IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/ccexxx/v07y2016i01ns2010007816400030.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

IS THE IPCC’s 5TH ASSESSMENT A DENIER OF POSSIBLE MACROECONOMIC BENEFITS FROM MITIGATING CLIMATE CHANGE?

Author

Listed:
  • RICHARD A. ROSEN

    (Tellus Institute, Boston, MA 02116, USA)

Abstract

This review summarizes what we know about the macroeconomics of mitigating climate change over the period 2010 to 2100 as presented in the 2014 IPCC Working Group III report. The review finds that little more, if anything, has been learned about the macroeconomics of mitigating climate change over the long run since the 2007 IPCC report. Furthermore, while the 2014 report is quite self-critical about the serious weaknesses in its methodologies, the self-criticisms are not explicitly taken into account when the net macroeconomic costs of mitigation are reported. Nor do the research teams that run the integrated assessment models relied on in the report utilize any systematic methodology for assessing the inherent uncertainty in the macroeconomic results reported. Thus, the basic quantitative “findings” are misleading — and, perhaps, even deceptive — in part because they appear to preclude the possibility of large macroeconomic benefits from mitigating climate change.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard A. Rosen, 2016. "IS THE IPCC’s 5TH ASSESSMENT A DENIER OF POSSIBLE MACROECONOMIC BENEFITS FROM MITIGATING CLIMATE CHANGE?," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(01), pages 1-30, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ccexxx:v:07:y:2016:i:01:n:s2010007816400030
    DOI: 10.1142/S2010007816400030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S2010007816400030
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S2010007816400030?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rosen, Richard A. & Guenther, Edeltraud, 2015. "The economics of mitigating climate change: What can we know?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 93-106.
    2. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, September.
    3. Richard Black, 2015. "No more summaries for wonks," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(4), pages 282-284, April.
    4. Richard A. Rosen, 2015. "IAMs and peer review," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(5), pages 390-390, May.
    5. Robert S. Pindyck, 2013. "Climate Change Policy: What Do the Models Tell Us?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 860-872, September.
    6. Hulme,Mike, 2009. "Why We Disagree about Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521727327, September.
    7. Nicholas Stern, 2013. "The Structure of Economic Modeling of the Potential Impacts of Climate Change: Grafting Gross Underestimation of Risk onto Already Narrow Science Models," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 838-859, September.
    8. Hulme,Mike, 2009. "Why We Disagree about Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521898690, September.
    9. -, 2009. "The economics of climate change," Sede Subregional de la CEPAL para el Caribe (Estudios e Investigaciones) 38679, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    10. Fujimori, S. & Kainuma, M. & Masui, T. & Hasegawa, T. & Dai, H., 2014. "The effectiveness of energy service demand reduction: A scenario analysis of global climate change mitigation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 379-391.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Franziska Schütze & Steffen Fürst & Jahel Mielke & Gesine A. Steudle & Sarah Wolf & Carlo C. Jaeger, 2017. "The Role of Sustainable Investment in Climate Policy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-19, December.
    2. Kolosz, B.W. & Athanasiadis, I.N. & Cadisch, G. & Dawson, T.P. & Giupponi, C. & Honzák, M. & Martinez-Lopez, J. & Marvuglia, A. & Mojtahed, V. & Ogutu, K.B.Z. & Van Delden, H. & Villa, F. & Balbi, S., 2018. "Conceptual advancement of socio-ecological modelling of ecosystem services for re-evaluating Brownfield land," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 33(PA), pages 29-39.
    3. Sarah Wolf & Franziska Schütze & Carlo C. Jaeger, 2016. "Balance or Synergies between Environment and Economy—A Note on Model Structures," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(8), pages 1-11, August.
    4. Rosen, Richard A., 2021. "Why the shared socioeconomic pathway framework has not been useful for improving climate change mitigation policy analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    5. Feng, Jing-Chun & Yan, Jinyue & Yu, Zhi & Zeng, Xuelan & Xu, Weijia, 2018. "Case study of an industrial park toward zero carbon emission," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 65-78.
    6. Fragkos, Panagiotis & Fragkiadakis, Kostas & Paroussos, Leonidas & Pierfederici, Roberta & Vishwanathan, Saritha S. & Köberle, Alexandre C. & Iyer, Gokul & He, Chen-Min & Oshiro, Ken, 2018. "Coupling national and global models to explore policy impacts of NDCs," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 462-473.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    2. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    3. Nicholas Lawson & Dean Spears, 2018. "Optimal population and exhaustible resource constraints," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(1), pages 295-335, January.
    4. Pezzey, John C.V. & Burke, Paul J., 2014. "Towards a more inclusive and precautionary indicator of global sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 141-154.
    5. Robert, Christopher LeBaron & Zeckhauser, Richard Jay, 2010. "The Methodology of Positive Policy Analysis," Scholarly Articles 4450129, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    6. Wei, Yi-Ming & Mi, Zhi-Fu & Huang, Zhimin, 2015. "Climate policy modeling: An online SCI-E and SSCI based literature review," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 57(PA), pages 70-84.
    7. Christopher Robert & Richard Zeckhauser, 2011. "The methodology of normative policy analysis," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 613-643, June.
    8. Lamperti, F. & Dosi, G. & Napoletano, M. & Roventini, A. & Sapio, A., 2018. "Faraway, So Close: Coupled Climate and Economic Dynamics in an Agent-based Integrated Assessment Model," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 315-339.
    9. Ciarli, Tommaso & Savona, Maria, 2019. "Modelling the Evolution of Economic Structure and Climate Change: A Review," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 51-64.
    10. Loïc Berger & Johannes Emmerling & Massimo Tavoni, 2017. "Managing Catastrophic Climate Risks Under Model Uncertainty Aversion," Post-Print hal-03027150, HAL.
    11. J. Farmer & Cameron Hepburn & Penny Mealy & Alexander Teytelboym, 2015. "A Third Wave in the Economics of Climate Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 62(2), pages 329-357, October.
    12. Sylvie Geisendorf, 2016. "The impact of personal beliefs on climate change: the “battle of perspectives” revisited," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 551-580, July.
    13. Oliver Bettis & Simon Dietz & Nick Silver, 2015. "The risk of climate ruin," GRI Working Papers 217, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    14. Weyant John, 2014. "Integrated assessment of climate change: state of the literature," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 377-409, December.
    15. Richard S J Tol, 2018. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 4-25.
    16. Hjort, Ingrid, 2016. "Potential Climate Risks in Financial Markets: A Literature Overview," Memorandum 01/2016, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    17. Tsigaris, Panagiotis & Wood, Joel, 2016. "A simple climate-Solow model for introducing the economics of climate change to undergraduate students," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 65-81.
    18. Andrea Rampa, 2020. "Climate change, catastrophes and Dismal Theorem: a critical review [Klimawandel, Katastrophen und das „Dismal Theorem“: eine kritische Überprüfung]," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 40(2), pages 113-136, October.
    19. Alain Quinet, 2019. "What Value Do We Attach to Climate Action?," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 510-511-5, pages 165-179.
    20. Marco Letta & Richard S. J. Tol, 2019. "Weather, Climate and Total Factor Productivity," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 73(1), pages 283-305, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:ccexxx:v:07:y:2016:i:01:n:s2010007816400030. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/cce/cce.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.