You knew that train would be coming to the station soon. Here is the reference, via Marginal Revolution. It is endlessly frustrating to see even the best economists confuse “solving” climate change with “reducing” CO2. Now, you MAY want to do that, but all that the economics of climate change recommends is that “we” pay for the external damages of our actions. Putting a proper price on carbon does this. Whether a single windmill gets built in response to the carbon price has nothing at all to do with whether we “solved” global warming. In other words, the “solution” to global warming may or may not include trying to reduce temperatures. But now even economists have lost this very basic lesson.
Here is the excerpt:
Granted, Cowen does not say that this is necessary, he perhaps is just pointing out, as we have here for years, that “decarbonizing” is a lot harder than folks think.
