Underestimating the Damage From Climate Change - WSJ - The Wall Street Journal
Underestimating the Damage From Climate Change - WSJ
Oct. 16, 2023 5:15 pm ET
Bjorn Lomborg maintains that U.N. climate reports predict intensive economic growth over the next century (“ Will the World Bank Choose Climate Change Over Poverty?” op-ed, Oct. 7). But they don’t predict; they assume. A prime example, cited by Mr. Lomborg, is the Dice model, which earned economist William Nordhaus the Nobel Prize. As stated clearly in the model, various parameters are arranged to ensure annual economic growth of 2% through the end of this century. As a result, all scenarios in the model show virtually the same growth despite radically different sums spent on climate-mitigation measures. At the same time, high growth is accompanied by unrealistically low estimates of climate damage. To wit, three degrees Celsius of global warming will render much of the earth’s tropics uninhabitable yet is said by Dice to reduce world gross domestic product by only 8%.
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