Is Global Warming a problem? Who cares!
I am taking a Public Finance course this semester. For those of you who don't know, Public Finance is basically the economics of the government. So we talk about taxes, public goods, budgets, and public programs.
We started talking about externalities last week, and we saw a movie to introduce the concept of negative externalities. The guy in the movie brought up Global Warming as a negative externality, and he basically said that even if you think that there is only a 10% chance that Global Warming could occur it is still economically beneficial to take out some sort of insurance against it (meaning enact some policy to decrease the severity).
Today Professor Browning brought this up, and gave his view on Global warming. He said that because by year 2050 the average estimated cost of doing nothing about global warming in about 1.5% of global GDP the cost of any current policy would be greater, and thus result in a net loss rather than a gain. SO we should not do anything.
The general arguments that I have heard were is it a problem or is it not. People who think that global warming is an issue are generally united in thinking that SOMETHING should be done, even if they don't nessicarily agree on WHAT.
This was the first time I have heard someone say that global warming is a problem, we just shouldn't do anything about it. For some reason I find this a little mind blowing, even though Dr. Browning does have sound economic reasoning behind his thoughts.
We started talking about externalities last week, and we saw a movie to introduce the concept of negative externalities. The guy in the movie brought up Global Warming as a negative externality, and he basically said that even if you think that there is only a 10% chance that Global Warming could occur it is still economically beneficial to take out some sort of insurance against it (meaning enact some policy to decrease the severity).
Today Professor Browning brought this up, and gave his view on Global warming. He said that because by year 2050 the average estimated cost of doing nothing about global warming in about 1.5% of global GDP the cost of any current policy would be greater, and thus result in a net loss rather than a gain. SO we should not do anything.
The general arguments that I have heard were is it a problem or is it not. People who think that global warming is an issue are generally united in thinking that SOMETHING should be done, even if they don't nessicarily agree on WHAT.
This was the first time I have heard someone say that global warming is a problem, we just shouldn't do anything about it. For some reason I find this a little mind blowing, even though Dr. Browning does have sound economic reasoning behind his thoughts.