[stupendousyappi]

Noah Smith has an article on Substack arguing that economists have largely failed to produce useful research on climate change, in part because of a preoccupation with carbon taxes to the exclusion of other research topics. The article is subscription only (edit: not true, see reply below), but his four big points are these:

* First, academic economists have basically ignored the topic. A survey of top economics journals found that, out of 77,000 total articles published, only 57 (0.074%) were about climate change.

* Many of the most cited papers have turned out to be crap, with basic calculation and data coding errors the authors have had to publish corrections for. Smith argues that this is partly because economists don't collaborate with other researchers much, especially natural sciences like climate change.

* The most important model for integrating climate change into macroeconomic analysis is the DICE model created by Richard Nordhaus. But the DICE model has big problems, the most important of which is that, due to discounting of future economic effects, it basically ignores the welfare of future generations. The DICE model also assumes that preventing climate change will be very expensive, and hasn't adjusted for recent technology advances on that front.

* Last, economists have been obsessed with carbon taxes, and haven't dealt with how politically unpopular they are, especially in international negotiations. This is, IMO, similar to how economists love to promote free trade, saying that the losers can be compensated via money from the overall economic gains, leaving everyone better off, and ignoring that this never, ever actually happens.

I'm in the camp that thinks that economists haven't earned a ton of credibility on the specific topic of climate change. Our best shot, IMO, is massive R&D efforts and CO2-removal geoengineering (especially wave-powered olivine weathering, as promoted by Project Vesta). Accompanied by crippling taxes on heavy emissions industries, but I think people will have an easier time accepting those if it's clear that governments are pursuing alternatives to taxes too.

[bun_at_work]

This sounds like a good article, I'll check it out. However, the claim that free trade doesn't lead to gains for losers in the economic sense is inaccurate. The poorest people worldwide have seen massive improvements to quality of life, even if things aren't perfect. Looking just at historical infant mortality rates, food/water access, education, and other broad metrics indicates life has been massively improving over the last century, worldwide. It's naive to think that free trade hasn't contributed to that.

As a quick example, free trade has allowed more developed nations (like the US) to leverage the labor markets in less developed nations, like China. As a result, money has flowed into those labor markets and increased the quality of life in those areas.

To be clear, those labor markets aren't perfect, and free trade as a universal good is a ridiculous idea. My point is just that free trade has led to a lot of good the world over and the referenced statement is over simplifying something that is very complicated.

[notJim]

That post isn't subscription only: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-climate-economics-...

[Ericson2314]

Glad to see it too.

I wish there was some discussion of carbon tax and dividend though. Like I absolutely agree that the orthodox "supply constraints and everything is a tradeoff" macroeconomics is nuts, and climate resilience doesn't need to suck, but we also can't just have electric-car are way there.

We simply need to make driving suck more, separate from making taking the train suck less, and Carbon tax + dividend is a great way to do that fairly and with minimal pain.

[ABCLAW]

Thank you for this link. This was a very worthwhile read.

[angry_octet]

I agree with your view on economists, but CCAS is a clown show that politicians use to delay taking real action. Biological and geoengineering strategies have promise but it will take decades of research, and we need to act now.

As far as convincing people, the way Canada gives taxpayers a big carbon tax refund is a good way to sell it. People love getting a summer bonus, and it still pushes people towards better solutions.