Priority for the worse-off and the social cost of carbon. Adler, M., Anthoff, D., Bosetti, V., Garner, G., Keller, K., & Treich, N. Nature Climate Change, 7(6):443–449, May, 2017. Paper doi abstract bibtex The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a key tool in climate policy. The SCC expresses in monetary terms the social impact of the emission of a ton of CO2 in a given year. The SCC is calculated using a ‘social welfare function’ (SWF): a method for assessing social welfare. The dominant SWFin climate policy is the discounted-utilitarian SWF. Individuals’well-being numbers (utilities) are summed, and the values for later generations are reduced (‘discounted’). This SWF has been criticized for ignoring the distribution of well-being and including an arbitrary time preference. Here, we use a ‘prioritarian’ SWF, with no time discount, to calculate the SCC. This SWF gives extra weight (‘priority’) to worse-off individuals. Prioritarianism is a well-developed concept in ethics and welfare economics, but has been rarely used in climate scholarship. We find substantial differences between the discounted-utilitarian and non-discounted prioritarian SCCs.
@article{adler_priority_2017,
title = {Priority for the worse-off and the social cost of carbon},
volume = {7},
issn = {1758-678X, 1758-6798},
url = {http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nclimate3298},
doi = {10.1038/nclimate3298},
abstract = {The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a key tool in climate policy. The SCC expresses in monetary terms the social impact of the emission of a ton of CO2 in a given year. The SCC is calculated using a ‘social welfare function’ (SWF): a method for assessing social welfare. The dominant SWFin climate policy is the discounted-utilitarian SWF. Individuals’well-being numbers (utilities) are summed, and the values for later generations are reduced (‘discounted’). This SWF has been criticized for ignoring the distribution of well-being and including an arbitrary time preference. Here, we use a ‘prioritarian’ SWF, with no time discount, to calculate the SCC. This SWF gives extra weight (‘priority’) to worse-off individuals. Prioritarianism is a well-developed concept in ethics and welfare economics, but has been rarely used in climate scholarship. We find substantial differences between the discounted-utilitarian and non-discounted prioritarian SCCs.},
number = {6},
urldate = {2017-09-19},
journal = {Nature Climate Change},
author = {Adler, Matthew and Anthoff, David and Bosetti, Valentina and Garner, Greg and Keller, Klaus and Treich, Nicolas},
month = may,
year = {2017},
keywords = {KR, Untagged},
pages = {443--449},
}
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