IN 2016, the administration of US president Barack Obama estimated that each tonne of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere caused about $50 of damage. In August, the Trump administration revised that to $1, revealing the charade that has supported decades of inaction on climate change.
Few people would agree that a price could be put on our planet, but that is the idea behind this 鈥渟ocial cost of carbon鈥�. Such hubris is the preserve of a select group in industrialised countries, who put a dollar value on the devastation that a strengthened hurricane wreaks on distant communities, pricing the people killed, the homes and neighbourhoods destroyed.
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Added to this is a guess of the cost to our children of living with exacerbated floods and droughts, human migration, the loss of pollinating insects, dieback of forests, sea level rise and so on.
Yet an important property of the social cost of carbon is that it can never be so high as to raise fundamental questions of today鈥檚 dominant economic model.
The massaging of costs to an acceptable level is achieved by two main ruses. First, the effect on poor people is underplayed by valuing such impacts against the low economic 鈥渨orth鈥� of those enduring them. Second, the effects on future generations are 鈥渄iscounted鈥�, that is, considered less damaging than if those impacts occurred today.
鈥淲hat we lack is not spurious financialisation, but the courage to deliver on our commitments鈥�
Such cost-optimising models have dominated the agenda on how we can mitigate climate change for more than two decades, during which emissions have risen rapidly.
The 1.5 to 2掳C commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement provide a guide on how much carbon we can emit. This has been informed by science.
What we lack is not spurious financialisation of deeply human and ecological values, but the courage and integrity to put in place the measures necessary to deliver on our commitments.
A price on carbon may be one tool for bringing about rapid decarbonisation in our society, but such a figure can never reflect the true cost of the escalating damage to ecosystems, or the misery caused by our emissions.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淐osting the Earth鈥�
