The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change

By S. Keen. Globalizations, 2020

125 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT Forecasts by economists of the economic damage from climate change have been notably sanguine, compared to warnings by scientists about damage to the biosphere. This is because economists made their own predictions of damages, using three spurious methods: assuming that about 90% of GDP will be unaffected by climate change, because it happens indoors; using the relationship between temperature and GDP today as a proxy for the impact of global warming over time; and using surveys that diluted extreme warnings from scientists with optimistic expectations from economists. Nordhaus has misrepresented the scientific literature to justify the using a smooth function to describe the damage to GDP from climate change. Correcting for these errors makes it feasible that the economic damages from climate change are at least an order of magnitude worse than forecast by economists, and may be so great as to threaten the survival of human civilization.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/75466fbbf86fd31e84fd947168fa6f2c8634780a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. J. Ritchie
2. John Shapland
3. Matthew G. Burgess
4. Roger A. Pielke Sr.

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

1. J. Ritchie
2. John Shapland
3. Matthew G. Burgess
4. Roger A. Pielke Sr.

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. J. Ritchie
2. John Shapland
3. Matthew G. Burgess
4. Roger A. Pielke Sr.

Citations in the corpus

• Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven't We Bent the Global Emissions Curve? (2021, unknown): “Across the policy landscape, mainstream economists have been active participants in the advocacy of markets for almost everything (83).”
• IPCC baseline scenarios have over-projected CO2 emissions and economic growth (2020, result): “In contrast, other recent models project smaller economic damages relative to GDP than the above comparison suggests (e.g. 8.5% at 6 ◦ of warming; Nordhaus 2018; but see also Keen (2020), which argues that such estimates are biased low for reasons similar to those discussed above).”