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Beyond the Ramsey model for climate change assessments

Baum, Seth
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Baum, Seth
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environmental ethics
climate change
sustainability
values
climate ethics
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Methods of ethics
Environmental ethics
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Climate Ethics
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E82.pdf
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http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/171865
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Abstract
ABSTRACT: The Ramsey optimal growth model contains a class of ethical frameworks popular among economists for assessing climate change. This essay critiques the Ramsey model, highlighting shortcomings in it and describing how to go beyond it towards more nuanced assessments through more accurate utility approximation and more diverse climate change mitigation strategies. This essay also critiques the 2 popular approaches for defining the model’s ethics, prescriptivism and descriptivism, both in and beyond the Ramsey model context. The descriptive approach is found to hold serious flaws and should be rejected. Despite the model’s various shortcomings, the climate change assessments using it provide a valuable applied ethics tool and bolster the case for climate change mitigation. KEY WORDS: Climate change · Ethics · Ramsey growth model · Utilitarianism · Discounting · Utility approximation · Carbon tax
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Article
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2007
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With permission of the license/copyright holder
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