Common Resources

Estimating The Social Cost Of Carbon: Robert Pindyck’s Critique

The US government’s new consensus estimate of the social cost of carbon (SCC)—around $43 per ton of CO2 from a 2020 baseline—has met with some approval in academic and other circles (as we discussed yesterday). But some of the harshest criticisms, at least insofar as the blogosphere would interpret them, have come from MIT economist […]

Towards an Agreed-Upon Social Cost of Carbon

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a monetary estimate of the global external (i.e., non-market) costs from a ton of CO2 (or greenhouse gas equivalent) emissions. These costs include, among other things, damages related to sea level rise, more frequent storms, and higher temperatures. These effects will vary over time but the SCC is […]