Climate Change, Climate Science and Economics by G. Cornelis van Kooten

Author:G. Cornelis van Kooten
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

7.1 The Climate Damages Landscape

Not surprisingly, sector-, regional- and country-level estimates of climate-change damages come from every quadrant, and are certainly not the purview only of economists. In some cases, damages are estimated using the principles espoused in the previous chapter, estimates based on solid economic science using economic measures of surplus. In other cases, estimates confuse true economic costs and benefits with economic transfers, generally leading to overestimates of damages. In yet other cases, damages (or benefits) are not even measured in monetary terms, as non economists weigh in with their views. This is all for the good, except it must be confusing for policymakers who must balance expenditures on mitigating or adapting to climate change against expenditures on public infrastructure, education, health and other programs of concern to citizens. It is because of these concerns that top-down modeling is generally done by economists.

In this section, we examine what is known about sectoral impacts, particularly focusing on areas of potential vulnerability – where costs might be greatest. In our discussion, we not only look at monetary and even non-monetary estimates of possible damages, but at some of the controversies related to what should be measured and how global warming might impact a particular sector.

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