Matt Yglesias

More Discount Rate Madness

Relevant to the earlier discussion of discount rates and climate change, here’s a document in which Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling make the case against “cost-benefit analysis” in general as an approach to environmental policy decision-making. Some of the problems with this approach, which unfortunately has been given a name that makes you sound crazy to argue against it, are, I think, especially severe in the case of climate change because the concerns about equity that exist with this overall approach get really problematic when you operate on a global scale where gaps in income get really immense.