The Stern Review

After the discussion on risks, uncertainties and probabilities in the economics of climate change, I would like to come back to the Stern Review that was introduced at the beginning. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change has been used as a basis for UK governments to move forward with climate policy. The review examines the evidence on the economic impacts of climate change and the economics of stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It concludes that 'the benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs' of inaction.

"The effects of our actions now on future changes in the climate have long lead times. What we do now can have only a limited effect on the climate over the next 40 or 50 years. On the other hand, what we do in the next 10 or 20 years can have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of this century and in the next"- Stern Review

It concludes that tackling climate change is the pro-growth strategy for the longer term, and it can be done in a way that does not cap the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries. They estimate that the excess of benefits over costs, in net present value terms, from implementing strong policies would be in the order of $2.5 trillion. Furthermore, on the question of uncertainties, it mentions that uncertainty is an argument for a more, not less, demanding goal, due to the significant adverse effects of worst-case climate change scenarios. Hence, the earlier effective action is taken, the less costly it will be.

Therefore, we can see that in some ways the review agrees with the kyoto protocol in that governments should do more to reduce emissions but the review presents several key factors that are significantly different from the scientific and economic community. The most important factor that is different is the estimated costs and benefits. Where the review concludes that the benefits of abatement outweigh the costs (by using low discount rates), the IPCC assessments and other studies have concluded that benefits are not significantly different from costs.

At this point, I would like to introduce an evening presentation from Bjørn Lomborg and Dimitri Zenghelis at LSE.

We have previously heard from Bjørn Lomborg on his stance in mitigating climate change. Dimitri Zenghelis, who was head of the stern review team, presents his side of the argument and refutes some of the points made by Lomborg (start viewing from 0:50:50). Particularly, he highlights the occurrence of low probability events (such as abrupt and adverse climate change) and how people buy insurance as well as including uncertainties and discounting in climate change mitigation. He also shows us that it is inappropriate to use Lomborg's methodology to mitigate climate change.

In my opinion, this again highlights the importance of choosing suitable models for estimating economic impacts of climate change. Zenghelis also mentions the problem of getting 'locked in' to a high carbon infrastructure if we delay the creation of innovative markets that might induce greener technology. This shows the importance of looking beyond the current century and further into the future and I believe this is an important aspect to be considered in mitigating climate change. 

Kyoto Protocol- a facade?

An agreement has been reached to extend the Kyoto Treaty by 8 years to 2020, which hopefully by then, a more suitable and equitable Treaty can be drawn up and implemented. I would like to direct you to the video that can be found in that news article, where it shows Andy Atkins from Friends of the Earth. He claims that the current agreement reached at the UN conference is an 'empty deal'. This is because no new cuts have been mandated and the agreement was only an extension of the existing treaty (which already has severe limitations in reducing greenhouse gas emissions). The article mentions that one thing that came out of the talks was the recognition for a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but implementing an equitable and all-inclusive policy would be a 'monumentally difficult'.

Andy Atkins's comments are in some ways similar to his comments after the Durban climate talks in 2011. 

Interview with Andy Atkins (2011)

He says that there is a framework (or 'shell') where theoretically policies can be implemented to help developing countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions but the 'shell' is essentially empty. The problem faced at the Doha talks seems to be a continuation of this. Countries agree that developed nations should help developing countries to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. This effort has culminated in the establishment of the green climate fund this year. However, even though there is much hype about this, countries have refused to comment and promise any form of funds to reach the targeted level of investment by 2020. This is most likely due to the economic and political implications back at home (as explained in my previous post). Most notably, the US government has refused to promise any form of funds to help developing countries mitigate climate change impacts but President Obama has recently asked congress for $60bn for the damages caused by Hurricane Sandy.

In my opinion, this shows that the problem of mitigating climate change is very much politically and economically influenced. When political or economic concerns override the peripheral concern for the changing climate, there will be a stagnation of policy implementation (which is in many ways what we are experiencing at present). As such, there needs to be more 'action' and less 'talk' if we were to rein in the negative effects of climate change. 

The Kyoto Protocol

After having a brief look at how people assess risk and make decisions, we can extend the analogy covered in the previous post to our analysis of abrupt climate change. I will like to discuss this in terms of the Kyoto Protocol. 

The Kyoto Protocol was enacted to combat a persistent rise in greenhouse gas concentrations and global warming. It has led to a large increase in the efficiency of energy use and the development of alternative sources of energy. Governments have also tried to work out market inefficiencies and market failures by implementing emissions trading platforms and clean development mechanisms. 

Böhringer (2003) presents a review of the Kyoto protocol and his perspectives of what should be changed to the protocol and how it can be improved. He starts off with describing the problems with managing climate change and coming out with 'first-best','second-best' or 'third-best' policies. It comes as no surprise that one of the problems is that of uncertainties and the different risk perceptions of different countries. 

He defines mitigating global warming as a problem of provision of a global public good. This means that the benefits of mitigation are non-rivalry (the marginal cost of providing the good is zero) and non-excludable (others who do not pay for it are not excluded from the benefits). He acknowledges that due to the uncertainties involved in calculating the costs and benefits of abatement, this has delayed the progress in policy solutions. He mentions that 'together with [the] irreversibility of both [greenhouse gas] accumulation in the atmosphere and accumulation of capital investments, [uncertainties] imply a trade-off between the risk of premature abatement action and risk of delayed action.

In my opinion, this is reflective of the discussion on risk perceptions and disaster preparedness. Similar to the correlation that Miceli et al (2008) discovered between risk perception and disaster preparedness, if people were to perceive abrupt climate change as possible and most probable, they will likewise be more willing to invest in precautionary measures (such as investment in green technology and cutting back emissions). 

However, Böhringer also mentions that there is a problem of incentives and we are faced with a problem of 'tragedy of the commons'. Although all countries could be better of if they behaved cooperatively, each has an incentive to deviate from the Pareto-efficient outcome. This suggests that there might be less incentives for countries to bear the costs of abatement. One example is the withdrawal of Canada from the Kyoto Protocol as the country believes that it has been marginalised by undertaking abatement measures. Since the implementation of the policy, the greenhouse gas emission cuts have been more than replaced by the increase in emissions by non-participating countries. However, heavy costs are still imposed on participating countries which have led to one country, Canada, withdrawing form the program. Hence, this shows that it is important for policy actions to be more equitable and fair across countries. 

For more information about the Kyoto Protocol:
-visit the UNFCCC website


References:

Böhringer, C (2003) 'The Kyoto Protocol: A Review and Perspectives', ZEW Discussion Papers, No. 03-61, http://hdl.handle.net/10419/23995.

Why do people live in areas that are prone to adverse weather conditions?

One of the question that has been asked at the beginning of the debate on abrupt climate change and progressively more adverse weather conditions, is why do people choose to live in areas that are prone to catastrophic floods or annual Hurricanes/ Tornadoes. 

BBC (2012)

BBC Magazine posted an interesting article a few days ago asking the same questions. Classical economic models would predict that housing prices in these flood prone areas (or areas where previous floods have occured) would fall. Due to the intrinsic costs of living in these areas, demand for housing should be very low. However, reports have shown that adverse events do not have a long term impact on house pricing. People still choose to live in such areas, citing reasons such as: 'it will not happen to me', 'Having a river at the bottom of the garden was a big attraction, as I like to do a bit of fishing. [And] it felt like a nice community'. 

Miceli et al (2008) describes the perceptions of flood risks in an Alpine valley in Italy. The study conducted collected information on individuals and communities living in high risk areas in order to understand the risk perception of the people living in these areas, amongst other things. They find that people perceive risks both cognitively and affectively and their perception of risk correlates significantly with disaster preparedness. With higher perception of risks, there will be increased disaster preparedness, which provides an explanation to why people might still consider living in these areas prone to adverse conditions. Furthermore, it has also been found that it is often not simply a lack of awareness, but rather, assessments of local risk based on experience that people underestimate the impact of rare or extreme event and continue to live in these disaster prone areas (Burningham et al 2007). For example, the authors highlight that when people were made aware of the history of severe flooding in certain housing areas, the general response was that they believed that castratophic events (50 or 100 year floods) will not impact them. The study also points towards denial as a factor when home owners purchase properties that have had experiences of flooding. 

However, the above explanations only look at the perspective of the home owners. One should also consider the perspective from the building companies, town councils and government institutions. Some people might consider living in these areas prone to disasters not by choice but by circumstance. The BBC article mentions that local authorities like to redevelop old industrial and mill towns, which are often near rivers. Another BBC investigation in Wales shows that even with regulations set in place, local development authorities still approved plans to develop new housing projects on river flood plains. 

Hence, we can see that there are many reason that might explain the persistence of the people living in areas subjected to areas that are prone to disasters. One should consider the different perspectives in this problem. The demand for a good is the quantity that people are willing and able to purchase at the given price. If people are unable to purchase the goods, naturally there will be no demand for such goods. Therefore, in the face of higher probabilities of adverse weather conditions due to climate change, governments should take more initiative in planning and restricting home owners' ability to built houses in areas of high risks. 



References:

Burningham, K., Fielding, J. and Thrush, D. (2007) ''It'll never happen to me': understanding public awareness of local flood risk', Disasters, 32, 2, 216-238. 

Miceli, R., Sotgiu, I. and Settanni, M. (2008) 'Disaster preparedness and perception of flood risk: A study in an alpine valley in Italy',  Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28, 2, 164-173. 

The Only Certainty is Uncertainty..

Uncertainties associated with climate change have polarized public debate. People use the uncertainty related to climate change and its impacts justify inaction while others take the opposite position and propose that the large risks should be mitigated regardless of the costs. Due to the high degree of uncertainty, the are limitations to using economic models to model climate change. By extension, modelling of abrupt climate change would be even more difficult.

I would like to propose that there are different sources of uncertainties involved in this debate. One source of uncertainty is an individual's aversion to risk (and adverse, abrupt climate change). Different people, from different places, would have different degrees of risk aversion. This would lead to uncertainties in predicting the impacts of climate change as well as the determining the thresholds or tipping points which calls for more action to prevent catastrophic consequences. 

Schneider and Mastrandrea (2005) put forward that stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI), as proposed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is largely a 'normative decision, influenced by value judgements, sociopolitical processes, and factors such as development, equity, sustainability, uncertainty and risk'. They propose the use of a probabilistic risk management framework to assess 'dangerous' climate change and use it as an effective method for informing the policy process (by determining the level of DAI and setting climatic (temperature) thresholds) and evaluating the implication of different policies. However, they recognise the limitations to this method as determining the level of DAI is ultimately still a value-laden process, which will lead to different levels for different stakeholders, in different regions of the world. David Archer (2012) proposes a similar idea. He proposes that contrary to climate change, the economy is 'much harder to forecast'. By extension, the uncertainties within economic models would be more significant than climate change models. He claims that eocnomics and other social sciences are not securely founded whereas physical sciences are based on a solid foundation of natural laws. Hence, economics is an awkward tool for the climate change decision (modelling uncertainty and risk aversion) because many aspects of the natural world are not economically fungible. However, he does concede that although it is not well suited to assess policy options, it can be used, at least in the short term.

This sets the tone for the debate on the role of economics within climate change as it is laden with uncertainties and value judgements from a diverse group of people. The decision for action/ inaction still lies with individual perceptions.

On the other hand, McKibbin and Wilcoxen (2002) discuss the role of economics within modelling climate change and put forward that the only certainty about climate change models is the prevalence of uncertainty at every juncture and the 'single most important attribute of climate change as a policy problem is uncertainty'. In contrast to the previous example, this case study delves into the uncertainties related to the science of climate change (projection of climate change).

They highlight three undisputed facts about climate change. Firstly, the presence of greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect has been universally accepted. Secondly, most have also acknowledged that the concentration of many greenhouse gases has been increasing rapidly due to human activity and lastly, consequences of rising concentration of greenhouse gases are being clearer. These show that human activity affects climate change and there is a chance for man to prevent abrupt climate change.

Uncertainties and disputed facts about climate change comes in terms of the precision of how much warming will result from a given increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, or when such warming will occur, or how it will affect different regions and ecosystems. More importantly, the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is also uncertain. For example, population growth and the rates of productivity growth in individual industries are key determinants of the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but neither can be projected with much confidence beyond a few years into the future. The table above is obtained from the article and it describes the uncertainties assigned to possible scenarios of the impact of global warming on the climate. The level of certainty uses terminology used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change where 'very likely' means a 90-99 percent chance, 'likely' means 66-90 percent chance. Being able to formulate accurate costs and benefits of climate change policy is crucial for justifying any proposed actions but uncertainties in climate change are pervasive. Regardless of how much models are built to incorporate uncertainties relating to climate change, it will be close to impossible for models to be able to accurately predict climatic changes.

This blog post has shown that what seems to be certain is that uncertainty is prevalent in both economics as well as climate change models. All these factors have to be taken into consideration when making decisions to mitigate climate change. 

References:

Archer, D (2012) Global warming: understanding the forecast. New Jersey: Wiley. 

McKibbin W. J. and Wilcoxen, P. J. (2002) 'The role of economics in climate change policy', Journal of Economics Perspectives, 16, 2, 107-129. 

Schneider, S. H. and Mastrandrea, M. D. (2005) 'Probabilistic assessment of ''dangerous'' climate change and emissions pathways', PNAS, 102, 44, 15728-15737.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2001) Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hurricane Sandy de-composed

The projected path of Hurricane Sandy provided by NOAA 4 days before the storm reached New York.

Following the previous entry about hurricane Sandy and its relevance to our discussion on abrupt climate change, I would like to share a video that is currently available on BBC. The documentary presents the period of time before and after Hurricane Sandy touched down on the US east coast. It shows the collaboration between the different institutions (i.e. fire department, transport, the electrical companies, expert opinions) in forecasting and preparing the city for the storm.

I woud like to highlight the last 5 mins of the video when the discussion turns towards relating adverse weather events to climate change. The narrator mentioned that 'expert opinion is divided on whether New York will face more frequent and destructive hurricanes in the future'. Coupled with rising sea levels as well as sea surface temperatures, this might cause storms that are significantly stronger and storm surges that are higher than what was experienced during Hurricane Sandy. An interesting point made in the documentary was that in the aftermath of the event, people wanted to put the event behind them and carry on with their lives (rebuilding their homes in the same areas with high risk of storm surges). I would like to point out that this is contrary to what is recommended by Bjørn Lomborg as mentioned in my previous post. 

Also, amidst the gloom of destruction, the documentary highlighted the accuracy of forecasts models which gave people the opportunity to evacuate before the storm hit. This is relevant to our discussion on managing the uncertainties and risks of abrupt climate change. With improvements in the accuracy of climate models, this would reduce the uncertainties in forecasting climate change. Lower uncertainties would better support the cost-benefit analysis of managing climate change and help us make better decisions in preparing for abrupt climate events. 

For more information on Hurricane Sandy, attached here is a news article which summarises the mechanisms of the hurricane presented in the BBC documentary.

Back to business

Hello again! after not being on the blog for quite some time, hope you're ready for quite a lengthy post!

First off the bat, I would like to highlight one of the key events that happened across the Atlantic Ocean last week. I am referring to the super storm that raged the US East coast, Hurricane Sandy. One of the possible impacts of abrupt climate change is more frequent and more adverse weather conditions (such as droughts, floods and hurricanes). In the aftermath of the destruction, insurers estimate that the cost of the hurricane could amount to $15-20 billion. This reminded me of what Bjørn Lomborg mentioned in his book- Cool It. 

Bjørn dedicates a section of his book to talk about extreme weather (page 94-107). He presents the arguments proposed by Al Gore in his famous documentary (An inconvenient Truth) and reasserts the claim that the costs of extreme weather conditions (future Sandys) in the future could amount to $1 trillion per year. However, he proposes that social changes are driving the higher costs rather than climate change. He posits that hurricanes have had similar strength and intensity over the past few decades and an increase in the economic costs of hurricanes over the years is caused by the rising concentrations of population and infra-structure in coastal regions. As such, resources should be put into mitigating such societal changes rather than mitigating climate change. Policies that he propose ranges from more stringent controls on coastal cities development, preventing people from staying in these hurricane prone areas, to redirecting the $180 billion a year spent on the kyoto protocol into building stronger buildings that can withstand more adverse conditions. Although there is still much uncertainty over the links between the frequency/intensity of hurricanes to anthropogenic processes, this is not the focus of todays post.

Let us first assume that the claims proposed by Bjørn are true and justified while we consider Hurricane Sandy and its impact on the residents of New York. It is quite possible for the city to build more 'hurricane-proof' buildings in the aftermath of Sandy but it is unlikely that people will relocate themselves away from this area given the importance that the city holds in light of the number of job opportunities and the significance of New York as a trading hub in the world. Hence, if the control of social changes are limited, under the model proposed by Bjørn, contrary to what is proposed, more effort will then need to be put in to mitigate climate change effects so that such extreme weather events do not become the norm. 

On this note, I would now like to highlight a paper written by Nicholas Stern in 2006, ahead of the publication of the Stern Review (which would be touched on in future posts). In his paper 'What is the Economics of Climate Change?', Stern identifies the severity of climate change and acknowledges the role of human activity in causing global warming. He highlights that climate change involves an externality (i.e. the emission of greenhouse gases damages others at no cost to the agent responsible for the emissions) and there is urgent need to find a remedy due to the risks of severe outcomes. With standard economic theory of externalities, several ways of ensuring that producers of the externality internalize the external costs have been proposed. However, these theories are based on strict assumptions that do not hold true in reality. Stern (2006) sums this up as 'a problem of intertemporal international collective action with major uncertainty and linked market failures'.

The economics of climate change, like the economics of most other social phenomenon, is focused on modelling the different aspects of society, ranging from implications of growth for emissions, calculating the 'social costs of carbon', to modelling the economics of technological options in mitigating climate change impacts. Key in this concept is the role of uncertainty. Stern reveals that uncertainty over the scientific, economic and social consequences of climate change makes it difficult for international collective action to mitigate the impacts of climate change. 

In light of these factors raised in the paper, focusing on mitigating the impacts of climate change is not simple and straight-forward. Even though economic models are useful in predicting social behavior, using such models to justify action (or inaction) towards mitigating climate change has its limitation due to a high degree of uncertainty. In the following posts, I will talk about the concepts of risks and uncertainties in the managing of climate change before moving on to the concept of tipping points.

For more information about the issues raised in this post, please refer to the following sources.

Lomborg, B. (2007) Cool It. London, Marshall cavendish limited and cyan communications limited.

Stern, N. (2006) 'What is the economics of climate change?', World Economics, 7, 2, 1-10.

Prioritising climate change?

This is a video that was recorded back in 2005. It features Professor Bjørn Lomborg and his views on problems faced by societies today. Given the limited time and limited financial resources that we have, Professor Lomborg feels that we have to prioritise our solutions to these problems and the process of prioritization (or making such decisions) is left to the economists (rather than the experts within the individual fields). This is because economists are believed to be proficient at cost-benefit analyses and making optimal decisions for everybody.

Although he does not refute the fact that climate change and global warming is a problem for society, he proposes that resources should first be channeled towards other more pressing issues such as improving the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS or preventing the spread of Malaria.

The situation might have changed since 2005 and Professor Lomborg has also given many talks with regards to managing global warming. Just today, Professor Lomborg gave a similar presentation in UCL! I managed to catch hold of him after the session and spoke to him at large about managing abrupt climate change (more details will be given in a separate post).

But what do you think of the (low) prioritisation of climate change?

I feel that the example given in the presentation of how future generations in a century will judge decisions made today is unfair to future generations and policy-makers today. If the worst case scenario predicted by the IPCC comes true, climate change will have massive impacts on the standards of living for future generation (if the Earth is still habitable!). Faced with this possibility, should we still prioritise climate change as less important than poverty eradication or improving health?

Let me know what you think!

Weeks, Months, Decades, Centuries or Millenniums?

Much care should be given to defining abrupt climate change before we move on to analyse its impacts and study how we should manage it. The climate is defined as 'a broad composite of the average condition of a region, measured by its temperature, amount of rainfall or snowfall, snow and ice cover, wind direction and strength as well as other factors' (Ruddiman 2008). It generally refers to long term fluctuations rather than short term changes.

Palaeoclimatologists generally define abrupt climate change by giving examples of climatic events such as the 8.2 KaBP event, the Younger Dryas or D-O cycles. These events generally last for a millennium. In light of this, as well as the definition of 'climate' offered by Ruddiman, how long is the 'long term'? and how short is the 'short term'? Today's post will set a definition for abrupt climate change that will be used for the rest of the blog. 

Defining the 'abruptness' of climate change is a tricky affair as presented by Professor Mark Hulme. He identifies two definitions that have been used in the past:

- 'abruptness' can be defined in relation to thresholds and nonlinear behaviour of the climate system rather than simply in terms of magnitude or rate of change;

- 'abrupt' climate change can also be viewed as a significant change in climate relative to the accustomed or background climate experienced by the economic or ecological system being subject to the change, having sufficient impacts to make adaptation difficult. 

However, Hulme puts forward the argument that these definitions are inappropriate for analysing the adaptive behaviour in society to abrupt climate change as they are either too broad (as in definition no. 2 which would encompass most scenarios of climate change) or too restrictive (definition no. 1) such that social and ecological impacts are neglected.

He thus proposes a framework to define abrupt climate change by categorising climatic changes by their rate, severity and direction of change. If climate change exceeds predetermined thresholds in rate or severity and if there is a prolonged reversal in the direction of climate change, such climatic changes can then be considered as 'abrupt'. This can be seen as a combination of both definitions mentioned above.

On another note, Hulme also realises that there are limitations to using fixed definitions of abrupt climate change to extend the concept beyond palaeoclimatology. Scientists studying climatic epochs would define abruptness as a matter of decades or centuries whereas abrupt changes in society are usually measured in terms of months or years. Hence, there is a confusion in the time-scales of physical and social processes that are in play when analysing the different impacts of abrupt climate change.

In light of the confusion that might result from cross-disciplinary analysis, this blog will define abrupt climate change using the three categories of rate, severity and direction proposed by Hulme. If the rate of sea level rise (or global warming) for particular regions rise above a certain threshold, or an unprecedented weather/climatic event occurs where there is a sustained change in the direction of climate change, this will be considered as abrupt climate change. Hence, when economic analysis is conducted for the impacts of abrupt climate change, this blog would engage the discussion with reference to the time-scale of such abrupt changes in climate.

One must note that this definition is in no way exhaustive or complete. The literature has revealed that it is very difficult to distinguish small changes in the climate from its natural variability. However, the purpose of this blog is not to strictly define the 'abruptness' of climate change and hence, we will be using the framework presented above while understanding its limitations.

With the definition for abrupt climate change established, I will next embark on looking at the role of economics in managing environmental change in the following post. See you next time!

For more information on the discussion on the definition of abrupt climate change, please refer to Hulme's paper:

Hulme, M (2003) Abrupt climate change: can society cope?, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A, 361, 2001-2021. 

For a brief introduction on abrupt climatic events in the past, a simple description is offered in the following book:

Archer, D (2009) The Long Thaw, Princeton, Princeton University Press, Chapter 4. 

What Line?

It is clear that the discourse on environmental change is increasingly prevalent in today's society. Conducting a search on Google's search engine about 'global environmental change' would return more than 130 million results. Not a day goes by without a mention of climate change in the news. Just today, BBC News reported that food prices are set to rise due to the second wettest British summer since records began (BBC, 10 Oct 2012). As such, environmental change is no longer an issue bound within academia but one that resonates closely with how we lead our lives.

Although it is argued that Earth is currently experiencing the longest warm 'stable' climate where we have not experienced many abrupt climatic changes on a global scale, it is still possible to identify smaller scale changes in regional climates (IPCC Third Assessment Report). It is interesting to discuss how these regional changes in climate have affected human development and how it might have led to the rise/ fall of civilisations (i.e. the Mayan Civilization). More importantly, a study of such abrupt changes will help us formulate policies to manage such changes in the future and minimise their impact on humanity.

Current studies in climate change predict that the Earth system will experience an increase of 5-6ºC in mean global temperatures by the end of the century. Although there are many uncertainties involved in making such climate change projections, two things are becoming increasingly clear to us; 1) such an increase in global temperatures will have significant impacts to humanity and 2) we can do something to avert such a future. In other words, deciding what to do about climate change today plays a large part in determining the state of the Earth for future generations. This is the line that we are treading.

Over the course of this blog, I would like to discuss environmental topics in relation to abrupt changes in regional climates. This blog will also seek to discuss the role of economic analysis in the management of environmental change and how environmental change affects economic development.

Feel free to leave a comment if you disagree with anything that is said on the blog or if you have a different perspective =)