Philosophers and economists agree on climate policy paths but for different reasons

Frikk Nesje, Moritz Drupp, Mark C. Freeman and Ben Groom ()
Additional contact information
Mark C. Freeman: University of York
Ben Groom: University of Exeter Business School

Nature Climate Change, 2023, vol. 13, issue 6, 515-522

Abstract: Abstract The estimated value to society from climate change mitigation is highly sensitive to the long-term social discount rate. Governmental discounting guidance has almost exclusively been influenced by economists, although it is not clear that they possess any special expertise on intergenerational ethics. Here, by contrast, we report the views of philosophers, who are the most trained in ethical matters. We show that, as a group, these experts offer strong support for a real social discount rate of 2%, a value that is also predominantly backed by economists. We find multidisciplinary support for climate policy paths in line with the United Nations climate targets when views on discounting determinants are applied within a recent update of the DICE integrated assessment model. However, this apparent agreement hides important differences in views on how the ethics of intergenerational welfare can be better incorporated into climate policy evaluation.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01681-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:13:y:2023:i:6:d:10.1038_s41558-023-01681-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01681-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().