Read on Twitter
. @ProfSteveKeen @jasonhickel , there's a mess in the delusional and terrible economics aisle. Want to come clean up? https://twitter.com/RichardTol/status/1341757027354349576
Ok, while waiting for the pain killers to kick in, I'll have a stab at explaining why this particular brand of "we can grow the economy by burning fossil fuels and then invest in technology to adapt to climate change impacts" is just so purely wrong, and also evil. 2/
This kind of cost-benefit economic analysis makes lots of assumptions, like:
Assumption 1: growth is reinvested for the common good [see pandemic: growth for billionaires, destitution & evictions for everyone else. How well is that going?]
3/
Assumption 1: growth is reinvested for the common good [see pandemic: growth for billionaires, destitution & evictions for everyone else. How well is that going?]
3/
Assumption 2: economic growth is necessary for human welfare.
[again questionable. See thread link below for exploration from one of my papers.] 4/ https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1243672614507347968
[again questionable. See thread link below for exploration from one of my papers.] 4/ https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1243672614507347968
Assumption 3: massive climate impacts can be predicted accurately and smoothly into the future.
This is completely laughable. Impacts can be predicted on average, but we're talking about exploding the climactic and chemical stability of an entire planet here. 5/
This is completely laughable. Impacts can be predicted on average, but we're talking about exploding the climactic and chemical stability of an entire planet here. 5/
Including complex feedback loops involving biodiversity, food supplies, international trade, social welfare systems. I mean, how many of these did you predict for 2020? Exactly. No one can predict, plan for or adapt to this level of climate disruption. And this below 1.5 C. 6/
Assumption 4: we can buy our way, with cash $, out of the planetary scale of impacts caused by climate devastation. You know, with air conditioners and flood defences. I don't even know where to start. How is that going in Paradise California? In underwater Louisiana? 7/
We're going to buy our way out of crop failures and mega-storms and mega-droughts and mega-fires and mega heat-waves and disease spread and ecosystem loss. Sure thing, mate. 8/
Do I need to remind everyone again that our best estimates show that 1/2 of all species of plants and insects, and 1/4 of all vertebrates, are at risk of extinction at 3 degrees of warming? 9/
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6390/791
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6390/791
How are we going to buy our way out of the collapse of the web of life? It's just so epically mega-dumb. It's the economic equivalent of techno-optimism: somewhere, somehow, we'll magic our way out of this growth-made cataclysm. 10/
Then there are huge problems with the actual estimates and mechanics of the cost-benefit optimisation models that try to do these kinds of "buy our way out of planetary scale impacts" modelling. @ProfSteveKeen detailed some here: 11/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1807856
. @jasonhickel wrote about the devastating economics of Nordhaus' Nobel Prize (ugh). 12/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/the-nobel-prize-for-climate-catastrophe/
Anyway. If anyone says everything's going to be groovy and we can buy our way out of this planetary-scale disaster by just growing the economy some more, maybe try to get their drug dealer's phone number, because that's some good 
they're on. 13/
they're on. 13/
But don't take their actual advice on any decision you would want to count on to save a few lives in the future. Just a friendly word of caution. Merry Xmas all. End/
A more realistic diagnosis here ... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y
A more realistic diagnosis here ... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y
Adding one more point: at 4 deg warming, most of the tropics will become uninhabitable due to deadly heat-humidity combinations for most days of the year. This is not let's get more aircon bad, this is everyone dies bad. Figure from Mora et al .
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3322/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3322/
And another: 4°C is heading for Pliocene climates, 3-4 million years ago, the dawn of homo genus. 8°C , which Bjorn Lomborg says would still be safe for the economy, is Eocene climates: 50 million years ago. Figure from Burke et al with my arrows overlaid.
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/52/13288
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/52/13288
There is no way in hell that either we, or the agriculture and ecosystems we depend upon completely for our existence, can "adapt" to kicking the planetary climate millions of years back in the span of a century. Lunacy doesn't start to cover it. 
https://medium.com/climate-conscious/cogs-in-the-climate-machine-167cf16750dd
https://medium.com/climate-conscious/cogs-in-the-climate-machine-167cf16750dd
