A quick internet search of William Nordhaus results in hundreds of thousands of links pointing to Yale University, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The National Bureau of Economics Research, all praising or publishing his excellent work in both economics and climate change. Nordhaus is a distinguished economist and professor at Yale University who has committed more than thirty years to researching and answering the big questions in climate-change economics. In his most recent book, The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World, Nordhaus aims to balance the arguments for and against climate change not only by discussing the science behind global warming, but also by providing the link between
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Economically speaking, climate change is a simple problem regarding negative externalities. Carbon dioxide emissions are at the heart of climate change, and as companies and individuals consume fossil fuels and partake in activities that can change the environment, the impacts are spread across the world. We know from economic theory that markets cannot self-adjust to counteract these externalities, so economic policy is required. As long as there is improper regulation of the pricing of carbon dioxide pollution, this externality will exist. In the special case of global warming, however, there is no action that only one government can take that will solve the entire problem. The only way economic policy can truly work is if all the world governments participate in the solution. More particularly, slowing climate change involves the specific lifestyles of every person on Earth. The majority of people on this planet must make an active choice to make changes to their habits in order to reduce their carbon footprints, but with current technology, it is not yet possible to do so without leaving convenience …show more content…
According to both the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) and the Yale Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) models, both applied to changing outside factors and variables, there are few differences between the predictions of the growth of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels over the next couple of years. Those same models, however, cannot predict with reasonable certainty what the growth will look like even a few decades from today, let alone hundreds of years from now because the predictions vary vastly. These large differences stem from outside variables factored into the EMF and DICE models, but trying to find the exact variables that create these differences requires answers to a whole new set of questions. “A careful analysis finds that the biggest unknown arises from uncertainty about future growth of the world economy: Will the world enjoy robust economic growth like that from 1950 to 2005? Or will it stagnate, with slow technological change, recurrent financial crises and depressions, spreading pandemics, and occasional widespread wars?”(Nordhaus 33). Depending on the answers to these questions (which will depend on who you speak to because there is no way to know for certain today), we can take the appropriate steps in updating our model, interpreting the
Economically speaking, climate change is a simple problem regarding negative externalities. Carbon dioxide emissions are at the heart of climate change, and as companies and individuals consume fossil fuels and partake in activities that can change the environment, the impacts are spread across the world. We know from economic theory that markets cannot self-adjust to counteract these externalities, so economic policy is required. As long as there is improper regulation of the pricing of carbon dioxide pollution, this externality will exist. In the special case of global warming, however, there is no action that only one government can take that will solve the entire problem. The only way economic policy can truly work is if all the world governments participate in the solution. More particularly, slowing climate change involves the specific lifestyles of every person on Earth. The majority of people on this planet must make an active choice to make changes to their habits in order to reduce their carbon footprints, but with current technology, it is not yet possible to do so without leaving convenience …show more content…
According to both the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) and the Yale Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) models, both applied to changing outside factors and variables, there are few differences between the predictions of the growth of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels over the next couple of years. Those same models, however, cannot predict with reasonable certainty what the growth will look like even a few decades from today, let alone hundreds of years from now because the predictions vary vastly. These large differences stem from outside variables factored into the EMF and DICE models, but trying to find the exact variables that create these differences requires answers to a whole new set of questions. “A careful analysis finds that the biggest unknown arises from uncertainty about future growth of the world economy: Will the world enjoy robust economic growth like that from 1950 to 2005? Or will it stagnate, with slow technological change, recurrent financial crises and depressions, spreading pandemics, and occasional widespread wars?”(Nordhaus 33). Depending on the answers to these questions (which will depend on who you speak to because there is no way to know for certain today), we can take the appropriate steps in updating our model, interpreting the