Economics and the Environment, 10th Edition

1Four Economic Questions About Climate Change

1.1 Introduction

One of the authors of this book recently had some surprise visitors to his environmental and natural resource economics class. It was alumni week at the college, and four members of the class of 1955, back for their 60th reunion, joined our discussion. We were talking about sustainability, and suddenly the day's lecture became very real. How has life really changed since these visitors left college in 1955? Have seven decades of intervening economic growth—with per capita gross domestic product (GDP) more than tripling—made life better? Or have the costs of growth made things worse? Is economic growth sustainable? And in the coming decades, will your generation's quality of life rise or fall?

So imagine now: You are that older person, heading to the classroom this week for your 60th class reunion. You are 80‐something, and for you, it will be sometime in the 2080s. As you listen to the young professor at the head of the class talking about the latest theories, you sit back and reflect on the changes that you have witnessed in your lifetime. Maybe your story will go something like this:

Over the twenty‐first century, you lived through both deep recessions and economic booms, through wars and political upheavals. You experienced staggering technological breakthroughs, unprecedented droughts, sea‐level rise that forced millions from their homes, large‐scale extinctions, and the outbreak of new diseases. Against this ...