Counting the cost of fixing the future
By EDUARDO PORTER
Published: September 10, 2013
What would you pay to protect the world in which your great-great-grandchildren will live from hurricanes, drought and the like?
In May, to little fanfare, the Obama administration published new estimates of the “social cost of carbon,” a dollars-and-cents measure of the future damage — from floods, pandemics, depressed agricultural productivity — that releasing each additional ton of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would cost.
The new numbers are likely to be more important than the low-key announcement would imply. They suggest climate change could cause substantially more economic harm than the government previously believed. But they also suggest there is a legitimate debate to be had about the cost of preventing it from getting worse.
Perhaps the most startling conclusion to be drawn from the new estimates is that the sacrifice demanded of our generation to prevent vast climate change down the road may turn out to be rather small.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/business/counting-the-cost-of-fixing-the-future.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&
= new reply since forum marked as read
