Yes, I am now becoming an internet meme where basically anything and everything can be tied into climate change. I’d like to make a few short observations today.
I’d like to focus for a moment on (3). If it turns out that what “society” cares about most is maximizing human happiness, but that our happiness is largely determined by genetic factors, and that changes to our material and physical well-being are but one-time adjustments to happiness which ultimately get replaced … then what is the case for worrying about the damages that climate change will bring? After all, we can physically adapt to much of the problems that are going to be caused by climate change by moving (slowly over time by the way) and by changing the patterns of farming and production (which will be changing anyway, so this is a matter of the type of change, not whether we change at all). And even if climate change physically threatens us, wouldn’t the implications of this behavioral literature be obvious? We would quickly adapt to the new world we live in, and it would not be worse (or better) than the one we are in right now?
I am not saying here that this is the reason to do nothing about climate change, but what I am suggesting was that to the extent that activists and professors and policymakers wish to weaponize happiness and behavioral research, I am not sure the weapons are not easily turned onto themselves. My deeper point is that this observation probably (1) lowers the social cost of carbon and (2) probably should encourage folks to appreciate the economics of climate change more and not less. After all, if people used to feel “free” to discard the economic insight of thinking of costs and benefits because it doesn’t capture happiness correctly, and now it turns out that the insights from happiness research suggest climate change won’t alter our happiness very much, then what else are you to rely upon if you are claiming “science” as the reason to “do something?” Now, using economics, you simply have to demonstrate that the benefits of mitigation exceed the costs, regardless of the implications for happiness.