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The literature on the costs of climate change often draws a link between climatic "tipping points" and large economic shocks, frequently called "catastrophes." The phrase "tipping points" in this context can be misleading. In popular and social scientific discourse, "tipping points" involve abrupt state changes. For some climatic "tipping points," the commitment to a state change may occur abruptly, but the change itself may be rate-limited and take centuries or longer to realize. Additionally, the connection between climatic "tipping points" and economic losses is tenuous, although emerging empirical and process-model-based tools provide pathways for investigating it. We propose terminology to clarify the distinction between "tipping points" in the popular sense, the critical thresholds exhibited by climatic and social "tipping elements," and "economic shocks." The last may be associated with tipping elements, gradual climate change, or nonclimatic triggers. We illustrate our proposed distinctions by surveying the literature on climatic tipping elements, climatically sensitive social tipping elements, and climate-economic shocks, and we propose a research agenda to advance the integrated assessment of all three.
We review the capabilities and costs of various lofting methods intended to deliver sulfates into the lower stratosphere. We lay out a future solar geoengineering deployment scenario of halving the increase in anthropogenic radiative forcing beginning 15 years hence, by deploying material to altitudes as high as ∼20 km. After surveying an exhaustive list of potential deployment techniques, we settle upon an aircraft-based delivery system. Unlike the one prior comprehensive study on the topic (McClellan et al 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 034019), we conclude that no existing aircraft design-even with extensive modifications-can reasonably fulfill this mission. However, we also conclude that developing a new, purpose-built high-altitude tanker with substantial payload capabilities would neither be technologically difficult nor prohibitively expensive. We calculate early-year costs of ∼$1500 ton −1 of material deployed, resulting in average costs of ∼$2.25 billion yr −1 over the first 15 years of deployment. We further calculate the number of flights at ∼4000 in year one, linearly increasing by ∼4000 yr −1 . We conclude by arguing that, while cheap, such an aircraft-based program would unlikely be a secret, given the need for thousands of flights annually by airliner-sized aircraft operating from an international array of bases.
What do we know about the size of the rebound effect? Should we believe claims that energy efficiency improvements lead to an increase in energy use? This paper clarifies what the rebound effect is, and provides a guide for economists and policymakers interested in its magnitude. We describe how some papers in the literature consider the rebound effect from a costless exogenous increase in energy efficiency, while others examine the effects of a particular energy efficiency policy-a distinction that leads to very different welfare and policy implications. We present the most reliable evidence available quantifying the energy efficiency rebound, and discuss areas where estimation is extraordinarily difficult. Along these lines, we offer a new way of thinking about the macroeconomic rebound effect. Overall, the existing research provides little support for the so-called "backfire" hypothesis. Still, much remains to be understood, particularly relating to induced innovation and productivity growth.
Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the position of Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Terms of use: Documents in Interpreting Sustainability in Economic Terms: Dynamic Efficiency Plus Intergenerational Equity SummaryEconomists have expended considerable effort to develop economically meaningful definitions of the somewhat elusive concept of "sustainability." We relate such a definition of sustainability to well known concepts from neoclassical economics, in particular, potential Pareto improvements (in the Kaldor-Hicks sense) and inter-personal compensation. In the inter-temporal realm, we find that dynamic efficiency is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a notion of sustainability that has normative standing as a goal for public policy. We define sustainability as dynamic efficiency plus intergenerational equity. Further, we argue that it is not unreasonable for economists to focus on the efficiency element, leaving equity considerations to the political process. The analogy to the relationship between potential Pareto improvements and (intragenerational) transfers can facilitate discussions about sustainability, both within the economics community and as part of an interdisciplinary discourse, and makes the basic concepts easier to operationalize.
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