Climate Change and Intergenerational Fairness: Reconciling Ethics and Economics

Event Description

Moral theories emphasize the importance of stabilizing the Earth's climate to protect the rights or interests of future generations. Economic models, however, often discount the future at a rate that implies that comparatively little weight is attached to the benefits of climate change mitigation. This lecture explored and sought to resolve the tensions that exist between these two points of view, arguing that the use of high discount rates is inappropriate in this context on both philosophical and empirical grounds.