Climate change policy and the social discount rate: political not ethical

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 297
Author(s):  
Craig Duckworth
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Discount Rate ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
The Social

Climate Ethics: Justifying a Positive Social Time Preference

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Heath
Keyword(s):  
Discount Rate ◽  
Time Preference ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Temporal Discounting ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
Social Time ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
Social Rate ◽  
The Social

Recent debates over climate change policy have made it clear that the choice of a social discount rate has enormous consequences for the amount of mitigation that will be recommended. The social discount rate determines how future costs are to be compared to present costs. Philosophers, however, have been almost unanimous in endorsing the view that the only acceptable social rate of time preference is zero, a view that, taken literally, has either absurd or extremely radical implications. The first goal of this paper is to show that the standard arguments against temporal preference are much less persuasive than they are usually taken to be. The second goal is to explore two different avenues of argument that could be adopted, in order to show that temporal discounting of welfare may be permissible. The first involves simply an application of the method of reflective equilibrium, while the second involves consideration of the way that our abstract moral commitments are institutionalized.

Discounting under Risk

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Maddalena Ferranna
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Discount Rate ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ramsey Rule ◽  
Climate Damages

The debate on the economics of climate change has focused primarily on the choice of the social discount rate, which plays a key role in determining the desirability of climate policies given the long-term impacts of climate damages. Discounted utilitarianism and the Ramsey Rule dominate the debate on discounting. The chapter examines the appropriateness of the utilitarian framework for evaluating public policies. More specifically, it focuses on the risky dimension of climate change, and on the failure of utilitarianism in expressing both concerns for the distribution of risks across the population and concerns for the occurrence of catastrophic outcomes. The chapter shows how a shift to the prioritarian paradigm is able to capture those types of concerns, and briefly sketches the main implications for the choice of the social discount rate.

Assessing the Operationalization of Cultural Theory through Surveys Investigating the Social Aspects of Climate Change Policy Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 651-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Cambardella ◽  
Brian D. Fath ◽  
Andrea Werdenigg ◽  
Christian Gulas ◽  
Harald Katzmair
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
The Social

AbstractCultural theory (CT) provides a framework for understanding how social dimensions shape cultural bias and social relations of individuals, including values, view of the natural world, policy preferences, and risk perceptions. The five resulting cultural solidarities are each associated with a “myth of nature”—a concept of nature that aligns with the worldview of each solidarity. When applied to the problem of climate protection policy making, the relationships and beliefs outlined by CT can shed light on how members of the different cultural solidarities perceive their relationship to climate change and associated risk. This can be used to deduce what climate change management policies may be preferred or opposed by each group. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of how CT has been used in surveys of the social aspects of climate change policy making, to assess the construct validity of these studies, and to identify ways for climate change protection policies to leverage the views of each of the cultural solidarities to develop clumsy solutions: policies that incorporate strengths from each of the cultural solidarities’ perspectives. Surveys that include measures of at least fatalism, hierarchism, individualism, and egalitarianism and their associated myths of nature as well as measures of climate change risk perceptions and policy preferences have the highest translation and predictive validity. These studies will be useful in helping environmental managers find clumsy solutions and develop resilient policy according to C.S. Holling’s adaptive cycle.

scholarly journals DISCOUNTING FOR PUBLIC POLICY: A SURVEY

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Greaves
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Discount Rate ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Time Preference ◽  
Social Discount Rate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Positive Rate ◽  
Technical Details

Abstract:This article surveys the debate over the social discount rate. The focus is on the economics rather than the philosophy literature, but the survey emphasizes foundations in ethical theory rather than highly technical details. I begin by locating the standard approach to discounting within the overall landscape of ethical theory. The article then covers the Ramsey equation and its relationship to observed interest rates, arguments for and against a positive rate of pure time preference, the consumption elasticity of utility, and the effect of various sorts of uncertainty on the discount rate. Climate change is discussed as an application.

scholarly journals THE CHOICE OF DISCOUNT RATE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY EVALUATION

2012 ◽  
Vol 03 (04) ◽  
pp. 1250024 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAWRENCE H. GOULDER ◽  
ROBERTON C. WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Discount Rate ◽  
Policy Evaluation ◽  
Numerical Optimization ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Pareto Improvement ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Change Policy

Nearly all discussions about the appropriate consumption discount rate for climate-change policy evaluation assume that a single discount rate concept applies. We argue that two distinct concepts and associated rates apply. We distinguish a social-welfare-equivalent discount rate (r SW ) appropriate for determining whether a given policy would augment social welfare (according to a postulated social welfare function) and a finance-equivalent discount rate (rF) suitable for determining whether the policy would offer a potential Pareto improvement. Distinguishing the two rates helps resolve arguments as to whether the choice of discount rate should be based on ethical considerations or empirical information (such as market interest rates), and about whether the discount rate should serve a prescriptive or descriptive role. Separating out the two rates also helps clarify disputes about the appropriate stringency of climate change policy. We find that the structure of leading numerical optimization models used for climate policy analysis may have helped contribute to the blurring of the differences between r SW and rF. In addition, we indicate that uncertainty about underlying ethical parameters or market conditions implies that both r SW and rF should decline as the time-horizon increases.

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