Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction and a Road Map
- 1 Climate Change
- 2 The Role of Benefit Cost in Climate Policy
- 3 Discounting and Social Weighting (Aggregating over Time and Space)
- 4 Empirical Estimates
- 5 Strategic Responses
- 6 Targets and Tools
- 7 Trade and Global Warming
- 8 The Challenge of International Cooperation
- 9 Beyond Kyoto
- 10 A Summing-Up
- Index
Introduction and a Road Map
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction and a Road Map
- 1 Climate Change
- 2 The Role of Benefit Cost in Climate Policy
- 3 Discounting and Social Weighting (Aggregating over Time and Space)
- 4 Empirical Estimates
- 5 Strategic Responses
- 6 Targets and Tools
- 7 Trade and Global Warming
- 8 The Challenge of International Cooperation
- 9 Beyond Kyoto
- 10 A Summing-Up
- Index
Summary
An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.
Will Rogers, American humoristScope and Focus
Global warming is the environmental issue of the twenty-first century. Many believe it ranks with war and poverty as one of the greatest challenges to human well-being. But unlike war and poverty, which humanity has confronted for millennia, global warming is a recent concern. And unlike war and poverty, global warming is mainly a prospective threat and one that can in principle be met with pre-emptive action.
Understanding and responding to global warming requires many scientific disciplines including meteorology, climatology, and oceanography; the full array of biological and ecological sciences; and the engineering disciplines. But while science is a necessary component of policy, it is not sufficient.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Economics and the Challenge of Global Warming , pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011