IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wus009/5073.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Economics and Ethics of Human Induced Climate Change

Author

Listed:
  • Spash, Clive L.
  • Gattringer, Clemens

Abstract

Human induced climate change poses a series of ethical challenges to the current political economy, although it has often be regarded by economists as only an ethical issue for those concerned about future generations. The central debate in economics has then concerned the rate at which future costs and benefits should be discounted. Indeed the full range of ethical aspects of climate change are rarely even discussed. Despite recent high profile and lengthy academic papers on the topic the ethical remains at best superficial within climate change economics. Recognising the necessary role of ethical judgment poses a problem for economists who conduct exercises in cost-benefit analysis and deductive climate modelling under the presumption of an objectivity that excludes values. Priority is frequently given to orthodox economic methodology, but that this entails a consequentialist utilitarian philosophy is forgotten while the terms of the debate and understanding is simultaneously restricted. We set out to raise the relevance of a broader range of ethical issues including: intergenerational ethics as the basis for the discount rate, interregional distribution of harm, equity and justice issues concerning the allocation of carbon budgets, incommensurability in the context of compensation, and the relationship of climate ethics to economic growth. We argue that the pervasiveness of strong uncertainty in climate science, incommensurability of values and nonutilitarian ethics are inherent features of the climate policy debate. That mainstream economics is ill-equipped to address these issues relegates it to the category of misplaced concreteness and its policy prescriptions are then highly misleading misrepresentations of what constitutes ethical action. (authors' abstract)

Suggested Citation

  • Spash, Clive L. & Gattringer, Clemens, 2016. "The Economics and Ethics of Human Induced Climate Change," SRE-Discussion Papers 2016/02, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
  • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wus009:5073
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://epub.wu.ac.at/5073/
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baer, Paul & Spash, Clive L., 2008. "Cost-benefit Analysis of Climate Change: Stern Revisited," MPRA Paper 101829, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Spash, Clive L., 2016. "The Paris Agreement to Ignore Reality," SRE-Discussion Papers 2016/01, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    3. William R. Cline, 1992. "Economics of Global Warming, The," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 39, October.
    4. Spash, Clive L., 1994. "Double CO2 and beyond: benefits, costs and compensation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 27-36, May.
    5. Robert S. Pindyck, 2013. "Climate Change Policy: What Do the Models Tell Us?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 860-872, September.
    6. Funtowicz, Silvio O. & Ravetz, Jerome R., 1994. "The worth of a songbird: ecological economics as a post-normal science," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 197-207, August.
    7. Clive L. Spash, 2014. "Better Growth, Helping the Paris COP-out? Fallacies and Omissions of the New Climate Economy Report," SRE-Disc sre-disc-2014_04, Institute for Multilevel Governance and Development, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    8. d'Arge, Ralph C & Schulze, William D & Brookshire, David S, 1982. "Carbon Dioxide and Intergenerational Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(2), pages 251-256, May.
    9. Nordhaus, William D, 1977. "Economic Growth and Climate: The Carbon Dioxide Problem," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(1), pages 341-346, February.
    10. Michael Jakob & Ottmar Edenhofer, 2014. "Green growth, degrowth, and the commons," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(3), pages 447-468.
    11. Ulrich Brand & Markus Wissen, 2013. "Crisis and continuity of capitalist society-nature relationships: The imperial mode of living and the limits to environmental governance," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(4), pages 687-711, August.
    12. Michael R. Raupach & Steven J. Davis & Glen P. Peters & Robbie M. Andrew & Josep G. Canadell & Philippe Ciais & Pierre Friedlingstein & Frank Jotzo & Detlef P. van Vuuren & Corinne Le Quéré, 2014. "Sharing a quota on cumulative carbon emissions," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 4(10), pages 873-879, October.
    13. repec:elg:eechap:15612_25 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Ha-Joon Chang, 2002. "Breaking the mould: an institutionalist political economy alternative to the neo-liberal theory of the market and the state," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 26(5), pages 539-559, September.
    15. Spash, Clive L., 2007. "The economics of climate change impacts a la Stern: Novel and nuanced or rhetorically restricted?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 706-713, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Valentin Cojanu, 2022. "The value of sacrifice in (post-)growth scenarios," Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 4322-4339, December.
    2. Valentin Cojanu, 2021. "The value of sacrifice in (post-)growth scenarios," Post-Print hal-03384636, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Baer & Clive L Spash, 2008. "Cost-Benefit Analysis of Climate Change: Stern Revisited," Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion (SEED) Working Paper Series 2008-07, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems.
    2. Richard S J Tol, 2018. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 4-25.
    3. Spash, Clive L., 2007. "The economics of climate change impacts a la Stern: Novel and nuanced or rhetorically restricted?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 706-713, September.
    4. Spash, Clive L., 2014. "Better Growth, Helping the Paris COP-out? Fallacies and Omissions of the New Climate Economy Report," SRE-Discussion Papers 2014/04, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    5. Buchholz Wolfgang & Heindl Peter, 2015. "Ökonomische Herausforderungen des Klimawandels," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 16(4), pages 324-350, December.
    6. Davidson, Marc D., 2014. "Zero discounting can compensate future generations for climate damage," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 40-47.
    7. Azar, Christian & Holmberg, John, 1995. "Defining the generational environmental debt," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 7-19, July.
    8. Spash, Clive L., 2020. "A tale of three paradigms: Realising the revolutionary potential of ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    9. Clive L. Spash, 2015. "The Future Post-Growth Society," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 46(2), pages 366-380, March.
    10. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    11. Stern, Nicholas, 2018. "Public economics as if time matters: Climate change and the dynamics of policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 4-17.
    12. Hongbo Duan & Gupeng Zhang & Shouyang Wang & Ying Fan, 2018. "Balancing China’s climate damage risk against emission control costs," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 387-403, March.
    13. Spash, Clive L., 2017. "The Need for and Meaning of Social Ecological Economics," SRE-Discussion Papers 2017/02, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    14. Joseph E. Aldy & Robert N. Stavins, 2021. "Rolling The Dice In The Corridors Of Power: William Nordhaus’S Impacts On Climate Change Policy," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robert Mendelsohn (ed.), CLIMATE CHANGE ECONOMICS Commemoration of Nobel Prize for William Nordhaus, chapter 1, pages 1-18, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. Christian Azar, 1999. "Weight Factors in Cost-Benefit Analysis of Climate Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 13(3), pages 249-268, April.
    16. Nordhaus, William, 2013. "Integrated Economic and Climate Modeling," Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, in: Peter B. Dixon & Dale Jorgenson (ed.), Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 1069-1131, Elsevier.
    17. Torres-Brito, David Israel & Cruz-Aké, Salvador & Venegas-Martínez, Francisco, 2023. "Impacto de los contaminantes por gases de efecto invernadero en el crecimiento económico en 86 países (1990-2019): Sobre la curva inversa de Kuznets [Impact of the Effect of Greenhouse Gas Pollutan," MPRA Paper 119031, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Clive L Spash, 2009. "Social Ecological Economics," Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion (SEED) Working Paper Series 2009-08, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems.
    19. Riccardo Rebonato & Riccardo Ronzani & Lionel Melin, 2023. "Robust management of climate risk damages," Risk Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(3), pages 1-43, September.
    20. Wei, Yi-Ming & Mi, Zhi-Fu & Huang, Zhimin, 2015. "Climate policy modeling: An online SCI-E and SSCI based literature review," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 57(PA), pages 70-84.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Climate change; economics; ethics; carbon budgets; discounting; compensation; harm; intergenerational equity; intragenerational distribution; justice; consequentialism; utilitarianism; incommensurability; risk; uncertainty; cost-benefit analysis; growth economy;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wus009:5073. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: WU Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://research.wu.ac.at/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.