Credible Discourse on Climate Policy: Beyond Dueling Certitudes

Whatever the policy question under consideration, reasoned and realistic evaluation requires credible policy analysis under uncertainty. This holds particularly to the study of climate policy in the United States, where science and ideology have become increasingly entangled. Welfare economics provides a transparent formal framework to describe and evaluate the subtle tradeoffs that must be addressed when comparing alternative climate policies. The largely qualitative discussions of climate policy in public-facing reports suffer from failure to use welfare economics to assess tradeoffs. I use 2025 reports by the National Academies and by the US Department of Energy as case studies.