Climate wealth borrowing by countries since 1950 - Nature.com
Climate wealth borrowing by countries since 1950 | Nature Climate Change
An integrated assessment model calibrated on past economic and climate development is used to estimate the historical time-series of the social costs of carbon from 1950 to 2018. The extent to which individual countries reduced global wealth through their fossil and industrial-process carbon dioxide emissions was then assessed.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Nordhaus, W. D. Revisiting the social cost of carbon. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, 1518–1523 (2017). A paper detailing the dynamic integrated climate–economy (DICE) model.
Feenstra, R. C., Inklar, R. & Timmer, M. P. The next generation of the Penn World Table. Am. Econ. Rev. 105, 3150–3182 (2015). This paper explains the composition of the Penn World Tables, which provide the basis for our calibration and assessment of past economic development.
Friedlingstein, P. et al. Global carbon budget 2020. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 12, 3269–3340 (2020). This paper explains the global carbon budget, which provides the basis for our calibration and assessment of past CO2 emissions.
Drupp, M. A., Freeman, M. C., Groom, B. & Nesje, F. Discounting disentangled. Am. Econ. J. 10, 109–134 (2018). This paper provides a specification of the social discount rate obtained from an expert survey.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This is a summary of: Rickels, W. et al. The historical social cost of fossil and industrial CO2 emissions. Nat. Clim. Change https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01709-1(2023).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Climate wealth borrowing by countries since 1950. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01717-1
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01717-1
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”