The "Stern Review" on the Economics of Climate Change

William D. Nordhaus ()

No 12741, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: How much and how fast should the globe reduce greenhouse-gas emissions? How should nations balance the costs of the reductions against the damages and dangers of climate change? This question has been addressed by the recent "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," which answers these questions clearly and unambiguously. We need urgent, sharp, and immediate reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. An analysis of the "Stern Review" finds that these recommendations depend decisively on the assumption of a near-zero social discount rate. The Review's unambiguous conclusions about the need for extreme immediate action will not survive the substitution of discounting assumptions that are consistent with today's market place.

JEL-codes: Q4 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
Date: Written
Note: EFG PE EEE
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12741.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12741

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12741
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().