Columbia International Affairs Online
CIAO DATE: 4/5/2008
The Economics of CO2 Mitigation: the Stern Review and its critics
January 2008
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract
The debate surrounding Global Warming and potential policies to curve its consequences has been ever-growing in noise and status. Sir Nicholas Stern’s Review on the Economics of Climate Change in 2006 stimulated more debate and research with its conclusions of immediate policy action based on cost-benefit techniques; its critics coming from both the mainstream and ecological economic backgrounds. This paper will examine Stern Review’s use of discounting in environmental cost-benefit analysis, its critiques, and possible alternatives to analyze the economic understandings of global warming. And, in the end, it will tie together the above economics to the political atmosphere of today.
