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5 - Costs and Consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2022

Peter Dorman
Affiliation:
Evergreen State College, Washington
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Summary

Two preliminaries: US experience points to the unprecedented challenge of the rapid, drastic energy transition we face, and the labor needed to accomplish it should regarded as a cost, not a benefit. This chapter thus encourages skepticism regarding claims that the cost of meeting carbon goals will be minimal and proposes questions that should be asked of optimistic studies. The most reliable analyses draw on integrated assessment models, which show we can achieve a two-thirds chance of limiting warming to 2° at moderate cost only by greatly overshooting corresponding carbon budgets, followed by decades of negative emissions using yet-to-be developed carbon removal technologies. Not predicating policy on these technologies, however, results in very high costs. Even so, these models don’t include the likelihood that much of the existing capital stock will be uneconomic to operate at high carbon prices, a potential source of enormous disruption. The closest analogy we have is the post-1989 shock in Eastern Europe when economic opening caused widespread shutdowns. It is important to be honest about costs: rosy forecasts are unconvincing, fail to prepare us for the problems we’ll need to solve and obscure the political economy of policy change.

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Chapter
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Alligators in the Arctic and How to Avoid Them
Science, Economics and the Challenge of Catastrophic Climate Change
, pp. 111 - 149
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Costs and Consequences
  • Peter Dorman
  • Book: Alligators in the Arctic and How to Avoid Them
  • Online publication: 14 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009029582.007
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  • Costs and Consequences
  • Peter Dorman
  • Book: Alligators in the Arctic and How to Avoid Them
  • Online publication: 14 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009029582.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Costs and Consequences
  • Peter Dorman
  • Book: Alligators in the Arctic and How to Avoid Them
  • Online publication: 14 July 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009029582.007
Available formats
×