A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls.
an ideal efficient climate change policy would be relatively inexpensive and have a substantial impact on long run climate change. This policy, which we have labeled the “optimal” one, sets emissions reductions to maximize the economic welfare of humans..
..The final message of this study is a simple one: Global warming is a serious problem that will not solve itself. Countries should take cooperative steps to slow global warming. There is no case for delay.
The piece completely misrepresented my work. My work has long taken the view that policies to slow global warming would have net economic benefits, in the trillion of dollars of present value. This is true going back to work in the early 1990s (MIT Press, Yale Press, Science, PNAS, among others). I have advocated a carbon tax for many years as the best way to attack the issue. I can only assume they either completely ignorant of the economics on the issue or are willfully misstating my findings.
