Climate change, catastrophes and Dismal Theorem: a critical review

Klimawandel, Katastrophen und das „Dismal Theorem“: eine kritische Überprüfung

Andrea Rampa

Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, 2020, vol. 40, issue 2, No 2, 113-136

Abstract: Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the main studies about catastrophic scenarios and environmental policy in the presence of natural disaster risks related to climate change. We investigate how literature has analysed these topics employing extreme case scenarios modelling. Throughout this review we want to investigate how related literature has evolved in recent years and how the historical evolution of climate change issues has induced academic studies (and vice versa), and why it has become a crucial topic for regional science, not only regarding resilience analysis. We focus on two main critiques: (i) the intergenerational equity between present and future generations (Stern 2006); (ii) the time preference rate linked to intergenerational equity, from the use of fat tail and the consequent debate around the Dismal Theorem (Weitzman 2009) to the debate around the usefulness of the Expected Utility theory.

Keywords: Catastrophe; Uncertainty; Environmental policy; Risk; Natural disaster; Katastrophe; Unsicherheit; Umweltpolitik; Risiko; Naturkatastrophe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10037-020-00140-9

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