How does that compare to where carbon is priced today by different governments?
It’s pretty clear that governments everywhere are underestimating the societal cost of adding CO2 by the ton into our atmosphere if this study a true reflection.
It comes from researchers at University of California Berkeley’s Resources for the Future (RFF) initiative. The lead researchers are David Anthoff, Associate Professor, and Kevin Rennert, RFF Fellow. They gathered data from across the U.S. to develop a metric to measure the economic damage from climate change in dollars.
States RFF President and CEO, Richard G. Newell, a co-author of the paper, “Our estimate, which draws on recent advances in the scientific and economic literature, shows that we are vastly underestimating the harm of each additional ton of carbon dioxide that we release into the atmosphere. The implication is that the benefits of government policies and other actions that reduce global warming pollution are greater than has been assumed.”
The social cost of carbon (SCC) is an economic measure based on estimates in dollars of the damage caused by emitting additional CO2 or equivalent greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
One can do a benefit-cost analysis on policies created to limit air pollution by looking at the implications for public health, and infrastructure. Think of hospitalizations from excessive heat, or from extreme weather events, or from the need to air condition buildings and homes because of rising temperatures.
Policies that cause emissions to rise increase the SCC. Policies that cause emissions to fall cost the SCC to lower as demonstrated by the following illustration:
The calculation is done in four steps:
The end result gives you a baseline SCC value that allows users to change the level of emissions and monetize the results in dollars.
Several U.S. states and the Canadian government have adopted the SCC methodology. If the U.S. were to adopt a federal carbon tax, the government would use SCC in its national cost of carbon calculations to provide guidance on pricing pollution.
Yes. For example, putting a value on future economic growth rates , or calculating how climate responds to the enactment of a policy. In developing an SCC value, modellers run thousands of scenarios with changing variables to produce ranges in the calculation rather than a single number. The median value is then the one disclosed with high and low-impact scenarios described much the way the IPCC reports on climate describe likely outcomes in terms of high, middle, or low confidence.
New open-source software and data exploration tools have been made available by RFF coming out of the study. They are:
States Brian C. Prest, a coauthor of the study and Director of RFF’s Social Cost of Carbon Initiative, “Decisions are only as strong as the science behind them. And our study finds that carbon dioxide emissions are more costly to society than many people likely realize.”
]]>“Stretching the mind across time—even in the most speculative ways—can help us become more responsible planetary stewards: It can help endow us with the time literacy necessary for tackling long-term challenges such as biodiversity loss, microplastics accumulation, climate change, antibiotic resistance, asteroid impacts, sustainable urban planning, and more.”
Ialenti worked on a 32-month study for Finland’s nuclear industry which was building a waste disposal facility some 450 metres below the seabed in the Gulf of Bothnia. The waste being disposed of included Uranium 235 with a half-life of 700 million years. The questions being asked included:
What could potentially disturb this nuclear waste site, not ten thousand, or one hundred thousand, but millions of years into the future?
What changes to the waste site could occur from climate, continental shifts, earthquakes, and other geological events during the eons of time that would pass and what would be the impact on human, animal, and plant populations?
An exercise of this scope, Ialenti says fosters “empathy across generations.”
We don’t have to look so far into the future to develop responsible policies that lead to positive outcomes for future generations. Climate change is not a consequence for us hundreds of millions of years into the future. But it is of consequence to those who follow us for millennia.
Today, we are dealing with the latest news from the IPCC that points to a “code red” moment for humanity and the planet. Climate scientists are telling us we are reaching a point where the goals set by the Paris Climate Agreement are no longer attainable; that we will blow past an atmospheric temperature rise of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) well before 2050, even possibly by the end of this decade. In addition, we will have set off environmental tipping points that will bequeath to those who follow us, a much different and less desirable world. Some of these consequences will last multiple generations if not thousands of years into the future.
A research article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) this week, is entitled “Economic Impacts of Tipping Points in the Climate System.” It is authored by researchers at the London School of Economics, the University of Delaware, and New York University, and points out that we are still infants when it comes to understanding the consequences of climate change inaction. The authors have attempted to synthesize the literature around eight climate tipping points, looking at near-future economic and social impacts. In their analysis they attempt to establish a social cost of carbon (SCC) while providing unified estimates of the economic impact from eight climate change tipping points:
The research reviews 21 articles in the literature with coverage over180 countries. It notes that there is no one assessment model to determine the SCC and that the consequences of the tipping points described above have not been fully researched from an economic impact perspective. Collectively, however, the research concludes that tipping points are likely to more than double global economic and societal risk.
The SCC calculation the researchers are using is based on the economic impact of each additional ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere over and above what is already present. The combination of these eight tipping points, they conclude, is expected to increase SCC by 24.5% over existing carbon pricing modelling, not including two wildcards, melting permafrost methane (CH4) release in the Arctic, and large-scale release of the same from melting hydrates on the ocean floor. These latter two, the study estimates, could add an additional 10% to the SCC. The authors see this research as a good starting point for determining a true cost for carbon pollution for the purpose of policy development.
The authors conclude that the economic impact of climate tipping points poses an increase in the level of risk for the entire global economy along with a high social cost. It also puts financial markets further at risk because of higher unanticipated and difficult to calculate economic costs.
Planners of climate policy take note. Using market mechanisms, such as pricing carbon pollution and carbon exchanges to combat climate change, need to consider tipping point impacts.
Around the world today we have examples of SCC pricing:
You can bet, in all of these pricing determinations, none have considered climate tipping points in coming up with their SCC. And in each policy decision, the attempt to be responsible planetary stewards seems wanting. Our current leadership has yet to exhibit the empathy across generations Ialenti describes. What that means for humanity and the planet’s future is consequential and frightening.
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