My thought here would be that if climate effects (or other factors) don’t substantially reduce the rate of technological and economic progress over the 21st century, then effects after the 21st century might be likely to be pretty small because our capacity to mitigate them would be enormous. If world real GDP keeps growing at a 3% annual rate, then GDP would be at about a quadrillion dollars/year in 2100 if I’m doing my math right (of course, one might argue it’s likely to be much higher due to AGI, much lower due to slowing technological progress etc.). But that kind of enormous world output would make solutions like scaling up direct air capture to get massively negative carbon emissions feasible. In light of that, it makes a lot more sense to worry about how climate change impacts humanity’s trajectory over the next 80 years than it does to worry about what the impacts will be after 2100.
Climate-economy models factor in technological and economic progress, and yet their SCC estimates are hugely sensitive to the discount rate. The only way I can see this happening is if climate damages in the future are very large.
That assumes a relatively happy path. If there’s some other major one-off catastrophe (eg a major pandemic), the long-term effects of climate change will end up being far harder to deal with.
My thought here would be that if climate effects (or other factors) don’t substantially reduce the rate of technological and economic progress over the 21st century, then effects after the 21st century might be likely to be pretty small because our capacity to mitigate them would be enormous. If world real GDP keeps growing at a 3% annual rate, then GDP would be at about a quadrillion dollars/year in 2100 if I’m doing my math right (of course, one might argue it’s likely to be much higher due to AGI, much lower due to slowing technological progress etc.). But that kind of enormous world output would make solutions like scaling up direct air capture to get massively negative carbon emissions feasible. In light of that, it makes a lot more sense to worry about how climate change impacts humanity’s trajectory over the next 80 years than it does to worry about what the impacts will be after 2100.
Climate-economy models factor in technological and economic progress, and yet their SCC estimates are hugely sensitive to the discount rate. The only way I can see this happening is if climate damages in the future are very large.
That assumes a relatively happy path. If there’s some other major one-off catastrophe (eg a major pandemic), the long-term effects of climate change will end up being far harder to deal with.