Climate Change and Economics 101: Teaching the Greatest Market Failure
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Data and Methods
3. Representation of Climate Change Science
“There is disagreement on whether humans have contributed to the problem…”Tucker (2014), p. 391
“Though the science is not yet fully resolved, fossil fuel used to power the likes of automobiles and electricity generators produces carbon dioxide, which mixes with other greenhouse gases that could contribute to climate change.”McEachern (2017), p. 377
“While there is general agreement among scientists that higher levels of carbon dioxide contribute to global warming, there is continuing debate about the form of the relationship.”Gwartney, Stroup, Sobel, and Macpherson (2018), p. 693
“In recent years, certain scientific research has suggested that emissions of carbon dioxide and various other so-called greenhouse gases might be contributing to atmospheric warming.”Miller (2016), p. 723
“And this was even before the incident that has become known as Climategate, whereby intercepted emails of climate change scientists showed the likely suppression of evidence not favorable to their view and obstacles put in the way of those more skeptical of climate science…”Tucker (2014), p. 391
“Other scientists are skeptical about both the temperature change and its causes… Skeptics also point out that the same computer models predicting global warming in the next generation predicted a much larger increase in temperature for the previous century than actually occurred.”Shiller (2009)
“[T]he Earth has experienced both warming and cooling trends in the past, and the current warming trend may well be unrelated to the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”Gwartney, Stroup, Sobel, and Macpherson (2008), pp. 777–778
4. Climate Change Economics: The Externality Framework
5. Climate Change beyond Externalities
5.1. GDP Accounting, Economic Growth, and Climate Change
“[F]or some industries in the United States, like stone mining and coal-powered electricity generation, including properly valued air pollution in the national income and product accounts as an offset to the value of the marketed goods produced by these industries would make the contribution of these industries to our nation’s GDP negative!”(Case, Fair, and Oster 2014, p. 436)
“The connection between growth and environment is tenuous, say growth proponents. Increases in economic growth need not mean increases in pollution... limiting growth is the wrong solution. Growth has allowed economies to reduce pollution, be more sensitive to environmental considerations...”
“Yet the desirability of further economic growth for a society that is already quite wealthy has been questioned on several grounds.”(Baumol and Blinder 2016)
“Growth has costs, and economics requires us to look at both costs and benefits … the wrong type of growth may produce undesirable side effects, including global warming and polluted rivers, land, and air.”(Colander 2013)
5.2. Climate Change as a Collective Action Problem
5.3. Climate Change and Global Inequality
“[A recent study] found that in 2004, 23 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by China were created in the production of exports. In other words, these emissions come not as a result of goods that China’s population is enjoying as its income rises, but as a consequence of the consumption of the United States and Europe… trade with China may be a way for developed nations to avoid their commitments to pollution reduction.”(p. 680)
“[T]he adverse effects of increases in temperature seem to afflict mainly the poor countries, most of whom are dependent on agriculture. Rich countries do not suffer from increases in temperature.”(p. 164)
5.4. Climate Change and Cost–benefit Analysis
5.5. Climate Change Adaptation
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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---|---|---|---|---|
Acemoglu, Laibson, and List | Economics | Pearson | 2018 | 2 |
Arnold | Economics | Cengage | 2016 | 12 |
Bade and Parkin | Foundations of Economics | Pearson | 2018 | 8 |
Baumol and Blinder | Economics: Principles and Policy | Cengage | 2016 | 13 |
Boyes and Melvin | Economics | Cengage | 2016 | 10 |
Case, Fair, and Oster | Principles of Economics | Pearson | 2017 | 12 |
Chiang | Economics: Principles for a Changing World | Worth | 2016 | 4 |
Colander | Economics | McGraw-Hill | 2017 | 10 |
Cowen and Tabarrok | Modern Principles: Economics | Worth | 2015 | 3 |
Dolan | Introduction to Economics | BVT | 2016 | 6 |
Frank, Bernanke, Antonovics, and Heffetz | Principles of Economics | McGraw-Hill | 2016 | 6 |
Gwartney, Stroup, Sobel, and Macpherson | Economics: Private and Public Choice | Cengage | 2018 | 16 |
Hall and Lieberman | Economics: Principles and Applications | Cengage | 2013 | 6 |
Hubbard and O’Brien | Economics | Pearson | 2017 | 6 |
Karlan and Morduch | Economics | McGraw-Hill | 2018 | 2 |
Krugman and Wells | Economics | Worth | 2015 | 4 |
Mankiw | Principles of Economics | Cengage | 2015 | 7 |
McConnell, Brue, and Flynn | Economics: Principles, Problems, and Policies | McGraw-Hill | 2015 | 20 |
McEachern | Economics: A Contemporary Introduction | Cengage | 2017 | 11 |
Miller | Economics Today | Pearson | 2018 | 19 |
O’Sullivan, Sheffrin, and Perez | Economics: Principles, Applications and Tools | Pearson | 2017 | 9 |
Parkin | Economics | Pearson | 2018 | 13 |
Samuelson and Nordhaus | Economics | McGraw-Hill | 2010 | 19 |
Schiller and Gebhardt | The Economy Today | McGraw-Hill | 2015 | 14 |
Sexton | Exploring Economics | Cengage | 2016 | 7 |
Slavin | Economics | McGraw-Hill | 2014 | 11 |
Tucker | Economics for Today | Cengage | 2017 | 9 |
Author | ALL | A | BP | BB | BM | CFO | Ch | Co | CT | D | FBAH | GSSM | HL | HO | KM | KW | Ma | MBF | Mc | Mi | OSP | P | SN | SG | Se | Sl | T |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
IPCC Scientific Consensus | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||||||||||||
Climate Science as Not Settled | X | X | X | X | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Emission Trading | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
Pigouvian Tax | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
Coase Theorem | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||
GDP and the Environment | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||
Economic Growth | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||||||||||
Collective Action Problem | X | X | X | X | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Global Inequality | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||||||||||||||||
Cost–Benefit Analysis | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||||||||||||||||
Climate Change Adaptation | X | X |
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Liu, J.C.-E.; Bauman, Y.; Chuang, Y. Climate Change and Economics 101: Teaching the Greatest Market Failure. Sustainability 2019, 11, 1340. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11051340
Liu JC-E, Bauman Y, Chuang Y. Climate Change and Economics 101: Teaching the Greatest Market Failure. Sustainability. 2019; 11(5):1340. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11051340
Chicago/Turabian StyleLiu, John Chung-En, Yoram Bauman, and Yating Chuang. 2019. "Climate Change and Economics 101: Teaching the Greatest Market Failure" Sustainability 11, no. 5: 1340. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11051340
APA StyleLiu, J. C. -E., Bauman, Y., & Chuang, Y. (2019). Climate Change and Economics 101: Teaching the Greatest Market Failure. Sustainability, 11(5), 1340. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11051340