TY - JOUR
T1 - Priority for the worse-off and the social cost of carbon
AU - Adler, Matthew
AU - Anthoff, David
AU - Bosetti, Valentina
AU - Garner, Greg
AU - Keller, Klaus
AU - Treich, Nicolas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/6/1
Y1 - 2017/6/1
N2 - 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 SWF in 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.
AB - 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 SWF in 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.
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U2 - 10.1038/nclimate3298
DO - 10.1038/nclimate3298
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85020126183
SN - 1758-678X
VL - 7
SP - 443
EP - 449
JO - Nature Climate Change
JF - Nature Climate Change
IS - 6
ER -