期刊名称:Documents de Travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne
印刷版ISSN:1955-611X
出版年度:2017
出版社:Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne
摘要:Climate change raises the issue of intergenerational equity. As climate change threatensirreversible and dangerous impacts, possibly leading to extinction, the most relevanttrade-off may not be between present and future consumption, but between present consumptionand the mere existence of future generations. To investigate this trade-off, webuild an integrated assessment model that explicitly accounts for the risk of extinction offuture generations. We compare different climate policies, which change the probability ofcatastrophic outcomes yielding an early extinction, within the class of variable populationutilitarian social welfare functions. We show that the risk of extinction is the main driver ofthe preferred policy over climate damages. We analyze the role of inequality aversion andpopulation ethics. Usually a preference for large populations and a low inequality aversionfavour the most ambitious climate policy, although there are cases where the effect of inequalityaversion is reversed.