Hauke’s calculation simply determines a standard Benefit/Cost ratio. If it costs $10 to avert a tonne of CO2 that provides benefits of $417 (in damages averted), this Benefit/Cost ratio equals 41.7. This ratio should be directly comparable to Copenhagen Consensus ‘Social, economic, and environmental benefit per $1 spent.’ For the Post-2015 Consensus, ‘Climate Change Adaption’ is listed as providing a Benefit/Cost ratio of 2 while climate-related ‘Energy Research’ has a ratio of 11. I would weight these results from meta-level research must more strongly than that from a single study. But even if we believed Hauke’s study, a benefit/cost ratio of 41.7 still lags ‘Reduce Child Malnutrition’ (ratio of 45) or ‘Expanded Immunization’ (ratio of 60). This hardly suggests that “we should consider prioritizing climate change over global development interventions.” The unconditional cash transfer benchmark that Hauke uses is a minimum and not representative of highly cost-effective interventions in global development. Using GiveWell’s estimates, deworming and malaria nets are more than 10x more cost-effective than cash. Before rushing to replace well-established priorities and interventions that are based on decades of research, we need to have substantial confidence in the new priority/intervention. This study is far from it.
Note that the Copenhagen Consensus and GiveWell results do not apply utility adjustments. If this new climate change study does so, its Benefit/Cost ratio would be distorted by improperly inflating Benefits, which make the ratio larger than it actually is.
“Some global development interventions have been estimated to be 17.5x more effective than cash-transfers (e.g. deworming).[34] We use this as the optimistic case.”
Hauke’s calculation simply determines a standard Benefit/Cost ratio. If it costs $10 to avert a tonne of CO2 that provides benefits of $417 (in damages averted), this Benefit/Cost ratio equals 41.7. This ratio should be directly comparable to Copenhagen Consensus ‘Social, economic, and environmental benefit per $1 spent.’ For the Post-2015 Consensus, ‘Climate Change Adaption’ is listed as providing a Benefit/Cost ratio of 2 while climate-related ‘Energy Research’ has a ratio of 11. I would weight these results from meta-level research must more strongly than that from a single study. But even if we believed Hauke’s study, a benefit/cost ratio of 41.7 still lags ‘Reduce Child Malnutrition’ (ratio of 45) or ‘Expanded Immunization’ (ratio of 60). This hardly suggests that “we should consider prioritizing climate change over global development interventions.” The unconditional cash transfer benchmark that Hauke uses is a minimum and not representative of highly cost-effective interventions in global development. Using GiveWell’s estimates, deworming and malaria nets are more than 10x more cost-effective than cash. Before rushing to replace well-established priorities and interventions that are based on decades of research, we need to have substantial confidence in the new priority/intervention. This study is far from it.
Note that the Copenhagen Consensus and GiveWell results do not apply utility adjustments. If this new climate change study does so, its Benefit/Cost ratio would be distorted by improperly inflating Benefits, which make the ratio larger than it actually is.
Thank you- I’ve now included this in my model:
“Some global development interventions have been estimated to be 17.5x more effective than cash-transfers (e.g. deworming).[34] We use this as the optimistic case.”