Discounting, Climate Change And The Ecological Fallacy
Discounting future costs and benefits is often defended on the ground that our descendants will be richer. Simply to treat the future as better off, however, is to commit an ecological fallacy. Even if our descendants are better off when we average across climate change scenarios, this cannot justify discounting costs and benefits in possible states of the world in which they are not. Giving due weight to catastrophe scenarios requires energetic action against climate change.
Date: 25 January 2019, 12:00 (Friday, 2nd week, Hilary 2019)
Venue: Littlegate House, 16-17 St Ebbe's Street OX1 1PT
Venue Details: Petrov Room
Speaker: Matthew Rendall (University of Nottingham)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Organisers: Prof Hilary Greaves (University of Oxford), Rossa O'Keeffe-O'Donovan (Nuffield College)
Organiser contact email address: gpi-office@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Global Priorities Institute (GPI) Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: James Aung