Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Yet another set of questions involves the interaction of climate
change and economic growth. In the next section, we will see that the
extent of impacts depends critically on the pace of economic growth,
which in turn will determine how dependent societies are on farming.
ECONOMIC GROWTH, CLIMATE CHANGE,
AND DAMAGE FROM CLIMATE CHANGE
Before discussing the impacts of climate change on farming, it is
important to understand two central points about the relationship be-
tween climate change and economic growth. The extent of climate
change, and the size and severity of damages on sectors like farming, will
depend primarily on the pace of economic growth over the next century
and beyond. But the fl ip side of this is that societies are likely to be
much wealthier in the future when they confront the dangers of global
warming.
The best way to see these connections is to compare two futures:
one with and one without economic growth. Let's examine the outlook
for each scenario of climate change and climate damages using a stan-
dard integrated assessment model.
The
baseline scenario
is the one used to project economic growth,
emissions, and climate change without emissions reductions or other
climate-change policies. This scenario serves as the standard no-policy
baseline throughout this topic. For this discussion, I rely on the Yale
DICE model discussed in Chapter 3. In the baseline run, per capita con-
sumption continues to rise rapidly over the coming decades. The pro-
jected growth in global per capita output is a little under 2 percent per
year for the twenty-fi rst century, and just below 1 percent per year for
the twenty-second century. After two centuries of growth, the world
would be an affl uent place by today's standards: Global per capita con-
sumption would be almost three times the current level for the United
States. The rapid growth in the baseline case also leads to rapid changes
in global temperatures. These growth projections are standard to the
integrated economic-climate models described in Part I (see particu-
larly Figure 9).
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