change in Longer-Term Perspective
- 14 Beyond CO2
- 15 Projecting Future Climate from Computer Models and Far, Far Distant Earth History
- 16 The Precautionary Social Cost of Carbon
- Part III Toward Rational Climate Policy
- References
- Index
Summary
There are, generally speaking, two types of harm from climate change: harm to human health, economic prosperity and welfare, and harm to nonhuman species and ecosystems. In this chapter, I discuss how the human cost of climate change has been estimated for US regulatory purposes. This estimate is called the social cost of carbon (SCC). It is the most rigorous monetized measure of the harm to human economies from climate change. Harm to humans is not the only potential harm from changing climate, but as the quantification of such avoided harm was the primary benefit advanced to justify Obama-era climate change regulations, I focus here solely on the SCC.
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- Information
- Climate RationalityFrom Bias to Balance, pp. 468 - 502Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021